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Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

nytimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#31

Post by xoa »

thot_experiment wrote: post #9

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.

I'm not sure I agree that any single fixed term makes sense. Rather, I think it'd be better if the exponential cost to society (in terms of works that don't happen, and works that don't happen based on those works that didn't happen and so on compounding) was just part of the yearly renewal price. Do maybe everyone gets 7 years flat to start with, then it costs $100*1.3^(year). So after another 25 years it'd be around $70.5k renewal. At 50 years it'd be $50 million. At 75 years it'd be $35 billion. Fixed amount and exponential can of course be shifted around here but the idea would be to encourage creators to use works hard and if they couldn't make it work not sit on them but release them. Once in awhile something would be such a big hit it'd be worth keeping a long time, and that's ok, but society gets its due too. And most works would be allowed to lapse as they stopped being worth it.

Another alternative/additional approach would be to split up the nature of copyright, vs an all or nothing total monopoly. Let there be 7-10 years of total copyright, then another 7-14 years where no exclusivity of where it's sold or DRM is allowed, then 7/14/21 years where royalties can still be had but licensing is mandatory at FRAND rates, then finally some period of "creditright" where the creator has no control or licensing, but if they wish can still require any derivative works to give them a spot in the credits.

I think there is a lot of unexplored territory for IP, and wish the conversations were less binary.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#32

Post by applfanboysbgon »

mannyv wrote: post #24
thot_experiment wrote: post #9

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.

[flagged]

Why do we send X person to prison for 5 years, and not 4 years, or 6 years? Clearly the only rational choices are life sentence or no prison time.

Or, why protect it for 70 years? Why not 69 years? Why not 68 years? etc. Such a useless argument in every way.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#34

Post by autoexec »

thot_experiment wrote: post #9

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.

I agree with you that 10 years is more than enough time for corporations to turn a healthy profit on something (not that they can't continue to make money off of a work after it has entered the public domain), but this wasn't a small victory.

If every ISP were at risk of being on the hook for endless billions in damages because of what their users did it would mean that ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of piracy. It's worth noting that cox was actually already doing this in a limited number of circumstances, and the media industry still wasn't satisfied.

The media industry insisted that they needed the power to get people's accounts terminated even though it would have left many people, including fully innocent ones, cut off from the internet entirely. This was a big deal, and I'm honestly surprised to see this supreme court do the right thing.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#35

Post by wat10000 »

mannyv wrote: post #24
thot_experiment wrote: post #9

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.

[flagged]

I think I've made plenty and I don't feel differently.

You could ask the same questions about the actual duration of copyrights as they are today. You present those rhetorical questions as if they were some argument against this proposal, but they're just things you need to think about regardless of what scheme you come up with: why this, and why not something else? It's not like "life of the author plus 70 years, or 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from creation" is any less arbitrary.

We should remember that the purpose of intellectual property laws in the US is explicitly, per the US Constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...." The purpose is not to ensure that creators can keep collecting money decades after they created their works. It may be useful to ensure that as a way to promote progress, but it's just a tool, not the goal. If progress is better promoted with a 10-minute copyright term then we should do that instead.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#36

Post by Permit »

strogonoff wrote: post #26

It’s interesting to see how as soon as intellectual property theft starts to be critical for powerful interests the legal system magically gets more lenient about copyright enforcement. The balance between public good and protecting IP ownership of the creatives (which is, paradoxically, also part of the public good) has to be struck and enforced consistently.

Isn’t this decision in exact opposition to the point you’re trying to make?

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#37

Post by VanTheBrand »

prepend wrote: post #30
strogonoff wrote: post #26

It’s interesting to see how as soon as intellectual property theft starts to be critical for powerful interests the legal system magically gets more lenient about copyright enforcement. The balance between public good and protecting IP ownership of the creatives (which is, paradoxically, also part of the public good) has to be struck and enforced consistently.

How is IP “theft” more important now than 20 years ago?

AI training

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#38

Post by prepend »

mannyv wrote: post #24
thot_experiment wrote: post #9

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.

[flagged]

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.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#39

Post by Covzire »

bushbaba wrote: post #25
Covzire wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but it seems to have major implications beyond music piracy, like into the realm of ISPs and free speech in general, it seems the court (rightly) sees ISPs as a common carrier (like water pipes) and we may see more opinions of the kind that reach into the space of monopolies or duopolies in social media next.

Big tech should loose its safe harbor protection. It’s both an aggregator AND a curator. The algorithms showing you what to see is no different than a newspaper editor. Just like newspapers big tech should be liable for their “feeds” showing harmful and defamatory information

I would be happy if congress passed a law saying a social media has no liability for anything their users post as long as the algorithm is completely open source. If we had social media like that, they'd even have APIs that let users design their own algorithm and we'd see a golden age of social media emerge from it. Twitter seems to moving in this direction but they enjoy no legal protections from being open at the moment. Blusky is already this way I believe, but without a neutral and trusted centralized control it's a bit different of an animal.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#40

Post by prepend »

VanTheBrand wrote: post #37
prepend wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is IP “theft” more important now than 20 years ago?

AI training

AI training might be copyright infringement. But there’s no cases or laws to establish that.

I don’t think this case or anything else has been affected by AI training on copyrighted material, if it is deemed infringing.

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