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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?

#71

Post by MessagePad2100 »

chc wrote: post #48
patio11 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Another possibility: Instead of squabbling with the publisher/Tolkien Trust, Michael Bay could have simultaneously made a movie as well to compete with Jackson's vision of the movie.

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

#72

Post by joe_the_user »

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #17
cookiecaper wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't think it should be exclusively about the life of the author, as I explain later in the comment. I think a relatively short general term from date of publication is good regardless of life of author. I am merely indicating that in cases where the author died many years ago, all the extension of copyright does is allow non-creative people that were once attached to people that were attached to the origina…

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

A copyright is a government granted-monopoly.

Essentially, it's a little bit of the state's right to restrict other people which has been given to you for reasons that supposedly wise-people consider important.

One might argue that it is almost the opposite of private wealth.

The government doesn't grant the descendants of social security recipients the right to their forebears' pension either. By your earlier reaoning, the state is "depriving" the pensioners of ability to sell a perpetual income stream to a third party. (yes, this is sarcasm...)

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

#73

Post by dfhtkyu »

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

#74

Post by whyenot »

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.

Not always darn good. Here is a counterexample: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_King_(1980_fi...

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

#75

Post by griftah »

Helianthus16 wrote: post #68
griftah wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need more fanfics?

when you accept that the LOTR movies are just fanfics we've spent millions on, you'll understand why we need more fanfics.

Do we really need to blur difference between art and fanfics even more then?

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

#76

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

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.

Can you name the algorithm used to distinguish "trivial ideas" from "nontrivial ideas"? I'm waiting... What about an algorithm for determining when "nontrivial idea A" is equivalent to "nontrivial idea B"? We're still foundering on the haltering problem here, I think... OK, now, what about an algorithm to determine when idea A is "useful"? Ah, you need... society for this one I think... Indeed, you "natural" idea contains an excess of unnatural contortions...

Even more. Let's suppose you really could determine all these not-algorithmically-determinable things and the criteria was simple. Any string X with length greater than N is "nontrivial".

What happens when every string of length N+1 is copyrighted/patented/etc? The 2^N+1 string then are contained in every possible further nontrivial idea and the owners of them can extract rent perpetually. Things are not quite at this level yet but we're getting closer (the state of video should give one pause).

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

#77

Post by grav1tas »

jorgem wrote: post #43
javert wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IANAL. If a copyright holder doesn't effectively exist like in this scenario, how can they charge you with copyright infringement?

If a work is out of print and not findable, and the copyright holder is gone, how would you know that the work existed, and how would anybody go about printing said work again?

I also think that your statement implies that society is somehow entitled to peoples' copy written works at some point. I think it might be the prerogative of the copyright holder to discontinue (and possibly destroy) his or her work before the copyright's lifetime ended. What then?

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

#78

Post by follower »

tptacek wrote: post #70
ajays wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property. It typically gets ignored (e.g. by people like Lessig)." No, it most certainly does NOT get ignored. What the proponents of change are saying is that IP rights should not be granted in perpetuity. Even patents expire after 20 years; so why not copyrights? Given the money that Disney is making, I would not be surprised if the copyright law…

It doesn't just benefit one corporation. It profoundly benefits one corporation, and significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property. The longer the copyright term is, the greater the value of a copyright is.

> significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property.

Doesn't that presuppose that the incremental gain from adding another N years of copyright coverage after an author's death is greater than the potential gain if it was accessible now to people who are making their living or--even--simply living?

It's not unreasonable to assume that an extremely large proportion of creators (who are only a small--but potentially growing--portion of society) will gain no real benefit from their works being covered by copyright for 70-100 years after their death but are negatively affected by everyone else's creations being covered in the same way.

It's not just a question of profit--it's also a question of culture. What wonderful and ground-breaking reinterpretations of culture from the 20th Century are never created--or illegal--because of current copyright law?

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

#79

Post by tptacek »

follower wrote: post #78
tptacek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't just benefit one corporation. It profoundly benefits one corporation, and significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property. The longer the copyright term is, the greater the value of a copyright is.

> significantly benefits everyone else making a living off intellectual property. Doesn't that presuppose that the incremental gain from adding another N years of copyright coverage after an author's death is greater than the potential gain if it was accessible now to people who are making their living or--even--simply living? It's not unreasonable to assume that an extremely large proportion of creators (who are onl…

The date of an author's death has little to do with the value of her creation at the time of its creation. Copyrights are transferable. This business about death is a red herring.

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

#80

Post by tptacek »

grav1tas wrote: post #77
jorgem wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IANAL. If a copyright holder doesn't effectively exist like in this scenario, how can they charge you with copyright infringement? If a work is out of print and not findable, and the copyright holder is gone, how would you know that the work existed, and how would anybody go about printing said work again? I also think that your statement implies that society is somehow entitled to peoples' copy written works at some…

They can't. Only the proprietor of a copyright has standing to sue over copyright violations.
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