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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]

#81

Post by CamperBob2 »

bgorman wrote: post #50
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…

Intellectual property is the probably the number one way the western world oppresses the poor.

Your own post is "intellectual property." Can you be a bit more specific?

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

#82

Post by NineStarPoint »

SamWhited wrote: post #62
NineStarPoint wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not so sure it ignores precedent, although it definitely extends it. I think Ginsberg in her dissent says it well that the issue follows from related precedent as such: “To explain why, I proceed from common ground. All agree that headnotes and syllabi for judicial opinions—both a kind of annotation—are copyrightable when created by a reporter of decisions, Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U. S. 617, 645–650 (1888), but a…

That may be fair; rereading Ginsburg's dissent though I'm still left wondering if it makes sense to apply precedent in the way the majority did, or if they were just making things up. It's quite possible that I'm just misunderstanding what I'm reading too though.

It’s definitely fair to disagree with the majority here. The written dissents also make sense, and as a 5:4 decision that wasn’t along party lines you’re in good company with Supreme Court Justices who think it was an incorrect decision.

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

#83

Post by greggyb »

jumelles wrote: post #78
greggyb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the decision, the un-annotated code is made freely available.[0] The issue at hand is the annotations. The majority opinion is that the key point is authorship. Officials whose work has the force of law (aka judges and legislators) cannot be authors for purposes of copyright of any work produced in their official capacity as a lawmaker. Their argument is that the annotations are published by the legislative body…

Any worries about over-expansion of the public domain on legislature-produced works seem very strange to me. Why does anything that lawmakers produce deserve to be copyrighted? They are elected public servants.

The gist of the government edict doctrine at hand in the majority's opinion is exactly this.

It is a precedent-based doctrine that says official works of officials whose work carries the weight of law cannot be copyrighted. This is because the law belongs to the people, from whom its authority derives. Thus, a lawmaker (legislator or judge engaging in lawmaking duties - official works) cannot be the author of their work, because their work (the law) belongs to the people. Copyright protections are granted to authors.

This was precedent established in the 1800s, and has now been upheld in this decision. It seems a quite significant decision in this area.

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

#84

Post by ineedasername »

jellicle wrote: post #75
henryfjordan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP laws are anti-competitive and rent-seeking, that's exactly the point. I agree that the amount of time copyrights are good for is ridiculous, but I still think it's better than not having them. Imagine if J.K.Rowling wrote the first 3 Harry Potter books but didn't see a dime because the second they got popular everyone with a printing press started selling them royalty-free. Would she have finished the series? I go…

In the absence of copyright, one supposes that authors would get large up-front fees for publishing, and that the fee for book 4, book 5 and so on for JK Rowling would have been quite large, so I suppose she would have done just fine. Think "Kickstarter, but for authors".

But why would the fee be quite large? Who would pay such a large fee when immediately after they publish the book, rival publishers who paid nothing could print their own versions. Even if it was a kickstarter model with decentralized payments from individuals, a large number of people would simply wait until the kickstarter was over and the book published to get it for free. Imagin that was the case with kickstarters now: How many people would pre-pay for products that have no quarantee of delivery if they knew that waiting would earn them the item for free? Again, even if there was a guarantee the product would be finished, those who wait would still get it for free.

I'm not saying this couldn't work, in theory, but I think in practice that the # of parasites has the potential to make such a model unworkable. But maybe not! I'd be perfectly happy if you're right and it worked.

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

#85

Post by harryh »

rayiner wrote: post #38
ISL wrote: post #10

Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. This is how America is supposed to work.

The judicial branch is supposed to rely on facts and logical arguments. That is not how “America” writ large, however, is “supposed to work.” If that’s what the framers anticipated, they would have have had the other two branches likewise run by unelected subject matter experts with life tenure. But they didn’t. The fact is that the world is too complicated to figure out via facts and logical analysis, and that’s why…

Hey, you're back! Glad to see you didn't leave forever.

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

#86

Post by majormajor »

gowld wrote: post #72
rayiner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is copyright anti-competitive? If you come up with an original work independently, why do competitor principles require ever letting someone else copy that work? We aren’t talking about limited resources here.

One example is derivative works. Fanfiction runs into legal trouble with copyrights.

Are derivative works competitive or anti-competitive? Truly original ideas could plausibly find it harder in that market.

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

#87

Post by baybal2 »

btown wrote: post #51
ISL wrote: post #10

Reading the opinions, it is a breath of fresh air to see one of the branches of government relying upon fact and logical argument when discussing the issues. This is how America is supposed to work.

Reading and listening to https://www.oyez.org/ - a fantastic resource for Supreme Court transcripts - it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged. The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact…

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 deputise his most important duties.

> it's clear that regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances of their appointment, each justice is incredibly intelligent and engaged.

I heard of much less charitable descriptions of the process, with the most frequent being about the well known mental decline of some judges.

> The problem is that when it comes to the really sticky, complex issues that affect huge swaths of human rights, it's very possible for justices, in your words, to "rely upon fact and logical argument," but base their end goal/optimization function on either "what did the founders of the country factually and logically intend" or "what do the norms and ideals of modern society suggest would be factually and logically sustainable" without regard to the opposite viewpoint.

This is one of very many problems. US court system has become too much more than just a legal institute it should be.

The point my law instructor told me was that a judge just a lawyer on the government payroll, and half of them should be sent back to the law school so bad their skill level was. Then, if you can not trust half of them with most basic judicial duties, why should you entrust them with the fate of society, moral guidance, and big matter topics?

Basically, the elites in the West tend to think too many things about lawyers, when they shouldn't.

He was a lawyer by trade, and he was not happy with society putting lawyers in charge of running itself at all.

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

#88

Post by ineedasername »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #65
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…

If you want to retain a professional creative class then you must implement a system that allows them to benefit from the works they produce. To rely on people producing things producing things without economic incentive is essentially the argument for anarchosocialism. It might work to some small degree for passion projects, but what the overall volume of creative production would collapse as creatives would have to…

> producing things without economic incentive is essentially the argument for anarchosocialism.

Which could work if we were to implement something like universal basic income, or progress to an agalmic economic society. I'm not optimistic on either of those.

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

#89

Post by henryfjordan »

jellicle wrote: post #75
henryfjordan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP laws are anti-competitive and rent-seeking, that's exactly the point. I agree that the amount of time copyrights are good for is ridiculous, but I still think it's better than not having them. Imagine if J.K.Rowling wrote the first 3 Harry Potter books but didn't see a dime because the second they got popular everyone with a printing press started selling them royalty-free. Would she have finished the series? I go…

In the absence of copyright, one supposes that authors would get large up-front fees for publishing, and that the fee for book 4, book 5 and so on for JK Rowling would have been quite large, so I suppose she would have done just fine. Think "Kickstarter, but for authors".

The exact opposite would happen. No publisher would pay very much for rights to a book that they cannot defend. Once that book hits the shelves, everyone with a printing press will be copying it and selling it at cost, which will undercut the first publisher because they need to include royalties in the price. They certainly aren't going to print a million copies if they aren't sure that they can sell them before someone starts copying them, so that would naturally limit the size of launches, further driving down the value of a manuscript.

There'd be a small first-mover advantage for being the first to print a book and smaller operations not worth copying would still operate but J.K. Rowling wouldn't be a billionaire.

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

#90

Post by zozbot234 »

ineedasername wrote: post #84
jellicle wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of copyright, one supposes that authors would get large up-front fees for publishing, and that the fee for book 4, book 5 and so on for JK Rowling would have been quite large, so I suppose she would have done just fine. Think "Kickstarter, but for authors".

But why would the fee be quite large? Who would pay such a large fee when immediately after they publish the book, rival publishers who paid nothing could print their own versions. Even if it was a kickstarter model with decentralized payments from individuals, a large number of people would simply wait until the kickstarter was over and the book published to get it for free. Imagin that was the case with kickstarter…

The entire point of the Kickstarter model is to solve collective action problems of that kind. It's in the individual's interest to contribute, because otherwise the project might not reach its funding threshold, or might have trouble reaching the 'stretch' goal that some care about. This ensures that the 'funding' issue is solved, at least.
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