A tiny victory. Copyright should not be more than a decade. This intellectual property system is one of the worst things to happen in modern society is what I would have said a few years ago, now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.
Disagree on the decade. There are plenty of examples of great movies or other works that took longer than a decade to bring to the public. Those projects would have been completely non-viable if their content could have been stolen after creators put a decade into their development. I think 25 or even 50 years is more defensible. But 100? Nah. But the crushing problem today for many of us here is SOFTWARE PATENTS. Th…
Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
231–240 of 369 posts
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, it looks like there is something in the law that only provides DMCA safe harbor to providers that have a policy of terminating accounts of repeat infringers. I'm still not sure if an ISP would even need that safe harbor though.
Lower circuit court said they did, Supreme Court overturned that.
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The current term in the US is like life +70 years, or something. While 10 is arbitrary, I like it because it is much closer to balancing incentive for creativity vs stifling creativity. I make software and data. It’s worth protecting. But I think the harm from copyright protection has been greater than the benefit. Framing it as people who want reasonable copyright as anti-creator is so not cool and avoids discussion…
You're the one avoiding discussion by just declaring this is true
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I like the idea, but I can't help wondering if it would have unforeseen consequences. Could this approach undermine the protections afforded by open-source licenses? (IANAL.)
> I think I like the idea, but I can't help wondering if it would have unforeseen consequences. As I said in a sibling comment, quickie comments on HN should be taken more as mental stimulation and kickoff points for further discussion as opposed to "final bill that has been revised in committee and is going to the floor for a full vote". The details of implementation are certainly critical, and not trivial either! I…
Agreed, and my comment was aimed at exactly that. :)
An example of my concern: What would happen to GPL-licensed software if the copyright expired quickly? Would that allow someone to include it in a proprietary product and (after the short copyright term ended) deny users the freedoms that the GPL is supposed to guarantee? I think those freedoms remain important for much longer than 10 years.
> (and no changes since remember, it's a constantly rolling window)
Do you mean that the copyright term countdown would reset whenever the author makes changes to their work? (I'm not sure if this is the case today.) If so, couldn't someone simply use an earlier version in their proprietary product in order to escape GPL obligations early?
> "if you're releasing under an open source license and thus giving up your standard first, second, and part of your third period of IP rights and monopoly, you're excluded from needing to pay a license fee because you've already enable the public to make derivative works for free for decades when they wouldn't otherwise anyway."
Yes, I think this makes sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another thing that doesn't get brought up enough: Copyright is not really needed to encourage creation. Suppose Copyright as a concept was overturned and no longer existed. Would Disney just say "Well, it was a great run, but we're going to close up shop and no longer create works." Would an independent artist who needs to paint something decide not to just because it couldn't be copyright? "The creation of new works…
You're absolutely right that artists can't stop themselves from creating, but I think that a reasonable amount of protection still does encourage more works. Many works require a good deal of investment and time and if people had little to no chance of making money or breaking even on that investment a lot of works wouldn't get made. Another nice aspect of copyright law is that it establishes where a work originated.…
The reason we need a copyright in the first place is to stop someone like disney just vacuuming up popular works and republishing them because they have the money to do it.
Disney, however, doesn't need almost any copyright to still encourage them to make new products. They'll do that regardless.
For an individual author, copyright should basically be for their lifetime. If they sell it, the copyright should only last 5 years after that.
A company like disney should get copyrights for like 1 year.
But also the type of media matters. IMO, news outlets and journalists should get copyrights for 1 day max. Old news is almost worthless and it's in the public interest that news be generally accessible and recordable.
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#236I have to pay property tax forever for a house I supposedly own. If I dont pay that, the government sues and takes my house. Basically I never actually own my house. (Of course, we have "Evil Communist China" where there is no property tax, and people own their homes and can live there. Id argue they're more free than we are.) But copyrights and patents and trademarks? There's no tax on those "properties". And gee, c…
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#237A tiny victory. Copyright should not be more than a decade. This intellectual property system is one of the worst things to happen in modern society is what I would have said a few years ago, now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.
If copyright was only a decade then Sony could have waited 5 more years and made the movie of Project Hail Mary without paying one dime to Andy Weir. I think the law is too long now, but a decade is too short to protect artists. Even a patent is 20 years.
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#238Hilariously (and appropriately), the decision cites Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. , also known as the "Betamax case." > (a) “The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another.” Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 434. > In Sony, copyright owners sued the maker and the retailers of the Betamax video tape recorder. Id…
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable? Notably by criminals who have never, and will never abide by the copious amounts of federal and state laws that currently regulate how people are able to use guns. If that is the case, how does holding manufacturers responsible for something completely out of their control make sense? Its like saying car manufacturers should be res…
The gun companies have incentive to sell as many guns as they can, to the consumerist base of gun hobbyists. There are 500M guns in the US because it's a hobby based on buying and collecting. Due to the amount of guns in circulation, it is common for guns to be stolen. Therefore, there are more "illegal" guns in circulation due to the consumerist nature of gun owners, and the companies making money on selling these g…
Also I don't think the consumerist gun ownes commit a lot of crimes with their guns. Unless they are a demographic that is known to be prone to lose or get their guns stolen super often, I don't see how they cause any real issue in term of gun violence. I agree that it is really cringe to see, but they are actually usually responsible in terms of ownership, storage, etc.
Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The lower court found the Betamax maker liable because the tape recorder was “not suitable for any substantial noninfringing use” and infringement “was either the most conspicuous use or the major use of the Betamax product.” I don't know anyone who sold television recordings, it was always for personal use. How could the lower court get this so wrong? Was this just one uninformed judge? Or was this actually less c…
In the late 80s and early 90s there was a great deal of blatantly pirated SF, Fantasy, and Anime videotapes for sale at conventions, typically recorded from OTA, satellite, or cable for Western stuff. Anime was typically better quality, copied from Japanese originals with fan dubs added. Some of it was "at cost" where you were paying other fans for the their time, equipment, and the tape. Others were more obviously f…
They sold them under the counter. I just wanted to know what was going to happen ahead of all my friends haha.