Why public domain

[Ghitulescu]

I think it's a general common agreement in that Nature fixed things as they should be and it's a model that needs to be followed.

Nature gave animals the so-called instincts - pre-defined subroutines defining the reaction of the animal under certain conditions. Fear, hungry, sex, all are instincts.

When one looks at his/her children play, s/he would notice immediately (no need to read puericulture books) that there is an early phase, where the child gives things to others. S/he shares what s/he has with anybody, even with pets. It's the second phase, coming right after the "I want it all" one.

This is the key - this is why Homo sapiens and not gorillas rule the Earth. Humans need society and share resources. This is how they managed to survive in conditions where any other animal would perish. Other "pack" animals, like wolves, have a sharing algorithm.

The concept of copyright, while initially correcting a major defficiency of the society, goes today against these instincts.

I repeat: the author (even more the publisher), got resources from the community (s/he did not pay for the education, gets it for free, paid from group's resources) but s/he wants not to give back.

Maybe this is where our end starts, as a species, I mean. Dinosaurs did not die all in the same day and daytime, it lasted a while, but the end was predictable - at least we see this now. Our successors in ruling Earth would probably say the same in 65 millions years: that's what perished them.

PS: parasites are organisms that thrive on host organisms (that is, they get something from them but give nothing back - if they would, it would have been called symbiosys).

[leebase]

Jesus.....the lengths. Everybody benefits from what came before. But nobody comes to the farmer to confiscate his fields, to the tradesman to confiscate his bank account, to the teacher to confiscate her house. How come an author's works are deemed “owned by society”?

You don’t deserve Mickey Mouse any more than you deserve your neighbor's car.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by leebase

But nobody comes to the farmer to confiscate his fields,...

Then how come get the European immigrants get land in the US in the first place? By chasing out the Indians living there, maybe?...

And what happened during the Great Crisis when almost all middle America went in the hands of a "chosen few" and the farmers went West for new "opportunities"...


If I paid for the education of the writer, I want my money back. Somehow. If I paid for the neighbour's car, someday I want my investment back.

[MarjaE]

A few days ago, Cubicle 7 Games announced that they had to cancel their planned 2nd Edition of The One Ring, because licensing negotiations had failed.

A lot of classic roleplaying games go out of print because licensing changes-- West End Games Star Wars, Serenity, Firefly, now The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-Earth.

The people with the skills to write/film and publish/produce a story are not necessarily the ones with the ability to create a good game of that story. The people with the skills and cold hard cash to negotiate licensing are not necessarily either one.

Now you could argue that creating a new completely-different set of rules, adventures, and so on each time these change hands spurs creativity. But it's not like players can compare these approaches when most or all are out-of-print due to licensing issues.

So at one extreme, straight-up adaptations of popular fictional settings run into licensing shenanigans, and some players avoid them because they don't know if the rules'll still be supported in 5 years.

At the other extreme, straight-up adaptations of history aren't as widespread as ones with bizarre fantasy twists.

There has to be a better way.

[Ghitulescu]

I will only add one statement to the above comment

humans are the only living creatures that truly enjoy leisure. All others have little time to relax, even if they are predators and not prey. Big cats and dolphins are the ones that are mostly known to the common people (there are others) and some primates.

The animals are too busy to find the food, to escape death (and to become other animals' dish ), find a mate, find a shelter. They don't have time to play The One Ring in either versions .

And this is only a modern time achievement, I mean as a species (let's rememebr that until recently only kings and nobles, priests and monks, could enjoy relaxation, wellness, reading, live bands and menestrels and so on). Once the concept presented by Pestalozzi to Napoléon and implemented by the latter bore fruits, and thus everyone besides church members and nobles could read, it's ONLY THEN when printing and writing and managing writers became a business. Monks has their own "duplication services" (low- grade monks that copied by hand a book in 10 years), and those that wrote a book realy had something to communicate to the humanity.

Side note: Everything that eventually goes into the mainstream (large basis of users) will eventually become the battlefield for "smart investors" and every hobby goes immediately expensive because of their involvement.

I wonder how the bulk of the writers will earn their daily bread, in the true sense of the word, if nobody wants to read their "nothings" any longer?!... As you can see, this is one reason why the studios/publishers want their rights so long protected, good works, created before a writer had been forced to issue a book a year, are in danger of becoming out of their monopole. No publisher or studio will ever live longer than his/her copyrights, thus the policy is a "cooperation" one (the oldest form of cooperation against the masses remains the church). Why the masses do not "cooperate" by itself? Because the concept of masses imply disorder by definition, while cooperation means a common goal. This explains a lot, for instance also why a handful of determined people can get the control of a country via putch, revolutions and stuff and the masses cannot do anything against or about it.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Jesus.....the lengths. Everybody benefits from what came before. But nobody comes to the farmer to confiscate his fields, to the tradesman to confiscate his bank account, to the teacher to confiscate her house. How come an author's works are deemed “owned by society”?

You don’t deserve Mickey Mouse any more than you deserve your neighbor's car.

And why does your neighbor deserve a car that a car company spent all that time, effort and IP into manufacturing. Your neighbor should be paying the car company licensing fees every time he or she turns the car on by your logic.

Once again, you use faulty definitions. Copyright isn't property, it's a government granted monopoly of limited duration. It doesn't become property just because you think that it ought to be property.

As far as arguing who deserves, Walt Disney died in 1966, some 54 years ago, back when copyright duration in the US was 28+28. No one currently working at Disney had a thing to do with making Micky Mouse what it is, they merely profit because of what someone else did long ago.

With all your assertions, you still haven't provided any justifications of why copyright should be considered property. You simply assert, it's property and the Disney Corporation puts lots of effort into advertising their movies and theme parks so they should own it forever and a day. Naturally, many companies put lots of effort into advertising their wares, but so what makes Disney so special that they should be the exception?

[leebase]

The neighbor buys a car, but does not have the rights to make copies of the car...the intellectual property remains a possession of the car company.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by leebase

Jesus.....the lengths. Everybody benefits from what came before. But nobody comes to the farmer to confiscate his fields, to the tradesman to confiscate his bank account, to the teacher to confiscate her house. How come an author's works are deemed “owned by society”?

You don’t deserve Mickey Mouse any more than you deserve your neighbor's car.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

[...]Once again, you use faulty definitions. Copyright isn't property, it's a government granted monopoly of limited duration. It doesn't become property just because you think that it ought to be property. [...]

Are we starting over again? How many loops does this make?

It is fairly simple: you are both wrong.

In the context we are discussing, copyright is property. It is because we say it is. (That government granted monopoly gives you rights under law, those rights are called copyright and the rights are a thing you own - hence property. Notice the distinction: it is not the words you own, it is the rights, the copyright, that is the property.) Have a problem with that, go change the law and/or the rules of economics (oh, and the dictionary). In the meantime just accept that, for all relevant intents and purposes, copyright is property.

In the context we are discussing, property is only able to be owned with the cooperation of the society. That cooperation is given under different terms for different types of property. Tangible or intangible, property ownership is not the absolute people keep trying to assign to it.

You own land (real estate property) only within the constraints permitted by society; eminent domain still exists, land can be confiscated, and until then taxes and other constraints will be levied against you for the privilege of those limited ownership rights. Fail to keep up and someone really will take your land. Notice again that even with real estate property what you actually own are a limited set of rights to the land. Don't like it, then change the law or accept it. The rules for copyright are different, but still just laws about rights, so if you don't like it, change the law or accept it.


I know that abstract concepts like property and ownership can be confusing, so we struggle with analogies to try and come to grips with the concepts, but what you have to do first is understand that these things only work the way they do because we as a society have agreed (in various and round-about ways) that they should ... for the moment. Laws have changed over time, and will continue to do so as people try to convince one another that some variation will be better than another. So fine, arguments like this will continue for many more loops yet, but please try to accept that there is no ideal or inherent order to this. It's all quite arbitrary, something "we the people" have chosen. So far. Mostly. Until something better shows up.

And so far neither of you offer anything better. You can't realistically claim copyright isn't property in the face of a world full of people treating it as such. It is at least slightly more realistic to say copyright could be perpetual, because society in theory could agree to that - for a price! But I need much better arguments than "because no one takes away land"; that statement is untrue, it can happen, and anyway, we pay for our land ownership privileges in other ways. And it seems to me those other ways don't suit copyright nearly as well as the current arrangements.

[Ghitulescu]

The copyright becomes property only because it's a monopoly granted by the state - which represent us, the people. It's not the other way round.

This way, a shell becomes property because children attach a value to it, they trade shells, balls, collectibles... remember Tom Sawyer painting the fence?

When we attach value to things, they become property. Valueless things are nobody's property for nobody wants them for they have no value.



The property disappears when the copyright lapses. It becomes public domain, or the property of the whole nation/earth (sounds very north-korean, but this is how the things are).

[Apache]

Originally Posted by leebase

Jesus.....the lengths. Everybody benefits from what came before. But nobody comes to the farmer to confiscate his fields, to the tradesman to confiscate his bank account, to the teacher to confiscate her house. How come an author's works are deemed “owned by society”?

You don’t deserve Mickey Mouse any more than you deserve your neighbor's car.

The Homesteaders that had their land condemned by the Government for Los Alamos weren't very happy. The Government also speed up the process so they could seize the land immediately. There have been many times the government has taken land from people without compensation. The city I live in did it to my neighbors and I ten years ago. Government have even seized land to give to private companies because they would " put it to better use than the current owners". This was usually to build Malls or Industrial parks

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by leebase

The neighbor buys a car, but does not have the rights to make copies of the car...the intellectual property remains a possession of the car company.

But is the car (or the book, for that matter) the property of the buyer?
That is, has he (less probably it will be a she in this context) the rights to change things (new type of light bulbs, spoilers, new carburettors, sport seats etc.) or he still infringes the owners' copyrights?
It's the same for a book, one can quote parts thereof, but still has to pay for this and his right can even be waived by the owner (to prevent this it was accepted the Fair Use doctrine).

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

The copyright becomes property only because it's a monopoly granted by the state - which represent us, the people. It's not the other way round.

This way, a shell becomes property because children attach a value to it, they trade shells, balls, collectibles... remember Tom Sawyer painting the fence?

When we attach value to things, they become property. Valueless things are nobody's property for nobody wants them for they have no value. [...]

The definition of property is merely "a thing or things owned". It doesn't actually have to have value (which is just as well, because a lot of us own an awful lot of valueless copyright ... and we keep generating more ).

In general, in this largely capitalist world, people care most about property that has value, but there are exceptions and people may continue to claim their ownership rights on worthless property for their own reasons.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by gmw

... and people may continue to claim their ownership rights on worthless property for their own reasons.

Their own reasons is that it has a value for them.

That was the example of Tom Sawyer supposed to explain, but maybe the glass collars and mirrors used by Colombus to exchange them for gold is better - each object had a lower value for the owner than the new things they acquired. They imprinted a value to these objects.

Or is this a better example: A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by gmw

Are we starting over again? How many loops does this make?

It is fairly simple: you are both wrong.

In the context we are discussing, copyright is property. It is because we say it is. (That government granted monopoly gives you rights under law, those rights are called copyright and the rights are a thing you own - hence property. Notice the distinction: it is not the words you own, it is the rights, the copyright, that is the property.) Have a problem with that, go change the law and/or the rules of economics (oh, and the dictionary). In the meantime just accept that, for all relevant intents and purposes, copyright is property.
...
.

And the answer is that no it's not. You may wish to redefine the word to make it property, but that doesn't make it property. It is simply a limited time grant of a monopoly to make copies of a specific work. That does not translate to own. It does not translate to property.

The idea of a limited time grant of control of an object is quite common in the real world. Few argue that leasing something is the same as owning it.
You can sublease a house that you rent to someone else. That doesn't imply that you actually own the house. It is quite common for one country to grant another country a 99 year lease on a piece of land for a lot of reasons, but most usually for military bases.

However, once someone attaches the word "Intellectual Property" to ideas like copyright and patents, then people seem to see that word and think "oh, property, ergo they own it, it belongs to them forever", which is of course was the purpose behind coining that phrase. No one seems to be able to articulate an argument on why copyright and patents should be considered property and ought to belong to the current holder forever, they just say "well, it's property because I say it's property". But, hey, the term does make it easier to get government to keep extending the length of the monopoly. It's really a form of rent seeking.

[Ghitulescu]

I think this confusion is deliberately imposed.
It's a temporary right, not a property. It only mimicks a property during its term.
So is marriage, but nobody would dare now to claim his partner "belongs to him" other than in a lyrical manner

But the strategeme worked, many people, including literate ones, have fallen into this trap.