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What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

law.duke.edu

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Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#41

Post by gjm11 »

xenophanes wrote: post #19

About copyright in general: Micky Mouse is still in active use. Can anyone tell me some reason that Warner Brothers should be allowed to make a Mickey Mouse movie just because it's old now? One other example: sales of Ayn Rand's books currently help fund the spreading of the ideas from the books, after her death. That seems fair enough to me. Why shouldn't books sales be able to fund promotion of the book's ideas as…

Book sales themselves already promote the book's ideas as long as readers keep buying it. Why should they also fund further promotion?

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#43

Post by jorgem »

javert wrote: post #32
donaldc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property; that's part and parcel of living in a civilized society. This argument is only considering one side of the equation. The other side: Pretty much all products of a human being's work in a civilized society are built on top of previous products of other people's works, in both a material and especially in an intellectual sense. Giving such an unreasonably…

You're correct that we build upon the previous efforts of others, but I don't think that's a counterpoint to what I've said. For one thing, copyright doesn't prevent you from building upon previous intellectual and material gains made by civilization; it just prevents you from, for example, making a movie of Lord of the Flies without permission from the owner of the copyright. Separately: There's a legitimate discour…

But copyright can prevent you from accessing less-famous works. Some of these works are out-of-print, so you can't get them and the copyright owners are nowhere to be found. These lost copyrighted works are essentially lost.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#44

Post by cma »

javert wrote: post #9
ajays wrote: post #7

The current copyright law is a prime example of the impotence of the electorate in the face of the power of Big Money. It is in the public interest to have works move into the public domain, so that others can build upon them (I'll refrain from linking to the myriad talks by Lessig and others about how the current copyright system is broken). And yet Hollywood keeps buying the legislators and perpetuates this broken…

There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property. It typically gets ignored (e.g. by people like Lessig). Basically: The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property; that's part and parcel of living in a civilized society. Doesn't matter if that work is entirely "intellectual" or not. The fact that it's physically easy to steal intellectual property does not make it right. P…

There is also the view that governmental implementation of natural rights has little to do with the actual principles embodied in the rights:

http://books.google.com/books?id=MfgtAAAAIAAJ&printsec=f...

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#45

Post by uvdiv »

cookiecaper wrote: post #37
ShabbyDoo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that your argument is generalizable to the inherit-ability of wealth.

Wealth is fine in literal terms. If you want to pass money on to your progenitors, that is just fine, as it is with all real property. The key here is that intellectual property and real property have some very fundamental differences. Ideas are assigned owners only to make it plausible to spread those ideas massively -- a stipulation that was necessary when it was expensive to spread ideas (printing). With the inter…

>Ideas cannot be owned; they are like fire and can only be equally shared. We assign monopolies to make publishing feasible, not to ensure the wealth of two or three generations that live off of the creativity of their grandfathers without contributing anything themselves.

Here's an alternative ethics. Nontrivial ideas are not natural resources but are created by an author; just as a physical object is the property of its creator, ideas are an intangible property owned by their author. The author can deny others access to his ideas, simply by not-disclosing them (keeping them secret); she has intrinsic control over them. IP ownership is not a monopoly "assigned" by some intangible collective; it is the natural property of its creator. Publishing rights are not an artificial benefit created by government to subsidize authors (out of benevolence); they are contracts between an author and publisher, transferring specific and limited rights (not ownership). Publishers can be forced to pay the author royalties, not out of utilitarian reasons, but because they voluntarily agreed to such terms (the author having natural leverage, e.g. she can refuse to disclose his ideas).

>Ideas are assigned owners

Did you have that thought, or did the social collective assign it to you?

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#46

Post by tbrownaw »

javert wrote: post #9
ajays wrote: post #7

The current copyright law is a prime example of the impotence of the electorate in the face of the power of Big Money. It is in the public interest to have works move into the public domain, so that others can build upon them (I'll refrain from linking to the myriad talks by Lessig and others about how the current copyright system is broken). And yet Hollywood keeps buying the legislators and perpetuates this broken…

There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property. It typically gets ignored (e.g. by people like Lessig). Basically: The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property; that's part and parcel of living in a civilized society. Doesn't matter if that work is entirely "intellectual" or not. The fact that it's physically easy to steal intellectual property does not make it right. P…

> The product of a human being's work is rightfully his property

For physical goods "you can't take it away from me" always goes with "you can't have it"; I would say that "rightfully his property" here can only mean the first half of that (and so cannot entirely apply to information, where the two parts are distinct). If it meant the second half it would lead to absurdities where third parties can forbid things that have absolutely no effect on them, for example how resaraunts always have to make up their own birthday songs or how playing the radio at works can lead to fines...

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#47

Post by trezor »

uvdiv wrote: post #40
slantyyz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my naive, idealistic understanding of the spirit of copyright, it's a social contract between the artist and society. Society will grant you a reasonable amount of time to make money off your work with legal protection. After that time's up, your work belongs to society. Seems like a fair economic exchange to me. As far as I know, it's been good for everyone that Shakespeare's works are in the public domain.

I don't see that as a "fair exchange". One side (the government) sets the terms unilaterally. There is no voluntary mutual transaction; the author doesn't consent to have his work forced into the public domain, or to the terms under which it is done.

There is no voluntary mutual transaction; the author doesn't consent to have his work forced into the public domain

In the absence of copyright the author would have no protection what so ever and would be at mercy of society at large. With copyright they gain protection from the public domain which we, the public, give them in exchange for the cultural creations this protection entices.

If they in exchange of this protection returns nothing to society (i.e. infinite retro-active copyright extensions), then we as a society should have no reason to provide this protection for them.

Basically Disney was able to build an empire on works found in the public domain, but they refuse to give the same opportunity for others to do the same. That is also very one-sided and society as a whole gains very little cultural capital and is forced to pay (again and again) for what they have generously provided protection for.

Make no mistake of it: If copyright law is one-sided, it is to the creators' and media-conglomerates benefit and not society.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#48

Post by chc »

patio11 wrote: post #33
griftah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why having Lord of the Rings in public domain is so important?

This is a good question . LOTR is being actively commercially exploited and the commercial exploitations are darn good . Meanwhile, it's cultural impact hasn't been noticeably blunted by copyright -- that novel launched at least one industry , to say nothing of being repurposed by virtually every book in adjacent genres.

I don't see what that has to do with anything. Public domain works can still be commercially exploited. The only difference is that LOTR wouldn't have sat in preproduction hell for years because of squabbles over the rights. Peter Jackson could have gone ahead and made his very fine movies — instead, copyright almost got him forced out of The Hobbit.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#49

Post by stretchwithme »

cookiecaper wrote: post #37
ShabbyDoo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that your argument is generalizable to the inherit-ability of wealth.

Wealth is fine in literal terms. If you want to pass money on to your progenitors, that is just fine, as it is with all real property. The key here is that intellectual property and real property have some very fundamental differences. Ideas are assigned owners only to make it plausible to spread those ideas massively -- a stipulation that was necessary when it was expensive to spread ideas (printing). With the inter…

Yes, but will someone bother to create assets for themselves that disappear on their deaths when they do have people to care for?

Property isn't really property if you can't sell it or give it to someone else. Liquidity is very important to many people.

While undermining this will have little impact on the generation of a lof of crap, it will absolutely destroy the "long tail" for many valuable things that are receive little recognition when they are created.

I do recognize that we should only be handing out monopolies when it absolutely benefits society. These ridiculously long copyrights only exist because our legislators have put their own interests above the national interest.

Re: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011?

#50

Post by Helianthus16 »

uvdiv wrote: post #45
cookiecaper wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is fine in literal terms. If you want to pass money on to your progenitors, that is just fine, as it is with all real property. The key here is that intellectual property and real property have some very fundamental differences. Ideas are assigned owners only to make it plausible to spread those ideas massively -- a stipulation that was necessary when it was expensive to spread ideas (printing). With the inter…

> Ideas cannot be owned; they are like fire and can only be equally shared. We assign monopolies to make publishing feasible, not to ensure the wealth of two or three generations that live off of the creativity of their grandfathers without contributing anything themselves. Here's an alternative ethics. Nontrivial ideas are not natural resources but are created by an author; just as a physical object is the property…

>Here's an alternative ethics. Nontrivial ideas are not natural resources but are created by an author; just as a physical object is the property of its creator, ideas are an intangible property owned by their author.

This is not an alternative ethics (if indeed this is an ethics instead of a system of legal ownership), it is the _dominant_ ethics.

>they are contracts between an author and publisher, transferring specific and limited rights (not ownership). Publishers can be forced to pay the author royalties, not out of utilitarian reasons, but because they voluntarily agreed to such terms (the author having natural leverage, e.g. she can refuse to disclose his ideas).

Except in a market where ideas are not scarce and the publishing _is_ success, the creatives are exploited and their so-called property rights a joke.

We all understand the _theory_ behind your 'natural property,' the ownership of something you create. We just don't agree with it anymore, because in many cases it has failed and in the future it will not be relevant.

>Did you have that thought, or did the social collective assign it to you?

Missed it. He's pointing out the semi-fictional nature of idea ownership, not claiming originality for his ideas.

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