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What will enter the public domain in 2022

publicdomainreview.org

221–230 of 235 posts

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fees are mostly to disincentivise keeping works from public domain (which copyright creators agreed was for the public good) which are not really benefiting the creator in any substantial way. Regarding governments, just like we establish residency for income tax purposes, you could establish residency for copyrighted-work creation. If it's multiple countries you've been in while "creating", the one you spent most ti…

>> Fees are mostly to disincentivise keeping works from public domain Your cure is worse than the disease. If I understand this right, works need to register and pay a fee to be copyrighted. So if I take a picture of my smiling family, post it on FaceBook without registering it (and paying a fee) it's automatically public domain? So it can be used in a brochure by any political party, company, gun advert, whatever, w…

> So if I take a picture of my smiling family

Btw, let me cover this one again. Copyright for the photo of your family actually belongs to the photographer. But because it has humans in it, author can only use it for whatever purpose those humans agree to. Without explicit permission from the photographer, you might not be able to use it for any purpose either (eg. print it out and put it on the wall).

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#222
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only time a Harberger tax makes sense is for illiquid investments, such as investment real estate. Everywhere else, the forced buying and selling creates more problems than it solves. In this example of Disney's IP - it takes a lot of time and money to make a movie. A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie and then forcibly buy up enough rights to make the movie illegal to release…

Pure Harberger taxes aren't a perfect fit for copyright--7 initial years free* is what one fan of the original paper proposed--but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry (a sufficiently large IP company might shift some spending from lawyers to valuation and risk assessment). > A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie…

> but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry.

The comparison was with OP's suggestion of replacing copyright with a simple tax, not with current copyright law. I agree Harberger taxes would be simpler than the existing system, though still not preferable.

> In a de novo work like Toy Story, or a fully licensed work like Wreck-It Ralph, Disney owns the rights and knows their value when they announce the upcoming film.

Sure, but a competitor could steal the rights out from under them in the time between announcing the film and the film hitting theaters.

There's another issue with not-yet-profitable IP. With Harberger taxes you wouldn't be able to protect IP while you're still working to build products around it. This is another way that smaller / new players get screwed with this type of system.

As I said, the forced buying / selling creates way more problems than it solves. All we are trying to do here is determine how high a tax should be. Inventing a scheme where people and companies can steal from each other (for a fee) is always going to have worse second order effects and be more complicated than just coming up with a price formula for the tax.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Spotify should just keep 100% of revenue for themselves instead of paying royalties?

Why would Spotify have revenue? Surely we would all download our music at the tiny marginal cost of the required internet bandwidth.

I guess all the artists will love freely distributing their music as charity.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#224
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure Harberger taxes aren't a perfect fit for copyright--7 initial years free* is what one fan of the original paper proposed--but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry (a sufficiently large IP company might shift some spending from lawyers to valuation and risk assessment). > A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie…

> but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry. The comparison was with OP's suggestion of replacing copyright with a simple tax, not with current copyright law. I agree Harberger taxes would be simpler than the existing system, though still not preferable. > In a de novo work like Toy Story, or a fully licensed work like Wreck-It Ralph, Disney…

The “initial duration X free” I mentioned solves all these problems without producing very onerous complications. Even if it didn’t, a small creator could get immediate cash infusions simply by pricing his newly created characters at a large multiple of what he thinks he could make off them—that way, Disney’s buyout is a providential windfall instead of legal thievery.

I think you’re undercounting the benefits and overcounting the side effects of incentive compatible mechanisms!

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#225
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 would destroy the largest community driven around art: furries. It would also, in the process, destroy independent publishing in general, for hire artists, small businesses, and only really end up entrenching more the establishment by introducing more thing that must be maintained.

Your fee structure turns my $20 shitpost profile pic commission into a several hundred dollar affair. It also provides zero of the protections that currently used de facto copyright gives.

Let me give you a simple example of how your system fucks over a small independent artist, such as your typical Etsy sticker seller:

Let's say I'm an artist who makes profit off selling stickers on Etsy, but not really enough to give up my day job. I sell stickers for $5 each at a $1.50/ea profit for shy of $150/yr in profits across 20 or so designs. Under the current system, I should register my designs under copyright system, but I'm granted de facto copyright under the law for most cases where someone copies my design whole cloth and making a profit from it. If I register my designs, I gain several additional, useful protections, all for the low low price of $0. I now have to do nothing in order to retain those.

Better: I don't have to reveal my identity, a feature that may be useful in situations where the kinds of products I hock are considered in some way unacceptable (porn, or content the producer would prefer under a pen name).

Under your suggested system, that small Etsy seller I describe now has their name and details in a public ledger (not great for sex workers, photographers who may be the target of hostile nations, contrarian writers, etc.) Then, the renewal fees become a bear. After eight years of meager profits paying for their beer tabs, the 20 designs that the Etsy seller hocks will put them on the hook for at least $2,000, likely even more.

What you've described is a basic regressive tax. I've even gotten a fantastic little way around your system:

All my IP is legally owned by a shell company, owned by me, who licenses my company, also owned by me, for $25/yr, the ability to use that copyrighted work. I take all the profits from that and assign all related copyright of such profits to the shell company. Now the shell company literally exists with no other assets than its licensing revenue and and IP, which can be written off as a loss in the long run.

The shell company runs at a net loss over time and I pocket 100% of the profits.

This is actually done today already and is why you have copyright holdings companies that exist entirely to be bureaucracy management for the system, and are the ones you see suing the shit out of teenagers pirating a copy of Aladdin so their cousins have something to watch while Uncle Joe beats his wife.

How would I fix copyright?

1. Ban logo copyright. Most logos are already simple enough to be considered public domain but actually drop the entire logo purpose. Conversely, allow them to be trademarked and service marked.

2. Place heavy fines and revocation of privilege on false copyright infringement claims. One of the worst parts of our copyright system as it stands is the DMCA. While useful at its core, a lack of actual repercussions for its improper usage and SLAPP-like usage to harm the public good.

DMCA strikes are used to take down material which is not actually the copyright of the filer in more cases than not. For instance, DMCA strikes take down content related to making perfectly legitimate backups of movies and other home media, commentary on that material, and otherwise perfectly legal content that is not under the copyright of the DMCA claimsnt but the claimant would rather not people know about.

Currently, the only zing on the DMCA is "under perjury of law" that the claim is accurate. This is the legal equivalent of a pinky promise and a wink. It looks scary but it's absolutely the case that the DMCA gets abused as a SLAPP mechanism. When does your ability to file a DMCA complaint get revoked? Never.

Read through Chilling Effects' DMCA logs. They're fascinating. Also go read TorrentFreak on occasion for their commentary on DMCA takedowns, such as this gem where someone asked Google to take down... Localhost: https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-firm-asks-google-to-blo...

3. Designate what is a long term and what isn't in copyright land.

I have an idea that I've kicked around for over a decade now about how to handle effectively abandoned properties and IP. It revolves around Gabe Newell's commentary on piracy: piracy is a response to a lack of availability in the digital age. There will come a point after which it is impossible to purchase a legitimate, perpetual license to something such as a book, movie, etc. At that point, all legitimate copies are on the second hand market. No revenue can be reasonably expected from that thing by the original seller. How can the original seller claim damages if they no longer offer a legitimate way to acquire the item?

Once this point occurs, once no legitimate mechanism for getting a copy of something exists, especially for durable goods (such as books, but not for things like stickers), when does it become abandoned? My take is 10 years. Once a purely digital copyright work is impossible to get legitimate for 10 years, it becomes abandoned: nonprofit duplication is legal, but for-profit duplication is not. After being abandoned for 30 years, the work is released to the public domain.

There's some exceptions: art has a weird place in the digital world. A fine line is drawn over what is archival and what isn't.

4. Destroy estate ownership of copyright extension. No more "the author died 50 years ago but the estate has the copyright into the next century" shit. Author died? 10 years for anything not abandoned.

5. Establishment of cultural copyright ownership/destruction of copyright on cultural heritage. Allow the LoC and other organizations to induct copyright works into a historic register of cultural touchstones. These items are considered long lived multigenerational items which should be placed into the public domain outside their usual timeline. Works over 25-30 years at minimum.

6. Fair use for incidental but otherwise prominent use of a copyright work during performance and its subsequent recording and replay.

This is 100% targeted at music and other content in twitch streams, YouTube vlog channels, and more.

Passing by a stall playing top40, having music in the background during an artist's stream should not affect their ability to continue. Broadening fair use is Essential.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#226
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think about this in the scenerio of e.g. a publishing advance. Just means older people will get paid less, publishers will dedicate less to marketing their work, etc.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Fees are mostly to disincentivise keeping works from public domain Your cure is worse than the disease. If I understand this right, works need to register and pay a fee to be copyrighted. So if I take a picture of my smiling family, post it on FaceBook without registering it (and paying a fee) it's automatically public domain? So it can be used in a brochure by any political party, company, gun advert, whatever, w…

> So if I take a picture of my smiling family Btw, let me cover this one again. Copyright for the photo of your family actually belongs to the photographer. But because it has humans in it, author can only use it for whatever purpose those humans agree to. Without explicit permission from the photographer, you might not be able to use it for any purpose either (eg. print it out and put it on the wall).

I don't know where you live, but laws like that don't exist everywhere. And of course the photographer gets copyright. But most family snaps are taken by the family. I'm taking about phone photos here, not studio pics.

Are you really suggesting that all photos posted to Facebook or WhatsApp should be in the public domain?

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#228
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry. The comparison was with OP's suggestion of replacing copyright with a simple tax, not with current copyright law. I agree Harberger taxes would be simpler than the existing system, though still not preferable. > In a de novo work like Toy Story, or a fully licensed work like Wreck-It Ralph, Disney…

The “initial duration X free” I mentioned solves all these problems without producing very onerous complications. Even if it didn’t, a small creator could get immediate cash infusions simply by pricing his newly created characters at a large multiple of what he thinks he could make off them—that way, Disney’s buyout is a providential windfall instead of legal thievery. I think you’re undercounting the benefits and ov…

> The “initial duration X free” I mentioned solves all these problems without producing very onerous complications.

I guess that depends on how you define it. All the marvel characters and stories have existed for decades. The only thing new about the movies are the movies themselves

> a small creator could get immediate cash infusions simply by pricing his newly created characters at a large multiple of what he thinks he could make off them—that way, Disney’s buyout is a providential windfall instead of legal thievery.

Yeah, and run the risk of bankrupting themselves from the tax bill in the process.

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if I take a picture of my smiling family Btw, let me cover this one again. Copyright for the photo of your family actually belongs to the photographer. But because it has humans in it, author can only use it for whatever purpose those humans agree to. Without explicit permission from the photographer, you might not be able to use it for any purpose either (eg. print it out and put it on the wall).

I don't know where you live, but laws like that don't exist everywhere. And of course the photographer gets copyright. But most family snaps are taken by the family. I'm taking about phone photos here, not studio pics. Are you really suggesting that all photos posted to Facebook or WhatsApp should be in the public domain?

I am suggesting what? How did you arrive to that conclusion from me saying eg.

> I'd avoid registration and only introduce registration/renewal fees after (a period of 10-15 years)

After that initial period (whatever it is, maybe even longer), do you seriously think you'd be disadvantaged from someone using a non-humans-containing photo from your Facebook?

As for photographer holding the copyright, I am mostly pointing out a legal nuance today that is never enforced. And many of those photos you are in — selfies excluded — you don't have the explicit right to post (but neither does the photographer but not because of copyright).

As for them being taken by family, family members have sued each other for less :)

Re: What will enter the public domain in 2022

#230
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…

Copyright was a reasonable bargain when printing a book involved a large up-front investment of typesetting it and then printing all the copies that would ever be printed from that setup. It didn't affect most people, just printers. And it enabled authors to make a living from writing.

It became fairly dubious in the age of photocopiers, but fortunately was little enforced, except in the USSR. A photocopier was useless without typeset or handwritten text to copy, and the copies degraded every generation, so publishing houses were still needed.

Now every computer is a book-copying machine more powerful than the entire publishing industry a few decades ago: it can transmit a gigabit per second, and for a one-megabyte book, that's 125 copies a second, 10 million copies a day, 3 billion copies a year, so copyright is a constant danger to everyone. Fanfic sites are full of people sharing stories they wrote with no expectation of making money. The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago, not due to xeroxes but due to TV. The best software is free software, as copyright makes proprietary software untrustworthy, creating incentives to stuff it with malware. And, even if Elsevier were paying researchers instead of vice versa, the idea that copyright on research papers could fund research is as ludicrous as the idea that people would stop singing songs and telling stories without monopoly profits.

Apps, videos, and websites constantly disappear due to (often groundless) accusations of copyright violations. Police evade accountability by playing copyrighted music, rendering any recordings of their abuses copyright violations. A mutual friend of ours committed suicide after being prosecuted for copyright violations that might have been fair use; we'll never know.

So, I would set the copyright term at zero years. Legal monopolies on preserving and sharing knowledge are not only useless in today's world, they are harmful, a monstrous menace to the integrity of the historical record and to private communication.

(Originally posted, slightly modified, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384318>.)

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