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?
Yes. Fanfiction is an artificial term imposed on us by our current IP regime. It is not a natural kind and simply refers to normal literary practices that run afoul of current laws. Why isn't Shakespeare's _Othello_ fanfiction of Cinthio's short story? Because there was no copyright to run afoul of, and so it was 'only' a retelling or adaptation.
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 a compelling natural rights justification for intellectual property But Copyright as law is only about 300 years old and wasn't implemented because of "natural rights". > If people's intellectual property rights are not respected, it will not be profitable to develop intellectual property. And, yet, a lack of copyright didn't appear to stop people from creating works before copyright existed. And maybe the…
> And, yet, a lack of copyright didn't appear to stop people from creating works before copyright existed. And maybe there's more important things for a culture than profit
Well. In those days "copying" wasnt all that easy either
Is it actually not possible to bypass the copyright system and distribute material under contract instead? I'd imagine such an arrangement would be incredibly expensive to set up and do horribly in the market, but is there actually a legal reason you couldn't do it?
I think you could, it's just not a fail-safe system. If one judgment-proof guy breaks your contract by sharing a single copy, you have no power to stop the recipient from making all the copies they care to. Copyright is imposed on all of us, so you get more than one chance to stop infringement.
That's getting at my point. The parent seems to be implying that copyright is forced on creators at the expense of other means of protection that would be more beneficial to them. I just don't think that's the case - there's not actually anything forcing creators to copyright their work, but they do so anyways because it actually is the most appealing of the available options.
Maybe for the same reason that having Romeo & Juliet and King Lear in the public domain is so important. Would West Side Story or Ran have been made if they weren't?
Copyright didn't seem to stop authors of D&D or many derivative fantasy novels that have more in common with Lord of the Rings than West Side Story with Shakespeare.
Why do you think D&D calls hobbits halflings, and ents treants? TSR has a vexed history with Tolkien's estate.
But how is that argument extended that your natural right over your work should be extended for 70 years after you die? Why should that period keep getting longer?
I don't have any specific opinion on how long it should be, as long as it's at least author's life plus some FIXNUM amount of years, to cover for the case where someone wants to invest in your work, but you might get hit by a bus tomorrow.
Why doesn't the same apply to patents too then? What makes a work of art more valuable (in terms of copyright limits) than a life-saving medicine?
That's easy: the patent covers the whole idea and precludes whole avenues of further exploration. Copyright only covers a single expression of an idea.
Then how do you explain the fact that people get sued for "lifting" just a few seconds off a track?
That's easy: the patent covers the whole idea and precludes whole avenues of further exploration. Copyright only covers a single expression of an idea.
Then how do you explain the fact that people get sued for "lifting" just a few seconds off a track? Consider this latest case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8497433.stm Having listened to both the songs, I can honestly say they are nothing alike. And yet Men At Work got sued some 20 years later for "infringement".
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…
Just because you can't find the copyright holder doesn't mean they don't exist. If your derived work is a big hit, some corporate lawyer somewhere might realized they acquired the rights two generations ago, and bankrupt you with an infringement suit. This is why projects go through the whole clearance-of-rights licensing nightmare, and whenever clearance fails, society loses because those projects never see the ligh…
"If a copyright holder doesn't effectively exist like in this scenario"
I was surmising a scenario where one did not exist to point out an issue with the parent post. Of course this situation would almost never occur in reality.
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…
As a practical matter, an unenforced copyright is as good as no copyright. However, if citizens routinely feel they can violate the law because it is neither enforced nor harmful to do so, the law should be rewritten to restrict it to scenarios where it is meaningful. Also, 'out of print' is not 'not findable'. When Google created their Google Books system they encountered many books they wanted to scan whose copyrig…
Agreed, it's limbo really. Those who choose to 'pirate' 'abandonwares' assume the risk (however large or small) of being hit with a lawsuit. Though, I think that quantifying damages of a non-distributed copy written work might not be very easy in court, but lawyers are a crafty bunch. It seems like there's a trend to remarket old copywritten material where there's a market for it, especially with new cheap distribution models you see like with Steam or Amazon's Ebook store, for example. This could work to reduce the number of abandoned works and push them back into availability to the general public.
Copyright law is really disappointing here. How do such long terms contribute to the progress of sciences or the arts? The writers and main contributors to most of the pieces named are dead. The publishers have made their cash time and time again and now most of these pieces are by no means "hot sellers", though they may be of cultural or historical interest. And, there's 40 years left before the copyright expires. A…
I make my living off of copyright.
But I think the term should be 28 years, and it could be extended by the copyright holder for a few additional years at a fee of $5,000/year.