Seriously thoughtful How Copyright broke. Cory Doctorow

[bizzybody]

Just as right now as it was in 2006

https://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues...ommentary.html

[Quoth]

USPTO, Big Media, DRM, DMCA, USA and Cory Doctorow. In that order.

Patents are far more broken. DRM is a problem. Copyright as such isn't at all broken.

[Quoth]

Misuse of Copyright law to bully

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/...copyright_ads/

In particular, the German giant Axel Springer, which has been pursuing a copyright claim through the courts for eleven years. You might assume that copyright exists to protect intellectual property and stop one party from ripping off another's content. Axel Springer's legal team proposes that because this protection also includes the right to stop others from modifying its content, blocking ads running in the content is against the law. If the law supposes that, you may think, then the law is indeed an ass, an idiot.

[nana77]

It recalls me of this:

Don't support me on Patreon, because I don't have one! (actually, as of Jan 13th 2017 I do, but only to pay the rent T___T) And don't donate to my Kickstarter, because I don't have one of those either. Instead, if you enjoyed this, give someone at your workplace, uni, school or whatever a random bar of chocolate or can or Coke or something. Seriously, it'll probably make their day.
That would totally make my day.

https://www.scifidimensions.com/who-...s-tie-fighter/

Did Lucasfilm/Disney ever comment on “Star Wars: TIE Fighter”?

While Lucasfilm/Disney did not officially endorse “Star Wars: TIE Fighter,” they generally tolerate fan-made creations as long as they are non-profit and do not infringe on their copyright. The immense popularity of the short likely contributed to their acceptance of the project. They’ve never filed legal issues against it.

The remastered version has another soundtrack:

ALL Rights belong to their respective owners:
Animation: OTAKING77077/ Paul Johnson 
  / otaking77077  
(approved by OTAKING https://i.imgur.com/hksyxRb.png) 
SFX: Starwars: Battlefront DICE/Electronic Arts/LucasArts
Music: SW: Rogue One/LucasArts

Update: I found out there are ads now, the revenue is going to WALT DISNEY Records due to their rightful copyright claim on the songs, Walt disney owns Star Wars anyways so it makes sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIE_Fighter_(film)

[Quoth]

And Disney had to be sued to pay copyright royalties to writers of official Starwars material. Mysteriously they claimed that after buying Lucas Arts they only had benefits and no obligations.

Copyright isn't broken. Big corporations are.

Winter is coming

(Northern Hemisphere)

[bizzybody]

What use is it to a person to hold copyright for decades after they're dead? Copyrights should be for a fixed term or the life of the author/creator, whichever is longer.

If a company / corporation goes out of business with none of their intellectual property rights purchased by anyone (it happens a lot) then all copyrights, trademarks, and patents filed by or owned by that entity should become null and void, public domain, non renewable, except in cases where there are contracts, deeds, or other documents returning or bequeathing remaining rights back to whom they were purchased from or to other persons or entities.

Same thing for individuals. If they do not bequeath in a will or otherwise explicitly transfer copyrights to other persons or entities for the remaining duration, then they should become non-revocable public domain.

The concept of "abandonware" for everything copyrightable needs to be established in law, mainly to get rid of the silly business of all the works still considered protected by copyright but with no valid living or existing claimants to that right so the works are stuck in limbo and unusable for a long time.

Copyrights should be only to allow the originator of a work to make an income from it, or designated assignees if the originator dies before the copyright expires. Aside from that, the originator should also be able to sell outright, rent, lease, or loan rights to the works to any other person or entity for any amount of time up to the expiration date of the copyright.

But there should always be a hard, non-extendable END to every copyright.

When Disney could no longer get the length of copyrights extended more on their earliest cartoons, they threw a wrench into anyone's plans to include them on DVDs of old public domain cartoons - by putting them on YouTube for free. If it's totally legal for others to make a dime off a Disney work without having to pay Disney, then Disney will forego that income if they can make it pointless for others to sell copies.

[Quoth]

Maybe Author's life + 20 or 25 years (for partner or child, longer only benefits huge corporations). The excessive time now was due to Disney and friends lobbying. The USA Government supports big business, not the voters. Crazy that corporate funding is allowed. It should be capped at $1000 approx per voter (with inflation adjustment), and only from actual voters.

[Sirtel]

Life of the creator, period. No more reason to support their spouses/relatives than anyone else's. They can earn a living themselves. If my hairdresser or plumber dies, will their spouses and children get any special benefits? Why should authors'?

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Life of the creator, period. No more reason to support their spouses/relatives than anyone else's. They can earn a living themselves. If my hairdresser or plumber dies, will their spouses and children get any special benefits? Why should authors'?

Where I think the comparison fails is that with books, the publisher can continue to sell the book, but the author's estate doesn't get any benefits from that.

So I'd only accept such a ruling if the book goes into public domain at the same time.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

So I'd only accept such a ruling if the book goes into public domain at the same time.

Yes, of course.