Why public domain

[shalym]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Pwalker seemed to assert that the common use of Coke to mean soda/pop/soft drink implied CocaCola was unable to pursue those individuals because the trademark protections had lapsed.

I was just pointing out that companies are generally wiser than to try to enforce usage when there's no explicit attempt to exploit a brand name for another product. And that the lack of them doing so shouldn't be taken as a sign of anything except a smart PR department that corporate actually listens to. Since, as noted, trying to pursue those cases would be a PR nightmare and wouldn't gain them any profit.

Actually, trademarks have to be defended, or they may be considered abandoned. https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/t...nded-9813.html "Kleenex" is mentioned in the article.

Here's another article on the subject: https://www.inc.com/guides/201101/ho...ringement.html

Many aspiring entrepreneurs dream of turning their brand into a household word. But watch what you wish for—if your trademark becomes the generic word for a kind of product, you could lose your ownership of it.

That was the fate of words like "escalator" (originally a trademark of Otis Elevator Co.), "zipper" (B.F. Goodrich), "aspirin," and even "heroin" (both Bayer AG). Today companies like Kleenex and Xerox struggle to avoid such a fate through marketing campaigns aimed at reminding the public that they are a brand, not a product category.

"The company most notorious for making sure you don't genericize their mark is Xerox, which insists that people use a Xerox copy machine, they don't 'make a Xerox,'" says Albert.

Shari

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by shalym

Actually, trademarks have to be defended, or they may be considered abandoned. https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/t...nded-9813.html "Kleenex" is mentioned in the article.

Here's another article on the subject: https://www.inc.com/guides/201101/ho...ringement.html


Shari

Interesting. Though until someone goes out and sells a soft drink called Coke without getting it from Coca Cola and successfully defends it in court, I’d stand by what I said. I’d also not suggest trying unless you’ve got a lot of money because they’ll bury you in legal issues until you cry at that point.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Newton deliberately declined to write for a mass audience:

In the good old times of Newton, only a few could read and write.
Therefore it was easy to direct your writings to a target or to avoid another target.
One could say the same things about hermeutics or (free)masons or any other secret societies.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Without copyright, specialists would still write articles in an attempt to convince other specialists that they should get tenure, and just for the joy of advancing science.

That's not really true. There is a coincidence, there is a superposition, there is a certain incentive (everyone chooses to use whatever means he had at his disposal in the given time period), but there is no causality.

While during newtonian times, the learned wrote to create themselves a "name" (fame), in Einstein times, but even more during our days, most people write to get money (and fame, which bring later on more money). Scientists are obliged to write articles for a limted circle of periodicals, for they need this number in order to fulfil formal requirements for advancing in career or university degree (Ph.D). There is so much "noise" that was published since copyrights were used in comercial purpose like no other in the history, in fact millions of articles each year, useless information, uselees for everybody else than the author. Where are the Humboldt's times, when the word of the day was: "prepare the communication/article, leave it in the drawer for at least 5 years, dig it out, re-read it (with other eyes, now), then see if it's worth, and publish it, in the amended form." Open Nature and see how many aerticles end with "future researches will [be needed to] prove the conclusions set forth" or similar.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

Ask Disney if it's an issue.

Are Disney still making movies?
Doesn't seem to be putting them off, does it?

Lack of copyright would certainly disencentivize companies from investing into new IP.
Limited copyright does not. Every work ever produced has been produced knowing it was not going get unlimited copyright. Almost all works ever produced were produced when copyright terms were lower than they are now.
Obviously companies who have already created works are going to try to maximize their own profits by increasing the limits for their existing works. That doesn't make it a good idea.

[leebase]

I completely agree that limited copyright has spawned the industries as they currently are. I am not suggesting limitless copyright for fiction will create anything better than what we have.

I am arguing based on private property ownership. Society has no right to confiscate my property. Taxes are the mechanism I advocate for society to get it's benefit from my property.

And while we DO have limited copyright and so we know we have successfully incentivized the wonderful set of industries we have.

We ALSO have unlimited copyright. We are bumping into the "big deal" properties that Disney has so far successfully lobbied in extending copyright. So we DON'T know what will happen when an intellectual property upon which large businesses are built go into public domain.

I'm not suggesting Disney will go out of business or stop investing. I'm suggesting that Disney has been continuously investing in those intellectual properties keeping them relevant and valuable. I think it's unfair to take that value away and give it to "society".

We don't with Trade Marks.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Are Disney still making movies?

Yes, they do - Star Wars last 2 episodes are "Mickey Moused".

[Abzeronow]

Originally Posted by leebase

I accept that Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austin works are good examples as counter arguments to my hyperbolic “no one will invest in properties they can’t own”. Of course...one needn’t look past Disney for such examples.

I’d say this in reply....Disney and the folks behind the Holmes shows and movies were willing to invest in pre-existing stories...because they knew their own works would be protected by ownership and the value of the existing works was worth exploiting even though others can equally exploit those same works.

Jane Austen only really became popular with the masses after copyright for them expired. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recept...of_Jane_Austen The 1880s and 1890s were full of cheap editions that only could have been printed because the initial copyright for the novels had expired, and Jane Austen has been in the popular consciousness ever since. There's a pretty good recent book about this by Janine Barchas called The Lost Books of Jane Austen https://lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu...g-jane-austen/

Where do you think Austen might be in history had her novels not sold for such affordable prices?

I tend to rely on facts and admit that even friendly hypotheticals make me nervous. All I can observe with confidence is that the cheapness of reprintings in the nineteenth century helped to promote and lock in the astonishing literary fame Austen now enjoys. However, and just between friends, might Austen have risen to the top of today’s literary charts if her stories had remained accessible only as rarified and expensive editions — such as was the case in her own lifetime? My gut says “no.”

In many cases, books tend to get more reprints when they're public domain, for many reasons, and publishers seem to be doing just fine with reprints of public domain material. Limited copyright serves the purpose of giving creatives a good limited monopoly over their works, and to promote the good of our culture, copyrights expire so others can reuse, remix or adapt to their hearts content.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by leebase

I'm not suggesting Disney will go out of business or stop investing. I'm suggesting that Disney has been continuously investing in those intellectual properties keeping them relevant and valuable. I think it's unfair to take that value away and give it to "society".

Disney has done so in the full knowledge that the copyright will eventually run out. (assuming of course they can't buy enough politicians to change the deal after it was done and to the detriment of one party over the other).

I don't see how simply enforcing what is essentially a contract both parties have freely entered into is "unfair". Particularly in light of the oft repeated argument that there is nothing wrong with contracts that take rights from authors and give them to corporations because "no one forced the author to sign the contract".

I think it would be unfair to reform a contract after it has been entered into just so one party can benefit at the expense of the other. Besides "because I say it is so", I have yet to see any argument why that would not be "unfair" or, indeed, why it would be a good thing.

[gmw]

Of course, you all realise how pointless this discussion is - yes?

I'm not talking about there being a world-wide conspiracy agreement to have a minimum copyright period and the chances of changing it significantly have got to be minuscule.

No, I'm talking about science eventually solving the problem of ageing: people will live forever and life+50 will be forever+50. Companies will find ways to invest their copyright with an individual to take advantage of the law, but such people will live under virtual house arrest in order to avoid sabotage by competitors that want to utterly destroy the body and so release the copyright in 50 years time. There will be privacy arguments over whether the law can demand a person appear in person to prove that they are still living and therefore still capable of holding copyright. There will be even more legal arguments over how much of a body must exist (kept alive artificially) to keep their copyright active, with counter arguments that all humans are now kept alive artificially by the genetic treatments that prevent ageing.

(Oh man, am I cooking or what? ... Wait, has someone already done that? Have I just broken copyright? )

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Open Nature and see how many articles end with "future researches will [be needed to] prove the conclusions set forth" or similar.

I rarely read Nature. But if such boilerplate, about the tentative nature of science, is endlessly repeated there, that's bad writing. Big-publisher-edited popular science titles, some authored by the same scientists, are better-written. This is the sort of title that only gets written after a book proposal is funded by the kind of publisher which needs copyright.

Originally Posted by gmw

Of course, you all realise how pointless this discussion is - yes? . . .

I'm talking about science eventually solving the problem of ageing: people will live forever and life+50 will be forever+50.

I wasn't going to put that reason at the top of the list, but I agree it's a pointless discussion

Taking your post perhaps too seriously, a cure for aging might be what it takes to get UN member states interested in a second Berne Convention.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

While during newtonian times, the learned wrote to create themselves a "name" (fame), in Einstein times, but even more during our days, most people write to get money (and fame, which bring later on more money).

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Samuel Johnson 1709-1784

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Samuel Johnson 1709-1784

Sure are a lot of blockheads in this thread

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by gmw

Of course, you all realise how pointless this discussion is - yes?

I'm not talking about there being a world-wide conspiracy agreement to have a minimum copyright period and the chances of changing it significantly have got to be minuscule.

No, I'm talking about science eventually solving the problem of ageing: people will live forever and life+50 will be forever+50. Companies will find ways to invest their copyright with an individual to take advantage of the law, but such people will live under virtual house arrest in order to avoid sabotage by competitors that want to utterly destroy the body and so release the copyright in 50 years time. There will be privacy arguments over whether the law can demand a person appear in person to prove that they are still living and therefore still capable of holding copyright. There will be even more legal arguments over how much of a body must exist (kept alive artificially) to keep their copyright active, with counter arguments that all humans are now kept alive artificially by the genetic treatments that prevent ageing.

(Oh man, am I cooking or what? ... Wait, has someone already done that? Have I just broken copyright? )

Totally agree the discussion is pointless. Particularly since one "side" refuses to put forward any rational argument to support their view.

As for life + 50, I think corporations as a whole will, in the not too distant future, manage to extend the legal notion of Corporate Personhood to cover copyright anyway. No need for a human body at all. Just another reason the discussion is pointless.

leebase and tubemonkey will get their Utopia of endless copyright and the spiral into legal suppression of creativity will begin. I don't think they will find it to be quite the paradise they envision but I'm sure the corporations of the world will love it.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

leebase and tubemonkey will get their Utopia of endless copyright and the spiral into legal suppression of creativity will begin. I don't think they will find it to be quite the paradise they envision but I'm sure the corporations of the world will love it.

That is an oxymoron to compare Utopia with paradise. The way I remember Utopia, it has very little to do with desirable circumstances. It sounds good on paper at first until you have to live it. Unless you chose your words precisely to mean just that: they will only get Utopia, and no paradise at all. A quite clever play on words.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

That is an oxymoron to compare Utopia with paradise. The way I remember Utopia, it has very little to do with desirable circumstances. It sounds good on paper at first until you have to live it. Unless you chose your words precisely to mean just that: they will only get Utopia, and no paradise at all. A quite clever play on words.