Death of copyright, film at 11?

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Or perhaps the answer is to do what been mooted in a number of countries - to impose a "levy" on all internet users which is then distributed to the music industry to compensate them for their losses. Of course, this is "punishing the innocent" along with the guilty, so it's far from ideal.

I think this is what the RIAA et al have really wanted all along. They've been leaning on the ISPs to play cop which they understandably don't want to do. It's nigh on impossible to be effective and the target's constantly moving. A fee is easier. It's a pretty common trick to get a buy-in by giving someone the illusion of a choice when only one choice is viable. However, aside from the fairness issue you raise, I really doubt the distribution of the money will end up being fair to the artists and smaller content providers, either.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I think this is what the RIAA et al have really wanted all along. They've been leaning on the ISPs to play cop which they understandably don't want to do. It's nigh on impossible to be effective and the target's constantly moving. A fee is easier. It's a pretty common trick to get a buy-in by giving someone the illusion of a choice when only one choice is viable. However, aside from the fairness issue you raise, I really doubt the distribution of the money will end up being fair to the artists and smaller content providers, either.

One of the sites that the RIAA spent a lot of legal fees going after in the 1990s was the original MP3.com - which sold works and gave free samples out for indie and foreign artists not marketed in the west. The RIAA eventually lost.

The problem that the RIAA faced then and is facing more than ever now is sites and concepts that bypass them in the business model. Artists can and have cut out the middle man. I have several albums I bought through that site that are still favorites. Most of them still don't work with the big labels.
I often buy from artists directly - most recently purchasing Laura Dare's Boyhood Shadows album.

Once artists are selling direct then the big players face downward price competition from artists who don't have to share a cut with the big publishers.

This exact same dynamic is now being played out with print.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I think this is what the RIAA et al have really wanted all along. They've been leaning on the ISPs to play cop which they understandably don't want to do. It's nigh on impossible to be effective and the target's constantly moving. A fee is easier. It's a pretty common trick to get a buy-in by giving someone the illusion of a choice when only one choice is viable. However, aside from the fairness issue you raise, I really doubt the distribution of the money will end up being fair to the artists and smaller content providers, either.

Canada already has something like this for books. That is exactly what has been demonstrated to happen.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

How do you balance the individual's "right to privacy" with the intellectual property owner's equal right to be able to take legal action against those infringing his or her rights? Clearly there needs to be some mechanism in place to allow the identification and punishment of those committing crimes.

1) Copyright infringement, in the situation of "distributing free copies online," may not be a crime, but a civil tort. If there's no profit (almost always the case), and no identifiable loss to the owner (arguable in some cases), there may be no criminal offense.

2) Copyright owners HAVE the right to take legal action. The problem is that they don't want to. They want to force other people to enforce their rights, instead of using the systems in place, because with the current systems, it's prohibitively expensive for them to claim their right to keep a monopoly on distribution.

3) The fact that it's prohibitively expensive to enforce a set of laws is a sign that the laws need reform, not a sign that the burden of enforcement should be turned over to private businesses, at the expense of innocent customers.

One cannot simply say that individuals have a "right" to commit crimes with impunity on the grounds that identify them would be a breach of their right to privacy!

Of course not. But individuals who have not broken the law are not obligated to be searched on the grounds that "some people have broken the law." Individuals have the right not to be placed in a "potential lawbreaker" category just because they have a computer. Or even because they use p2p networking.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Phogg

That is not an insignificant point. Copyright was originally intended to last fourteen years - not the life of the author. The life of the author plus seventy years is way out.

I don't know what you mean by "was originally intended" - intended by whom? The first modern copyright law is generally regarded as being the "Statute of Queen Anne" in 1709 in Britain; this provided protection for 28 years, and was a successor to the "Licensing Act" of 1662 which established a "register" of licensed books, and protected the rights of a printer to print specific books.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know what you mean by "was originally intended" - intended by whom? The first modern copyright law is generally regarded as being the "Statute of Queen Anne" in 1709 in Britain; this provided protection for 28 years, and was a successor to the "Licensing Act" of 1662 which established a "register" of licensed books, and protected the rights of a printer to print specific books.

I quote a Wikipedia reference without citation, so do not take it as a contradiction, and it states that:

"The statute of 1709 vested authors rather than printers with the monopoly on the reproduction of their works. It created a 21 year term for all works already in print at the time of its enactment and a fourteen year term for all works published subsequently".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne)

Okay, I've now gone on a little further, from Wikipedia links, and have this scan and transcription of the Statute:

http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html

This refers to the aforementioned twenty-one and fourteen years.

I'll allow others to translate the transcription, and the applicability of each term.

Cheers,
Marc

[HarryT]

Hi Mark,

Under the 1709 act, there was an initial term of 14 years, which could optionally be extended by the author for a further 14 years, for a total of 28 years.

Cheers,

[mpd123]

are there any figures on the subject to say how much money is lost by the authors/publishers from people downloading books from p2p sites?

cheers mick.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hi Mark,

Under the 1709 act, there was an initial term of 14 years, which could optionally be extended by the author for a further 14 years, for a total of 28 years.

Cheers,

Thank-you, Harry. I could not read the thing without my eyes glazing over. I have, however, found myself a decent link for explication, and it states it thus (in line with your statement):

"For existing works, authors or their assigns were granted the exclusive right of publication for 21 years from the effective date of April 10, 1710. For new works, the right ran for 14 years from the date of publication; the author, if living at the expiration of such term, was granted the privilege of renewal for 14 more years."
(Copyright Law & Practice, William F. Patry)

Cheers,
Marc

[zelda_pinwheel]

even assuming the maximum original term, or 28 years, it's pretty obvious that the current term (life of the author plus 70 (soon 90 ?) years) is so far from the original intent of copyright as to be unrecognisable. current copyright law should be in the dictionary as an example next to the word "travesty".

[Robotech_Master]

The thread seems to be wandering a little far afield from its original message (not that this is a bad thing).

I'm curious what people think of the claims that the P2P researcher puts forward in his paper. Anyone else read the whole thing? I thought the definition of "peer to peer" he uses is a little broad (he lumps in Slashdot and Youtube as examples of "peer to peer" sites, which may be theoretically true in the sense that they're about peers interacting with peers, but less so in terms of the way the term is most commonly used) but he had some interesting points.

If darknets finally achieve the same ease of use and selection as ordinary peer to peer, what implications could that have for the enforceability of copyright?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

The thread seems to be wandering a little far afield from its original message (not that this is a bad thing).

I'm curious what people think of the claims that the P2P researcher puts forward in his paper. Anyone else read the whole thing? I thought the definition of "peer to peer" he uses is a little broad (he lumps in Slashdot and Youtube as examples of "peer to peer" sites, which may be theoretically true in the sense that they're about peers interacting with peers, but less so in terms of the way the term is most commonly used) but he had some interesting points.

If darknets finally achieve the same ease of use and selection as ordinary peer to peer, what implications could that have for the enforceability of copyright?

Copyright is dying. P2P is only a symptom, not the cause.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know what you mean by "was originally intended" - intended by whom? The first modern copyright law is generally regarded as being the "Statute of Queen Anne" in 1709 in Britain; this provided protection for 28 years, and was a successor to the "Licensing Act" of 1662 which established a "register" of licensed books, and protected the rights of a printer to print specific books.

I was referring to the original statutes in the US.
I will concede there was one time renewal there also.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by mpd123

are there any figures on the subject to say how much money is lost by the authors/publishers from people downloading books from p2p sites?

It's pretty much impossible to get an accurate number. If it's anything like the music industry, then the number is either "zero" or "100 zillion dollars", depending on who you listen to.

There's no real way to measure it though. What you end up with is whichever side you're listening to making up numbers to try and spin the argument in their direction.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That article strikes me as being the equivalent of saying "too many cars are being stolen, so let's say that car theft is no longer a crime".

Let's have all the ISP's monitor traffic for illegal downloads and hand over details of all the criminals to the police, cutting off internet access from the villains. Make people realise that it is NOT "socially acceptable" to obtain such material without paying for it.

I'll give you this much, your views on copyright are certainly entertaining.