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What will enter the public domain in 2022

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Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#191

Post by hnbad »

jedberg wrote: post #82

This 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…

I'd abolish intellectual property as a category. Yeah, there's no chance this will happen short of a communist revolution or something, but you didn't ask specify whether the fix would be practical.

Yes, this would abandon patents and strengthen trade secrets, but with no IP laws trade secrets would eventually either be leaked (because you can't keep secrets indefinitely) or reverse engineered.

Workers already have to sign contracts granting their employers all the rights to their output. Without IP laws they could just walk off and build on their developments if they wanted to.

The renewed interest in trade secrets would also drive some innovation in how businesses can cooperate without spilling their beans because simply licensing their IP would no longer be an option. Without trademark protections a lot of the more blatant trademark infringements would probably just be treated as fraud (e.g. impersonating a well-known brand).

IP laws reward ownership, not innovation. Inventors seldom get to keep their inventions unless they're wealthy enough (read: own enough capital) to begin with. The prolific fan fic communities and countless amateur musicians (both garage bands and online "creators") demonstrate that creative expression does not depend on compensation as they're already barely making any money off their labors of love.

You'd of course probably want some public grants but most foundational research is already publicly funded because private companies are too risk averse to fully fund research with no immediate path to monetization. I think systems like Patreon could also become more important, maybe even to the point that they could be supported as public infrastructure the same way banks are (in some countries anyway). You could still justify protecting your likeness via privacy laws, but there will always be fans who want to know the band merchandise they buy actually is licensed by the band they love, not just churned out by some third party (on the other hand, consider etsy and its creators' rampant "derivative works" of major well-known franchises).

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#192

Post by hnlmorg »

jedberg wrote: post #82

This 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…

This might be fine for welthy Americans, but what about those who aren't? You're allowing hobby authors and musicians to be exploited. Also what about international works? Particularly those from poorer countries? 100USD is going to be unobtainable for people from some African nations or Indian states.

The one benefit of copyright being free and automatic is that it benefits everyone equally.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#193

Post by hnbad »

hnbad wrote: post #191
jedberg wrote: post #82

This 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…

I'd abolish intellectual property as a category. Yeah, there's no chance this will happen short of a communist revolution or something, but you didn't ask specify whether the fix would be practical. Yes, this would abandon patents and strengthen trade secrets, but with no IP laws trade secrets would eventually either be leaked (because you can't keep secrets indefinitely) or reverse engineered. Workers already have t…

Or for a less radical approach:

Limit copyright for creative works to the author's lifetime. Dad wrote the next Lord of the Rings on his deathbed? Too bad, you better hope he sorted out a good publishing deal that'll survive him. Abolish copyright for software. Sorry, your ecommerce website isn't Hamlet.

Cap patents to a fixed number of years, say 10, and ban software patents. Also require that a patent filing actually provides enough information to be able to reproduce the work given all other publicly available information. Want to patent your AI that requires a secret training data set? Tough. Want to patent your crazy new dating algorithm? Better provide an example implementation in the public domain.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#194

Post by activitypea »

jedberg wrote: post #82

This 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…

>Minimum fee of $100

This comment is a Disney psyop, pay no mind fellow readers

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#195

Post by franga2000 »

jedberg wrote: post #82

This 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…

10 years from the date of publication, possible extensions while derivate works like sequels are still being produced up until the death of the author. No inheritance. For corporation-owned copyright, same principle, but with an upper bound of 50 years.

After expiry, the authors should retain a right to call a derivative work original/canonical, but enjoy no other protections - so I can make my own James Bond movies, but they won't have the "canonical" stamp. This right would last a long, but finite amout of time (max 150 years) and would be inherited (to somewhat equalise individuals to corporations, since nobody lives that long).

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#196

Post by Klaster_1 »

d110af5ccf wrote: post #172
fastball wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think jedberg's point is that revenue generated is not being factored in. So Disney, who effectively has a monopoly on certain popular content can copyright it for a long time because they're making so much money off of it, while a small time copyright owner who is making $10k a year will not be able to make money for very long.

I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. Depriving the public of free use should be compensated appropriately. The older it is the more it becomes part of our shared culture. It makes sense that in some cases large players will be capable of realizing benefits from things at scales that small ones simply can't match. A small player could still presumably sell their copyright to a large one if it appeared lucrative to cont…

>It's a matter of balancing freedoms against monopolies in order to maximize innovation. Large players often enjoy intrinsic economic advantages and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as long as it doesn't hurt consumers.

I wonder what other n-order consequences of this might be. The suggested approach will encourage small players to either focus on original content or compete with each other using public domain items. The big companies will buy or even rent out rights when original holders can't support the fee. This will happen around copyright fee increase breakpoints, the change of ownership will become more predictable, more pump and dump situations like with Star Wars happen to popular franchises. Predictable change of ownership will affect share prices, this will be in news all the time. If breakpoints will coincide with calendar years, the companies will try to maximize profits before the fee grows too much, resulting in super-competitive, choke full release schedules like what happens now around Christmas. We'll see weird variations of public domain content, like fan fiction, but on larger scale and more money for creators. Older, public domain content might see more demand thanks to derivative works it enables, and more demand means healthier content preservation efforts (more customers, more money to support the projects) and file sharing scene.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#197

Post by moffkalast »

cma wrote: post #80
spaetzleesser wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is no different from somebody who has a regular job or starts a business and passes away too soon. There is no security for the family either. In the end the main beneficiaries are big corporations and not creators.

Why should a 70 year old's same work product be worth much less than a 20 year old's? It should just be a period of time, with possibly exponentially increasing renewal fees so funds go into the common good the more the public domain is deprived.

Because you can't take your work with you when you die, so it can't matter what happens to it and should be considered common good afterwards. I'd say it's actually worth more, to humanity as a whole.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#198

Post by bryanrasmussen »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #190
jedberg wrote: post #82

This 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…

so first off regarding your plan - there used to a be a funny checklist going around, why your plan to fix email won't work, (but I can't find that on the internet anymore because we all know search doesn't work) so I can't make a very precise parody of it but: Why your plan to fix copyright won't work: 1. It does not take into account the different understandings of the purpose of copyright in other countries than t…

now as far as how I would improve copyright, part of one of the problems copyright faces is that in countries outside the U.S fair use is either a non-existent concept or it is much diluted. I think it would be nice to import the American concept of fair use to these other countries but it would be a hard go running into that Berne convention moral rights thing I noted earlier. But maybe doable.

For creators, some sort of unified treaty about copyright reversion. This would probably go over good in Berne convention aligned countries because follows moral rights philosophy.

One of the main problems with copyright is actually the DMCA, so fix the DMCA to not make it so easy for people to squash things.

finally people have a problem with the term limits of copyright. This is a hard thing to fix, basically I would think the copyright of works is a little bit of too long now - I would say 60 years or the life of the creator whichever is longer. For companies obviously has to be 60 years then. So someone writes a book at 20 and lives to be 85 they have 65 years, someone writes a book at 65 and dies at 67, the book remains in copyright 58 more years after death and their kids get taken care of if that book happens to be the best selling children's book of all time or something like that.

Characters created in one work etc. are copyrighted from the time of their first creation.

for creators as well, lighten or get rid of registration requirement in the U.S (which is required in order to sue for infringement and needs to be timely in order to get statutory damages) or course no European court has this, because Berne convention, so I think it would be nice to align things.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#199

Post by chrismorgan »

zczc wrote: post #186
fastball wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think jedberg's point is that revenue generated is not being factored in. So Disney, who effectively has a monopoly on certain popular content can copyright it for a long time because they're making so much money off of it, while a small time copyright owner who is making $10k a year will not be able to make money for very long.

Moreover, Disney will just register its decade of works as a single multipart work, so this regime would encourage further monopolization

If that would be a vulnerability under my proposed scheme, it would already be a vulnerability now. But as it is, it’s already blocked by law surrounding copyright of compilations. Indeed, my scheme in my preferred form takes matters further so that if they tried to do what you suggest they’d be risking getting everything in the “single multipart work” declared public domain as soon as someone complains that some of those substantial “parts” were published long ago.
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