The Mondrian estate... don't get me started on that one.
Please do get started! You can't just leave hints like that and not give us the full scoop!
Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
81–90 of 171 posts
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's rather incongruous that you register intellectual property for very little - and have states enforcing your rights for free - while a piece of land pays property taxes.
> It's rather incongruous that you register intellectual property for very little It's even more incongruous that you'd have to "register" for your rights. Intellectual property are recognized as an inherent right that doesn't require any registration at all, under the 1886 Berne Convention. Although the US was not a signatory until 1989.
In the US, you do not need to register your copyright. It is entirely optional, and you can still enforce an unregistered copyright.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Up to death" would provide a perverse incentive for people to kill creators in order to liberate something from copyright.
The inheritors are in a better position to kill the author-- or just allow them to die from neglect-- and are incentivized to do so by postmortem profits. Any benefit from the work being public domain is diffuse, it won't create a windfall for any particular party. The residuals on the other hand are quite concrete, particularly when an author's preferences are capping the market for their work or when the publicity…
> The inheritors are in a better position to kill the author-- or just allow them to die from neglect-- and are incentivized to do so by postmortem profits.
This is true now, with or without copyright reform. If the author fears, they can make a will or trust, just like it is today. Not sure why this consideration would factor as a negative signal.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's rather incongruous that you register intellectual property for very little It's even more incongruous that you'd have to "register" for your rights. Intellectual property are recognized as an inherent right that doesn't require any registration at all, under the 1886 Berne Convention. Although the US was not a signatory until 1989.
In the US, you do not need to register your copyright. It is entirely optional, and you can still enforce an unregistered copyright.
Right, that's one of the terms of the Berne Convention that I am referencing.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
IP is next to impossible to appraise, unlike land. It’s pretty easy to ballpark what a lot of house or office building is worth based on comparables that sold recently. IP doesn’t sell that much and comparisons are harder.
This is actually a solved problem. It is self-assessed valuation with compulsory sale at declared value, known as the Harberger Tax.
That's a dumb system as it doesn't account for the fact that a piece of property's value can change over time. You write a book, you have to declare its value prior to knowing it's value to consumers. If you aren't independently wealthy already you will never be able to become wealthy by writing books, paintings, songs, etc. as you will have to declare their value quite low in order to pay taxes on them. If it becomes popular the publishing company comes along and forcibly buys it from you for the low value you had to put on it because you couldn't pay the tax, then raises it's value far beyond what the author could afford and profits from the movies rights and etc.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creators pay tax on their income. We all get legal protections for our property.
Real property owners also pay tax on their income. Income is taxed. Real property is taxed. Intellectual property is not.
Taxing copyright ownership is effectively impossible.
Unless you want to figure out how to receive a tax bill for the comment you have written.
Just about any written or artistic artifact you create is subject to copyright protection. How do you begin to decide how a tweet should be taxed
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generative AI raises a lot of questions as to the value of copyright to society. There's a very dangerous direction I suspect things are tipping toward with generative AI: the big creative rights holders / representatives are going to be paid big royalties, in perpetuity for generative AI. The amount of money the RIAA could get from Google, for example, may exceed the enterprise values of all record labels combined.…
A human's own likeness is not copyrightable. Hard to take posts about copyright doctrine seriously when they are premised on complete misunderstanding.
There is a legally protected right of publicity. You cannot take someone's likeness and use it for your advertising campaign/movie/endorsement without their permission.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#88I read "The duration of the U.S. protection for all other works… was for 70 years from the artist’s date of death" and thought wow, did Mondrian really live into the 1960s or so? Next paragraph: "Mondrian died in 1944. Any of his works subject to a life-plus-70 regime would have entered the public domain" 10 years ago. Who even thought of including that in a legal argument??
Life + 70 has always been an oversimplification, we still haven't even reached 70 years since the introduction of these rules (1973 in the US, in other countries depends on when the US strogarmed them into adopting similar rules). There's all sorts of quirks for anything published before that rule got standardised more-or-less worldwide, but in general 1930-1945 is still like a legal grey area that can be challenged…
Do you really think that the whole world is waiting for whatever the US say to make their laws? Spain copyright law is dated 1879: https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1879-40001 , based on the French _droit d'auteur_ laws of 1700's. About the matter being discused here, read Artículo 6: dead date + 80.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#89The Mondrian estate... don't get me started on that one.
Please do get started! You can't just leave hints like that and not give us the full scoop!
:)
Let's just say that one day I found myself in the Tate Gallery with a Mondrian that needed some work... tech consultancy takes you into the most interesting places.
Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
#90As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.
Almost all works make all their money in the first five years after creation. 5 years is therefore a very reasonable copyright term limit, that will benefit almost all creators and benefit - not penalise - the society that lets them have copyright in the first place, i.e. us. Fuck the copyright cartels.
FWIW it's not just about money, it's about controlling creative work. E.g. Radiohead really does not want ICE to use their music for fascist propaganda, at any cost.
I really don't like how the discussion on HN always ignores the ways copyright protects individual expression as a fundamental right. Instead we're STEM dorks, focusing on how getting rid of copyright protection lets us increase content volume at the entertainment factory.