Winnie-the-Pooh !
And nobody knows what else!
(actuallly I got it to work by playing with the DOM. This is Hacker News, after all...)
What will enter the public domain in 2022
101–110 of 235 posts
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#102Something something bad design, give me my upvotes for saying what everyone else already said.
There you go!
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#103This comes up every year so I ask a question: If you could fix copyright, how would you do it? Here is what I would do: 1. All works must be registered in a government registry. If it's not in there it's not copyrighted. If you want to register a work from before the law passes, you have to prove you own it under the current system. This would solve the orphan works problem -- if no one can prove they own it, it beco…
If you went this route, I’d push it out farther and make the cut steeper. Maybe after 20 years you start doing X%, where X is (Years - 20)*2. I really don’t want to make it harder for people to survive on their creative output for their whole careers. But that’s the focus: providing for a family, maybe even fabulously, but for one generation only.
I don't see why someone should get to live a lifetime on their creative output. My goal is to make it harder to do that. There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#104This comes up every year so I ask a question: If you could fix copyright, how would you do it? Here is what I would do: 1. All works must be registered in a government registry. If it's not in there it's not copyrighted. If you want to register a work from before the law passes, you have to prove you own it under the current system. This would solve the orphan works problem -- if no one can prove they own it, it beco…
Measuring revenue sounds like a total pain in the ass, and sounds ripe for "hollywood accounting", and like a pointless jobs program for lawyers and accountants. How do you measure the revenue gained from the copyright on iOS? The total value of the devices it is sold on? Some arbitrary percentage? What about the copyright on a piece of artwork selling tickets to a gallery? Or for that matter a movie, with movie tick…
When I first thought about this, I also landed on the public bounty method. The problem with that is it lets monied interests own everything. If you, a small creator, make something cool, there is no bounty you can set that Disney can't afford, and once they make it public, they can certainly exploit it better than you can.
As for revenue accounting, it's actually pretty easy (for some definition of easy). If someone else used your IP and you had to sue them, how much would you sue for? Use the same method to calculate your own income. Yeah, it's definitely a jobs program for accountants and lawyers, but overall it provides a strong public benefit.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you went this route, I’d push it out farther and make the cut steeper. Maybe after 20 years you start doing X%, where X is (Years - 20)*2. I really don’t want to make it harder for people to survive on their creative output for their whole careers. But that’s the focus: providing for a family, maybe even fabulously, but for one generation only.
I don't see why someone should get to live a lifetime on their creative output. My goal is to make it harder to do that. There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again.
> There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again.
It makes people want to do it, hence providing the incentive for more creation. Frankly, if someone writes a good song then I'm happy they'll do well off it, we need more good songs and that song will last a lifetime for the listeners too.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#106This comes up every year so I ask a question: If you could fix copyright, how would you do it? Here is what I would do: 1. All works must be registered in a government registry. If it's not in there it's not copyrighted. If you want to register a work from before the law passes, you have to prove you own it under the current system. This would solve the orphan works problem -- if no one can prove they own it, it beco…
My ideas are quite different from yours. First I would drastically shorten the time, and not link to the life of the author, instead I would have fixed time from first release, with a max of 40 years. The current amount is simply way too long, 40 years is a normal "economically productive" time for a typical person, longer than that is not necessary. Registration is a good idea, but I would do it different. Everyone…
> I also don't like percent of revenue - that's basically taxes, people already pay that, there's little point in doing it via copyright. What's the issue you are trying to solve with percent of revenue, that is not also solved with a fixed amount?
It's supposed to be a tax. You're being taxed on holding something out of the public domain, which in theory is harming the public. Using a percent of revenue makes it more fair -- if it were a fixed fee, there is no fee you can make that Disney won't happily pay to keep everything forever that would be affordable to the small creator.
At the very least, if you don't want to do revenue, make the fee a percent of the total income of the owner. Of course Disney could again avoid that by making small companies to own things.
> Registration is a good idea, but I would do it different. Everyone gets 20 years automatically for free, with no registration needed. (Small players, for example I write an essay and put it on a website, need to be protected. You don't want to force 12 year old students to deal with registering their works.) After that you can pay to register a work, a fixed fee that goes up each year for the final 20 years.
If registration is fee I don't see why there would be a burden on anyone. But sure, you can make it automatic for the first five years or whatever. But that makes it hard to tell if a work is an orphaned work or just not registered yet. If you find a work you like, you'd have to wait in your system 20 years to make sure it wasn't unregistered.
> My issue with your idea is people holding things, and refusing to sell them - for example old software.
How can you set a fee that's high enough to stop Microsoft but not be a burden to a small developer?
> First I would drastically shorten the time, and not link to the life of the author, instead I would have fixed time from first release, with a max of 40 years.
My system is also not linked to the life of the author. We can certainly debate the number of years, but under my system, you'd be giving 1/3 of your total income from your work as a tax after 40 years on top of your regular income taxes.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see why someone should get to live a lifetime on their creative output. My goal is to make it harder to do that. There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again.
> There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again. It makes people want to do it, hence providing the incentive for more creation. Frankly, if someone writes a good song then I'm happy they'll do well off it, we need more good songs and that song will last a lifetime for the listeners too.
> It makes people want to do it,
This is red herring. I doubt you could find a single musician who would tell you that they wouldn't be creating if they don't get a lifetime to exploit the work. Further, you can see proof of this through history. Copyright used to be much shorter and people still created.
Most people who create, especially people who make good music, do it because they love it, not because they will get to exploit it.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#108This comes up every year so I ask a question: If you could fix copyright, how would you do it? Here is what I would do: 1. All works must be registered in a government registry. If it's not in there it's not copyrighted. If you want to register a work from before the law passes, you have to prove you own it under the current system. This would solve the orphan works problem -- if no one can prove they own it, it beco…
> How would you fix copyright?
Mandate something about source code for software. For eg. Source code escrow with Software Heritage or your software isn't protected by copyright. The source code is automatically released under GNU AGPLv3 after 10 years or immediately if you stop developing it and escrowing new versions of it. After 20 years it becomes public domain.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#109Copyright term length should be scaled back.
Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny as a patent is granted for much less time. You’d think patents and copyright would have the same duration
Patents cover discoveries, which, as a class, are limited, whereas copyrighted works are created, and therefore (in some sense) unlimited. Or, in other words: a patent can block access to something that is potentially irreplaceable, and that would have been discovered by others, eventually. Donald Duck just wouldn’t exist without Disney. The goal of copyright is to provide some incentive for creation. At the same tim…
> (Another item on this scale: trademarks, which are entirely imbued with value by the owner’s exclusive right to use them. They are not time-limited as long as they are used because, to a first approximation, the value of “Levi’s” has nothing to do with the beauty of the word (which one could consider a limited ressource), but depends on the company’s interest in maintaining its status)
After subscribing to Disney Plus I immediately began to notice their use of a segment of Steamboat Willie in place of a static or simply animated trademark. It seems clear to me what Disney's strategy will be going forth: to get as far they can abusing so-called "motion marks" (i.e. animated trademark symbols) to re-capture as much of their expiring copyrighted content they can.
However far they get--it will likely take decades for the dust to settle after years of intensely testing the legal waters and lobbying Congress for various tweaks--I don't doubt that it will prove very effective. Trademarks can in principal provide protection in perpetuity, as you say. Motion marks let you significantly expand the scope of the mark (and art), so you can protect a broader array of merchandise as well as films--not much market for public domain copies if segments have to be removed. Plus with their army of lawyers they can widen that moat even more through sheer intimidation, so they may very well be able to squash alot of otherwise highly marketable derivative works.