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Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

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Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#181

Post by icebraining »

zozbot234 wrote: post #99
henryfjordan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose she'd be able to sell "official copies" or something akin to that, but no matter what she's still not capturing as much of the value she created if she cannot assert a copyright. There's also nothing in copyright law precluding her from also getting sponsors. If anything, copyright law makes it clearer where everyone stands and so makes connecting writers and sponsors (or employers through a work-for-hire a…

> she's still not capturing as much of the value she created if she cannot assert a copyright No one's disputing that. But she's also creating a lot more value at the same time. It's a wash.

It's not a wash for her, though, which may change her decisions to actually produce the work.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#182

Post by WalterBright »

icebraining wrote: post #177
WalterBright wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rowling is quite an outlier - 1% of 1% of 1%. While a fascinating example, it seems unoptimal to center copyright protection laws around her experience.

She's only an obvious outlier after the fact, though; protecting all authors because they are potential outliers is a perfectly valid goal.

Optimizing a system for the 1% of 1% of 1% is not the greatest good.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#183

Post by WalterBright »

icebraining wrote: post #179
WalterBright wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write and give away free software. People have paid to come to my workshops. They've paid me to write more. It's sort of like why would anyone pay to attend MIT, when you can watch videos of the lectures for free on youtube? Oddly enough, MIT is doing better than ever.

MIT has an IP-equivalent in the form of the exclusive right to tell people you graduated there. Plus a regular property right in who frequents the campus, and it's known that much of the value comes from the network one forms there.

Exactly my point. The value isn't in the video of the lectures.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#184

Post by kd5bjo »

Taniwha wrote: post #178
supernova87a wrote: post #47

Aside from the particulars of this case, I feel that the whole subject of copyright is generally anti-competitive and rent-seeking, as codified in the laws and time limits being inflated grossly to suit copyright holders in the current era. In my opinion, the argument that copyright extension incentivizes authors/creators doesn't hold much water. I generally observe that there are plenty of people willing to create a…

Originally copyright was a bargain between the creator and the government (originally the Crown, but now the people) - essentially it's "we give you a fixed term monopoly, and in return you turn your creation over into the public domain afterwards". Two things have messed with that deal - corporations are now treated as people, who live forever, and copyright extension allows corporations to extend copyright past the…

For patents, part of the deal was also that the inventor should clearly describe how the invention works. Modern patents, however, are drafted to be so obtuse that they’re basically impossible to learn from.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#185

Post by MaxBarraclough »

markdown wrote: post #113
stx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first Harry Potter book was released in 1997 and the first movie was 2001. So to satisfy that the author be compensated would not require 70 years after her death. I think most of us agree that copyright has value but its become excessive.

IMO 30 years or the death of the author, whichever occurs sooner, is long enough for the author to benefit from their work. There really isn't any difference in terms of incentive for the author between 30 years and the current life of the author + 70 years (or whatever the current term is).

I think 15 years would be more than enough, certainly in most fields of copyrightable endeavor. Whether there are fields where that wouldn't be long enough, I'm not sure.

The copyright on the first Harry Potter book should have expired by now. Copyright expiration should not be merely a distant possibility that we rarely think about, as it is today.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#186

Post by MaxBarraclough »

bobthepanda wrote: post #150
markdown wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO 30 years or the death of the author, whichever occurs sooner, is long enough for the author to benefit from their work. There really isn't any difference in terms of incentive for the author between 30 years and the current life of the author + 70 years (or whatever the current term is).

The reason why +years exists is mostly for the case of inventors who die prematurely, so that their family can still reap the benefits. It's the same reason why widows can collect their partners' pensions.

No, that's not it. The reason is that Disney lobbied to have the copyright term extended to prevent Mickey Mouse entering the public domain. This is despite that Disney was essentially built on public domain works.

This isn't how copyright was meant to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...

CGP Grey on copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#187

Post by incompatible »

javajosh wrote: post #93
supernova87a wrote: post #47

Aside from the particulars of this case, I feel that the whole subject of copyright is generally anti-competitive and rent-seeking, as codified in the laws and time limits being inflated grossly to suit copyright holders in the current era. In my opinion, the argument that copyright extension incentivizes authors/creators doesn't hold much water. I generally observe that there are plenty of people willing to create a…

You make two arguments here, one about degree and the other about kind. As for kind, as others have pointed out, the intent of IP law is to create artificial scarcity . The marginal cost of information is 0, so you have to put turnstiles somewhere. Society has kind of blundered and stumbled into the mishmash of enforcement measures we have today, but the intent is to reward content creators. If you accept this is a g…

I'm not sure why you think that scarcity is such a good thing that it needs to be created artificially.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#188

Post by icebraining »

WalterBright wrote: post #182
icebraining wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's only an obvious outlier after the fact, though; protecting all authors because they are potential outliers is a perfectly valid goal.

Optimizing a system for the 1% of 1% of 1% is not the greatest good.

Not if your goal is to help the greatest number of authors, but it might be if your goal is to help the greatest number of readers. Since a single book can be enjoyed by many, it's arguably better to have a single book that is very liked than one thousand books that nobody really likes to read.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#189

Post by LunaSea »

foxbarrington wrote: post #110
baybal2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI: a lot of US supreme court opinions are not even written by justices, but by their law clerks and assistants. Similarly, judges deputise their legal research to them at rate that would be rather unsettling for most of us outside of US. Anything like that would not be something expected from country's best laywers. A judge given a quarter million USD salary must be the best of the best in performance, and not to d…

> Anything like that would not be something expected from country's best laywers. A judge given a quarter million USD salary must be the best of the best in performance, and not to deputise his most important duties. $250k is what 4th year lawyers at big firms like Cravath make. Partners can make 10x or more, and a lot of the work of partners is done by associates. [0] If an associate has clerked for a supreme court…

Doesn't really matter in the end.

If you accept a salary for a job you actually do the job. Period.

Re: Supreme Court rules Georgia state law annotations not copyrightable [pdf]

#190

Post by q084yn39cptyth »

markdown wrote: post #113
stx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first Harry Potter book was released in 1997 and the first movie was 2001. So to satisfy that the author be compensated would not require 70 years after her death. I think most of us agree that copyright has value but its become excessive.

IMO 30 years or the death of the author, whichever occurs sooner, is long enough for the author to benefit from their work. There really isn't any difference in terms of incentive for the author between 30 years and the current life of the author + 70 years (or whatever the current term is).

It's interesting to me when others come up with similar conclusions independently.

There's studies of sales of works (books etc) and iirc, at least with books, the vast majority of sales are within the first several years, with income trailing after that. This has come up in discussions of zombie rights to works, where a publisher sits on something out of print without releasing new copies because the return isn't enough. It's like the textbook reason for limits on copyright terms. Last I looked at it, 30 years was more than sufficient to cover the bulk of sales in almost all cases. If you think back 30 years now, that would be works released pre 1980s and earlier. That makes intuitive sense to me.

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