Copyright Reform Poll

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

If your mother and/or father left you income from a family business or money from investments that were earned because of their work. would you refuse to accept the money because you would be sponging off your parents' work?

Interestingly, I only feel this way about inheritance with copyrights. For investments, land, money in the bank, etc. I'm fine with them inheriting that. I agree with what someone said in another thread about books being a part of our cultural heritage and therefore would prefer to see them move into the public domain as soon as possible.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Interestingly, I only feel this way about inheritance with copyrights. For investments, land, money in the bank, etc. I'm fine with them inheriting that. I agree with what someone said in another thread about books being a part of our cultural heritage and therefore would prefer to see them move into the public domain as soon as possible.

The cultural heritage thing might hold more weight if the books were not (for the most part) already available to you regardless of copyright. If your culture is so important to you - and you can't afford to buy your own copy - there are things called libraries and they let you borrow a copy for free! And you don't even have to wait ... except maybe for a little while for the very popular books.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by gmw

The cultural heritage thing might hold more weight if the books were not (for the most part) already available to you regardless of copyright. If your culture is so important to you - and you can't afford to buy your own copy - there are things called libraries and they let you borrow a copy for free! And you don't even have to wait ... except maybe for a little while for the very popular books.

Cultural heritage refers to the ability to use elements of the work in creating a new work.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Cultural heritage refers to the ability to use elements of the work in creating a new work.

It happens already. Masses of fantasy since Lord of the Rings owes its existence to Lord of the Rings. While, Lord of the Rings, in its turn, took inspiration, and some (limited) elements, from Tolkien's cultural heritage. And so on, ad infinitum. How many more examples do we need?

Anyway, claiming "cultural heritage" is just spin. Fan-fiction/Derivative-fiction might, at a stretch, be considered a specialised use of cultural heritage (just this little bit of culture please), but it's rather a big swallow to claim we need short copyright for cultural heritage purposes when all we really mean is this tiny little specialist bit of cultural heritage that isn't already covered.

[DiapDealer]

It's rather hard to call it "just spin", in my opinion when the balance of limited rights vs the cultural benefit has been a common theme since the inception of the first copyright laws. Culture was one of the prime tenets of the contract between creators and society. Blowing that off as "just spin" seems like a dangerous attempt at rewriting history to me.

[gmw]

Why side track this into an argument about history? At the moment I'm interested in what we have now vs what we might consider ideal.

And what we have now already gives creators access to their entire cultural heritage EXCEPT for a few odds and ends to do with copying and derivation. (Oh, and outside copyright, there may also be other laws impeding creators, depending on your jurisdiction: liable, hate speech etc..) If you want to argue about certain aspects of cultural heritage that are or are not accessible then that's one thing, but don't try to claim that your use cultural heritage as a whole is significantly impeded. So yes, the unqualified use of the phrase "cultural heritage" does indeed try to spin the argument by suggesting the current impositions of copyright are broader than they are.

[DiapDealer]

No problem. I'll bow out, then. It seemed odd to me to dismiss the cultural aspect of copyright as "just spin" is all. Now, in the past, or in the future. Feel free to carry on with what YOU want the conversation to be about, though. I'll not interrupt your soliloquy again. *shrug*

[Philippe D.]

I voted for lifetime of author, but I would be OK with a fixed amount of time. I suppose I'm in the minority in thinking heirs should not get benefits, but then I'm also in the minority in believing any form of inheritance should be abolished.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Philippe D.

I voted for lifetime of author, but I would be OK with a fixed amount of time. I suppose I'm in the minority in thinking heirs should not get benefits, but then I'm also in the minority in believing any form of inheritance should be abolished.

As long as the Author is Human. Walt is dead. Steamboat Willie will never die

No Inheritance? Then who gets the Estate (and copy rights) ?

There is no ONE SIZE FITS ALL answer.
What we have is seriously broken, but it all should not be tossed either.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by theducks

No Inheritance? Then who gets the Estate (and copy rights)?

There's a push, probably not a big push, for something called the 100% inheritance tax. I heard part of a talk by Bill Gates's father; he and his son are pushing for it. As I understand it, you avoid having your money, estate, whatever taken by the government by willing to non-profits.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by hobnail

There's a push, probably not a big push, for something called the 100% inheritance tax. I heard part of a talk by Bill Gates's father; he and his son are pushing for it. As I understand it, you avoid having your money, estate, whatever taken by the government by willing to non-profits.

I have no problem with people giving their wealth to charity. I have a big problem with people insisting that I give my wealth to charity or the government.

However, I look at copyright as a contract between the artist and society, not as the artist's personal property. Just like when I stopped working for my former employer, I stopped being paid, even though they were still using the code I wrote, my property was the payment that I invested. If an artist wants to have property to give to his or her heirs, then invest the money you earn during the limited duration of the copyright.

[hildea]

I picked "The lifetime of the author, plus a number of years", but even better would be 80 (or thereabouts) years after the birth of the author. That would ensure income for dependents of the author even if the author dies young. And in those (rare?) cases when it's difficult to determine who the author is or when they died, it defaults easily to at the latest 80 years after publication.

I'd set a much shorter time for copyright owned by companies, say ~20 years after publication at most.

Originally Posted by Philippe D.

I suppose I'm in the minority in thinking heirs should not get benefits, but then I'm also in the minority in believing any form of inheritance should be abolished.

I completely support abolishing all forms of inheritance (preferably keep a small amount for sentimental things). But I don't think we should start with taking it away from artists while letting everybody else keep it.

[rkomar]

In a philosophical way, I'm frustrated about these conversations not really talking about the root issues. Is money the most important, and even only important, consideration when thinking about copyrights? Will anything change so long as we have political systems that make political contributions a legal form of bribery for directing the passage of laws? To me, current trends in copyrights are canaries in the coalmine showing the erosion of law-making for the greater good.

Here in Canada, the length of copyright terms is going up due to pressure from the American government, under the direction of large corporations. That's just disappointing in so many ways.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by rkomar

In a philosophical way, I'm frustrated about these conversations not really talking about the root issues. Is money the most important, and even only important, consideration when thinking about copyrights? Will anything change so long as we have political systems that make political contributions a legal form of bribery for directing the passage of laws? To me, current trends in copyrights are canaries in the coalmine showing the erosion of law-making for the greater good.

Here in Canada, the length of copyright terms is going up due to pressure from the American government, under the direction of large corporations. That's just disappointing in so many ways.

Well, the whole lifetime movement for copyright was pushed by a wealthy author (Victor Hugo) who was peeved because he thought that copyright was his personal right. So Disney is simply following in his footsteps. Long copyright is purely about protecting commercial profits of a small number of works. The vast majority of authors get the vast majority of sells in a fairly short time period.

Of course, as I've pointed out before, books really doesn't move the copyright needle much. It's mostly driven by movies these days. It's not exactly a surprise that the US joined the Berne convention about the time that box office outside the US became an important market for film makers.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Well, the whole lifetime movement for copyright was pushed by a wealthy author (Victor Hugo) who was peeved because he thought that copyright was his personal right. So Disney is simply following in his footsteps. Long copyright is purely about protecting commercial profits of a small number of works. The vast majority of authors get the vast majority of sells in a fairly short time period.

Of course, as I've pointed out before, books really doesn't move the copyright needle much. It's mostly driven by movies these days. It's not exactly a surprise that the US joined the Berne convention about the time that box office outside the US became an important market for film makers.

Actually when the early sound pictures were looking at copyright expiration. 1929 to 1976 was 47 years, the expiration would be in another 9 years. As a matter of fact, it covered silents that were not already in PD, even though there wasn't much of a market for them. (1921 + 56 = 1977)

Hollywood was into foreign markets from the 1930's. Look at how you started to have latin american themed movies (musicals especially) in 1940, once the european markets were closed off with WWII.