101–110 of 233 posts
99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?
Honestly I think we should just work at doing away with the concept. The idea of it was to encourage the creation of works by providing a limited term of artificial scarcity so said works could participate in the market. But in the information age, where copying information is as close to free as makes no odds, I think that makes a lot less sense than it used to. That's without even considering that giant corporation…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?
Honestly I think we should just work at doing away with the concept. The idea of it was to encourage the creation of works by providing a limited term of artificial scarcity so said works could participate in the market. But in the information age, where copying information is as close to free as makes no odds, I think that makes a lot less sense than it used to. That's without even considering that giant corporation…
99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.
In an ideal world, copyright should last for maybe two or three years. It would still mostly fulfill its purpose to allow the creator to earn money, but would severely curtail the abuse potential. In an even more ideal world, copyright shouldn't be transferable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think this is fair and we will likely see it extended further. the media works of today cost way more than they did before. some songs cost millions to produce. some movies hundreds of millions. some video games billions of dollars. and the longevity of media has increased over time. we may not watch much 1920s movies but we do watch movies from the 50s and 60s. and i think recent movies will last even longer since…
I disagree wholeheartedly. The purpose of copyright is to shift money made from selling copies back into the production of new works; and anything else is just blatant rent-seeking at the expense of the larger economy. High-budget songs, movies, and video games will either make back their budgets immediately , or they will be written off as a loss. There are very few cases where a work's financial success is predicat…
production value has a huge impact. why would rockstar spend billions developing gta 5 if it was public domain after 10 years? it’s still the cash machine that runs the business today and it’s 8 years old
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, anyone that had a personal attachment to that music is dead. The current goal of copyright is to let companies own the culture you grew with. All the movies, music, books and games that defined who you are will not enter the public domain until you are dead or very old. Companies like Disney were founded on well known stories. They will not allow anybody else too accomplish the same.
Disney was founded on Mickey Mouse. Yes, they made major motion pictures out of old myths and legends, like Cinderella and Robin Hood, but those stories have always been public domain and you can write a book or movie about them with no problem.
99 years to enter public domain... I don't think this is fair.
In an ideal world, copyright should last for maybe two or three years. It would still mostly fulfill its purpose to allow the creator to earn money, but would severely curtail the abuse potential. In an even more ideal world, copyright shouldn't be transferable.
Does this offer a sort of land-grab opportunity where anyone who has an original recording can remaster it, convert to mp3, then claim copyright over that "transformation" of the original?
There were a bunch of court cases about this, music radio, and rights payments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not comparing these numbers correctly. Your second link shows years of additional life expectancy. For example, at age 80 it shows 8.43 years of life expectancy, meaning that the average 80-year-old lives to age 88.43. So the average 25-year-old in the US has 52–57 years of life remaining, and will live to age 77 or 82, according to your link. This is a very big increase over the pre-twentieth-century adult l…
Thanks for the correction. So we're at a 45% increase. Typically life expectancy is reported as the "from birth number". That's gone from ~20 to 80. The claim was that the bulk of the life expectancy number being driven by the mortality rate prior to adult hood was an "urban myth". Life expectancy in adult hood is a ~1.4x increase. Life expectancy from birth is a 4x increase. I'd say the bulk is driven by saving the…
Since the time period you chose, life expectancy at birth has increased by about 40 to 55 years. Near-elimination of infant mortality accounts for 15–30 years of increase, while increases in adult life expectancy account for an additional 25 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if we're going to time limit ownership rights to intellectual property we should time limit ownership rights to everything - including land, buildings, shares and stocks, bonds, art collections, all of it. Except maybe trivial items like home furnishings and portable tools. I've yet to hear any credible argument - one that doesn't reduce to entitlement and wishful thinking - for distinguishing between these a…
> I've yet to hear any credible argument - one that doesn't reduce to entitlement and wishful thinking - for distinguishing between these asset classes. Owning a physical thing and "owning" information is fundamentally different. Information can be copied, spread, redistributed without taking it away from someone. If you take land from someone they can no longer use it, if you copy information from someone they still…
This is also why we have the word "infringement" and why we should not be using the word "theft" in these contexts.
To put this idea another way:
Say Jane has an iObject. She uses it everyday.
Bob takes the iObject. Jane now does not have her iObject, and cannot use it everyday.
The iObject has value, and it's expensive to obtain another one. Jane must spend to obtain another iObject, assuming one is available for purchase.
This is theft, and the key legal concept here is someone being deprived of their property.
Joe has made a song. Joe has granted distribution rights to Larry, who collects money for people obtaining copies of the song. Joe makes money from Larry, who also makes money doing all these things.
Ann gets a copy of Joe's song from her friend Jose. Larry and Joe did not get any revenue from Ann.
This is infringement.
Notably, Joe still has his song. Larry still has his right of distribution he obtained from Joe. They are not denied their property.
Essentially Anne and Jose did, or experienced something they were not supposed to.
Also of note, Larry and Joe could still sell Ann a copy of the song! Ann could further promote Joe's song to others in various ways, legally.
There are some additional considerations.
Part of the value in Joe's work is context. People who know Joe, understand his work, identify with Joe in ways that make using Joe's work important to them all represent value. Larry helps add value to Joe's work by doing the other work associated with distribution, and that's advertising, and other efforts that generally promote the work and add context.
Unlike theft, there can actually be value created as a result of infringement!
In the case of theft, the value of the iObject to Jane is associated with owning and using the iObject, and said use could be just looking at the thing, or it could be the iObject enables Jane to do things she would not normally be able to do, whatever. When theft happens, Jane no longer has that value and or whatever was possible when she did have her iObject.
Infringement is weird.
Ann gets a copy of Joe's work from Jose. Prior to that, Ann has no clue about Joe, his work, that it's available. There is some chance Ann would have stumbled on all that due to Larry being good at what he does, but there is also a great chance Joe remains undiscovered by Ann, who would never spend any money that Joe and Larry would receive.
However, Jose promoting the work to Ann changes all of that!
Now Ann knows who Joe is, has context (Jose) and now could spend money for any number of reasons.
Joe and Larry received value from Jose's act of infringement (copy, distribute), and Ann added to that by her other act of infringement. (use)
And that's it, just really want to underscore the difference.
I've long held the view we won't really get workable laws on all this, until we discuss it using the proper words. The nuances are subtle, but they matter! As does the law and its impact on our lives and opportunities.