If you had a vote for copyright?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Should we be tracking down the descendents of ancient Greek or Chinese manuscripts to pay them royalties? After all, we shamelessly stole their works and made them our own. Should peoples of European, Asian, African, etc. descent be backing our bags and returning to our homelands? After all, we shamelessly stole their land and made it our own.

It's too late for the past. Deal with the now and move forward.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

At the end of the day, there is no such thing as absolute property rights. We lose track of who owns what. Sometimes we just take what we want. In a sense, copyright laws acknowledge that. Actually, in the case of some nations, copyright goes beyond acknowledging that and suggest that sometimes things have to be turned over to society for the public good.

What happens when we lose track of who owns a piece of real estate?

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

What happens when we lose track of who owns a piece of real estate?

Such as in a case when someone dies and there is no established heirs? The government gets it.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Such as in a case when someone dies and there is no established heirs? The government gets it.

And that's when public domain should step in. Failing to re-register your copyright would place said property in the public domain.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Must we?

You bet it is when we're talking about theft of an entity's property.

Copyright isn't property. It's a limited monopoly on reproduction of a given work granted by governments.

And yes,

[BuddyBoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

He didn't have to "copyright" the speech. It was automatically protected by copyright the moment that he set pen to paper.

The USA didn't become signatories to the Berne Convention until the late 80s. Until then works in the US would have to have been either registered or published with a copyright notice.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Copyright isn't property. It's a limited monopoly on reproduction of a given work granted by governments.

And yes,

I fully realize that laws say otherwise. That doesn't stop me from disagreeing with those laws.

As consolation, I have some peace of mind knowing that copyright keeps getting extended.

Law is a two-edged sword.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by carld

You have your copy yes, but the rights you had to it are gone. It's no longer "your" song, book, or painting. It eventually belongs to everyone.

I think the conceptual framework is flawed; a work in the public domain doesn't belong to everyone; it belongs to no one. And the reason I think that is so is because even when a work enters the public domain, the creator still retains moral rights (i.e. attribution, accurate rendition, etc).

Originally Posted by carld

A creative work is more than just the creation itself, it's also the bundle of associated rights.

That is exactly why a creative work is not equivalent to property. Your "associated" rights of property are due to your actual possession of it; once you cease to possess a property, it ceases to be yours, except in a social system where you do have recourse to an institution of justice if you were dispossessed through aggression. The laws exist to protect individuals against aggression.

But creative expression is in a whole 'nother category. It only has value in its transmission (as opposed to property, which only has value in its possession), and can be infinitely reproduced(whereas physical property is scarce and rivalrous). Copying involves no aggression by the copier, since the copying could only take place if the creator already released the expression. It is in fact the restriction of copying that introduces aggression. Whereas physical property requires no reference to an outside entity (since it is something you possess and exclude others from), copyrights have no inherent existence. They are entirely artificial social institutions created to serve a public function.

Another way to think about it is that property precedes government, whereas copyright does not. Before there ever way government you could possess stuff, and it was yours unless you gave it away or someone else took it from you. There was also creative expression before government, but you could not restrict others from replicating that expression,

Originally Posted by carld

Those rights are taken away in time, if you publish. I think that's a good thing, eventually.

Again, I think this is a flawed conceptual framework. No rights are taken away; they expire. The public sector provides a service (protection and an enforced monopoly), and the duration and scope of that service was determined even before the creation of the work. The expiration of a service is not tantamount to something being "taken away."

Copyright is not equivalent to other intangible rights such as free speech, because whereas those rights protect what you can do, copyright merely restricts what others can do, even if their actions are no way aggressive.

I think people commit a categorical error when they try to pass off copyright as property. It is useful probably just, but it is not property.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

I think people commit a categorical error when they try to pass off copyright as property. It is useful probably just, but it is not property.

No, we just happen to be on the losing side of some arbitrary definition set by law.

[Geco]

Author's lifetime. That's all. Everything else becoming public domain. Why my son should live with my own work? Let him get his own!

Check this: http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital.php (and read it with your favourite e-book reader!)

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Geco

Author's lifetime. That's all. Everything else becoming public domain. Why my son should live with my own work? Let him get his own!

Check this: http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/digital.php (and read it with your favourite e-book reader!)

You can place your works in PD voluntarily upon your death.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There are many people who make books freely available without looking for payment (my humble self included), but there are a heck of a lot more that are only available because publishers keep them in print. You seem to be suggesting that it's some kind of "crime" to publish public domain works for a profit. It's not - the whole point of the public domain is that it encourages reproduction of the work by any and all means. There's nothing wrong with publishing for profit - it's what keeps books in print.

Copyright exists because people tried to make a profit from authors works without giving them anything in return. If this wouldn't be the case then the publishers could only make money from the authors that are writing now and put effort into that.

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Why? What harm is done?
Water is available to everyone (in 1st world countries), yet people make money selling bottled water, why is that less ridiculous?

It isn't any less ridiculous. And the harm comes from the fact that people get deprived of what should be free to them. Can homeless people in 1st world countries get access to free water?

Originally Posted by TheJohnNewton

I say keep it simple. Forget variables like date of death or optional renewals. Make it publication date plus some period, say 20 years. That way you only need to know one thing, the publication date, to figure the public domain date and it's consistent for every book. You can quibble on the period (10? 20? 30? years) but choose a period that covers most of the profit for most books and call it a day. Sure there will be exceptions where a book becomes popular after the period or continues to be popular after but those will be rare cases that will have little to no effect on motivating authors.

If a book becomes popular after 20 years, it's only a problem for the author if they didn't write anything after that. Otherwise having one book free could only benefit the author because readers could easily try their work. It has been repeatedly pointed out that readers are willing to pay a higher price to get the book faster so I don't think that there are many that will decide to wait 20 years to get a book for free.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would change that a little. I would go for 40 years but only if the author is dead. If the author is alive after 40 years, it doesn't become PD until the author dies.

This is exactly what Angst said. Did you miss the part about "whichever is greater"?

Originally Posted by niggle

An interesting article here on Dickens and copyright:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/...pva/pva75.html

I hadn't realised that Wordsworth also suffered from being ripped off by copyright pirates.

And again the publishers are the ones that caused the need for copyright.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

It isn't any less ridiculous. And the harm comes from the fact that people get deprived of what should be free to them.

No they don't.
How does the existence of a non-free copy of the book prevent the existence of a free copy?
The existence of Project Gutenberg refutes your argument.

Can homeless people in 1st world countries get access to free water?

Do you have public drinking fountains?

[patrickt]

I hate polls where two ridiculous options are posed as alternatives.

I favor copyrights for either the lifetime of the author or a specific time period.

I oppose those who feel they're entitled to read what other people have written without paying. Of course, those people generally feel entitled to everything else, too.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

No they don't.
How does the existence of a non-free copy of the book prevent the existence of a free copy?
The existence of Project Gutenberg refutes your argument.

What you quoted I didn't say in reference to books, and I wasn't the one who made the analogy.

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Do you have public drinking fountains?

I haven't seen any where I live now.
And there used to be drinking fountains in parks in my home town when I was little but I haven't seen any in recent years.