Coppyright: Brazil's Approach on Anti-Circumvention: Penalties For Hindering Fair Dea

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by nashira

Immortal companies aside, HOW do people think forever copyright will benefit them?!

Via campaign contributions from immortal companies, perhaps...

[Barcey]

It's good to see that Brazil gets it. The current trend of over protective Copyright reforms will kill creativity and the digital economy. It's necessary for works to fall into the public domain.

[ficbot]

The thing that always annoys me about opinions like that of Sonny Bono is that creative work does not exist in a vacuum. Creative works draw on a common pool of culture (the public domain) that, without it, would not allow new works to be made. For example, if eternal copyright existed, than Sonny Bono would not have been able to write songs about love, because other people had written songs about love first and therefore had eternal dibs on the idea. And he would not have been able to write songs about pain. Or friendship. Or anything, really. Anything that anyone else might have done first would be off-limits.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ficbot

For example, if eternal copyright existed, than Sonny Bono would not have been able to write songs about love, because other people had written songs about love first and therefore had eternal dibs on the idea.

No disrepect, ficbot, but you have a strange idea about copyright. Copyright doesn't protect ideas; it protect concrete expressions of ideas. "A boy going to a school for wizards" is an idea, and anyone is free to use it. "A boy called Harry Potter going to a school called Hogwarts" is a concrete expression of that idea, and you're not free to use that. Copyright does not stop you from writing your own book about boy wizards.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No disrepect, ficbot, but you have a strange idea about copyright. Copyright doesn't protect ideas; it protect concrete expressions of ideas. "A boy going to a school for wizards" is an idea, and anyone is free to use it. "A boy called Harry Potter going to a school called Hogwarts" is a concrete expression of that idea, and you're not free to use that. Copyright does not stop you from writing your own book about boy wizards.

Depends on how closely it resembles Harry Potter and Hogwarts...

[HarryT]

It does indeed, but my original point stands, which is that copyright law does not protect ideas. That's what patent law is for, and why copyrights and patents are completely different things.

[pholy]

Patents were not supposed to protest ideas, they were supposed to protect things and physical processes. Algorithms and mathematics were not included until some lawyers and US Supreme Court Justices got all confused about reality and philosophical constructs.

Don't get me started!

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Scary but truly mind boggling stuff all told.

This just confirms, at least to my mind that publishing companies are truly pre-Cambrian in their thinking and need to control anachronistic distribution models!

I'm sorry, I don't agree with your view of their motives. I think it's Greed.

Regards, Alex

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I'm sorry, I don't agree with your view of their motives. I think it's Greed.

Regards, Alex

I think you will find that it boils down to the same thing. Control the current distribution model with it's restrictions and overpricing and it is greed.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It does indeed, but my original point stands, which is that copyright law does not protect ideas.

Yes it does. It just protects specific ideas, not general ones. It's still granting monopoly of an idea.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Yes it does. It just protects specific ideas, not general ones. It's still granting monopoly of an idea.

I'm sorry to disagree with you, but it's not the idea that's protected, but its concrete expression - as a book, a song, a film, or whatever. Anyone could have taken Ms. Rowling's "idea" about a boy called Harry Potter going to a wizard school called Hogwarts; copyright doesn't protect it until it's written down, filmed, recorded, or whatever. The idea, while it exists only in someone's mind, without concrete expression, is not protected.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm sorry to disagree with you, but it's not the idea that's protected

"A boy going to a school for wizards" and "A boy called Harry Potter going to a school called Hogwarts" are both ideas.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I think you will find that it boils down to the same thing. Control the current distribution model with it's restrictions and overpricing and it is greed.

Exactly. Greed, which is achieved through control.

[HarryT]

Yes, of course they are, but it didn't become a protectable idea until it was written down; that's my point. The idea doesn't get the protection until it's expressed in a concrete form.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, of course they are, but it didn't become a protectable idea until it was written down; that's my point. The idea doesn't get the protection until it's expressed in a concrete form.

But it's still the idea that gets the protection, not the physical form.

If I had never heard of Harry Potter, but out of sheer luck happen to write the identical story myself, word for word, that would be copyright infringement (although extremely unlikely).

An idea has to be expressed in a tangible form in order to qualify for protection, but once it is, it's the idea, not the physical form, that is protected. Otherwise the above scenario would be legal since it didn't involve copying the concrete form.

ficbot's point is incorrect because he is talking about a general idea, not a specific one. Just because somebody writes "a" love song does not mean that "all" love songs are copyrighted. He does have a point though, in that most art is derivative of previous art. However, your point is incorrect as well. Specific ideas are protected, not just the concrete expression. If two musicians write "the same" love song, then one of them will get ownership of it via copyright (and could sue the other). It doesn't matter that they never "copied" the concrete expression. The specific idea of that exact song is what's protected.