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'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

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Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#121

Post by inigyou »

meta_gunslinger wrote: post #110
vv_ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reference from an old interview with Gabe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQweFurRz4g > It's a bit like saying it's okay to sneak into a movie theater because the prices for movie tickets are too high. It is not just the price, though. In some regions, for some media, the movie theater doesn't exist or the movies are not localized (no subtitles / dubbing). Nowadays you need several subscriptions to watch all…

The law does not state "you have to pay for this, unless it's inconvenient".

Is your position that legality == morality?

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#122

Post by inigyou »

wickedsight wrote: post #84

It feels weird/wrong that the Anne Frank Foundation of all things would fight against a free internet and battle companies that allow people to fight oppressive regimes.

This is very typical. An organisation will always name itself something that sounds good, especially if it plans to do bad things.

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#123

Post by pydry »

ralferoo wrote: post #97
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorter copyright terms don’t prevent someone from retiring after making it big. To do that you’d need to cap how much they could make in total not the number of years their work was protected. Instead you’re essentially talking about hypothetical people rather than anything approaching a meaningful number of artists. Further lotteries attract suckers based on potential payouts. Just as the NFL or NBA convinces young…

Limiting by total income disincentivises companies to spend heavily to produce e.g. films, plays, video games, whatever. At that point, you're effectively saying copyright is only sensible for things produced by a single unaided person. Sadly, copyright term is the only sensible (and easily enforceable) metric, although whilst I'd agree that the term is currently too long, reducing it to shorter than the creator's li…

>Limiting by total income disincentivises companies to spend heavily to produce e.g. films, plays, video games, whatever.

I'm not sure we'd be any worse off as a society if, say, Disney wasnt incentivized to make 34 marvel movies.

There are things where we desperately need large scale investment (e.g. manufacturing, green energy) but big budget artistic productions is probably one area of the economy where we could easily live without it.

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#124

Post by crest »

one33seven wrote: post #92
petcat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US regulators don't order ISPs to block websites. The FBI will occasionally seize a domain, but only after a court order.

In germany it's an organization of the biggest copyright holders that make ISPs block sites, without any court order.

What make it even dumber is that following their block lists is voluntary for ISPs. The CUII is just a cabal of ISPs and intellectual "property" holders.

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#126

Post by ralferoo »

pydry wrote: post #123
ralferoo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting by total income disincentivises companies to spend heavily to produce e.g. films, plays, video games, whatever. At that point, you're effectively saying copyright is only sensible for things produced by a single unaided person. Sadly, copyright term is the only sensible (and easily enforceable) metric, although whilst I'd agree that the term is currently too long, reducing it to shorter than the creator's li…

>Limiting by total income disincentivises companies to spend heavily to produce e.g. films, plays, video games, whatever. I'm not sure we'd be any worse off as a society if, say, Disney wasnt incentivized to make 34 marvel movies. There are things where we desperately need large scale investment (e.g. manufacturing, green energy) but big budget artistic productions is probably one area of the economy where we could e…

Would be be worse off as a society without Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, the Herbie series, and any of the many more recent films?

If anything these films are a great example of why copyright terms should be long, because those films are still culturally relevant today, 60-80 years after they're made, and that people are still willing to pay for them over newer films shows that the creators and their families still deserve to continue to get royalties from them.

Sure, film companies often make a quick buck from sequels, but it's interesting that copyright on characters is distinct from copyright on works.

If anything it's surprising that you're arguing something other than the usual issue that's brought up around Disney, which is that their older works frequently took stories that were specifically out of copyright, and then they vigourously pursued copyright on the films they made from those stories.

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#128

Post by ralferoo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #68
Retric wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do care about income streams for their descendants or charitable organizations etc. So it’s not completely ineffective. What’s broken is extending copyright after a work was already created. But that’s true even if the creator was still alive.

> People do care about income streams for their descendants or charitable organizations etc. So it’s not completely ineffective. It is once you make it to the other side of the marginal utility of a dollar. Suppose you write a popular work in your 20s. You make plenty from it, and then people keep buying it. As long as they do, why spend your time creating new works when you can drink whiskey or play video games or l…

Reworking that a bit, suppose you work hard in your 20s and have a skill that many others don't have and can command a good wage for your work. You can make plenty from it, so why spend your time in your 40s and 50s doing more work when you can drink whiskey or play video games or live in a cabana on a beach?

Why can e.g. programmers profit from their specialism and then have early retirement, but e.g. popular singers or authors not do the same if they wanted? Why shouldn't they be allowed to continue to make money from the original work they've created that nobody else could / did? Why should a programmer be allowed to leave a huge legacy to their children in the form of vested stocks, but artists not be allowed to in the form of continuing royalties?

Creating works of art that people want is as much of a specialised skill as e.g. programming, but the payoff doesn't come as a large monthly paycheque, but as a small amount on each copy sold that you hope to recoup by selling more volume over time.

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#129

Post by rsynnott »

moomin wrote: post #127

It is wild that, 80 years after a girl was murdered, she’s relevant to a court case involving technology it would have taken over an hour to explain in 1945.

Explaining the ECJ, the venue of the court case, would also likely have been, ah, a challenge.

Re: 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

#130

Post by basilikum »

ralferoo wrote: post #97
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorter copyright terms don’t prevent someone from retiring after making it big. To do that you’d need to cap how much they could make in total not the number of years their work was protected. Instead you’re essentially talking about hypothetical people rather than anything approaching a meaningful number of artists. Further lotteries attract suckers based on potential payouts. Just as the NFL or NBA convinces young…

Limiting by total income disincentivises companies to spend heavily to produce e.g. films, plays, video games, whatever. At that point, you're effectively saying copyright is only sensible for things produced by a single unaided person. Sadly, copyright term is the only sensible (and easily enforceable) metric, although whilst I'd agree that the term is currently too long, reducing it to shorter than the creator's li…

> For instance, if copyright was just 20 years after something was created, a painting might have been created 20 years ago but never made public until later in their life, and so copyright has expired before they've ever tried to sell it.

Copyright should last ten years, at the very maximum 15 years, after publication. This is an entirely solved problem. The solution is just not implemented because in reality copyright is not about incentivizing authors at all.

> Maybe there was only public interest in their work later on in their career and suddenly their early work was now considered valuable.

Sucks for them. No reason to grant indefinite copyright.

> Or if it's 20 years from the date something was made available to the public, then you could reset the clock by creating a slightly different work

No, you couldn't. Why would a derivative work prolong the copyright term of the original? The derivative work would have copyright on its own if it had significant additional creative input (so not just spelling corrections). The original is entirely unaffected by this. Derivative works are already a settled concept in copyright. Nothing about them is new or special.

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