Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Man, if there's one thing that truly motivates a starving artist, it's knowing that just one more generation of 1%ers is going to be making money off his work, long after he's dead.
So what's in this for the telecoms that have agreed to do this? Some kickback from the RIAA and MPAA? A vague promise of future savings because of lower overall bandwidth usage? (If you kick out the torrent users, you can deliver stable service into the future without doing as many upgrades as they otherwise would have.)
Because not a single customer is going to be happy with this. At best they will be indifferent and at worst they are going to get pissed off (both the infringers and the falsely accused) and cancel their service.
If the telecoms really go all in on this and these notifications turn out to be a widespread thing, what happens to them when they start losing a large percentage of their users?
AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.
Pretty sure all of those companies also make money charging people to access content.
Why would a cable company not want people to download Dexter instead of paying for Showtime? I can't imagine.
I think a few of those are also affiliated with content producers.
They have devised a way to use morals clauses to get out of providing service to their customers, to extort further money from people seeking that service, and, yes, to receive kickbacks from the MPAA and RIAA.
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Man, if there's one thing that truly motivates a starving artist, it's knowing that just one more generation of 1%ers is going to be making money off his work, long after he's dead.
I think there's certainly a difference between infinite rights and rights that go as long as you go. That's the issue, right? When rights are held by a company as opposed to a person? That's a tricky one. But the actual concept is not faulty, it's simply a way to make sure people are paid for their work.
So basically what we're saying here is that people are going to go back to swapping physical media at the office/school/university like back in 2001, with source being the guy with the VPN connection as opposed to the guy with the fast connection.
So basically what we're saying here is that people are going to go back to swapping physical media at the office/school/university like back in 2001, with source being the guy with the VPN connection as opposed to the guy with the fast connection.
Hundreds of productives died under such beneficent patronage while the fat, grublike nobility of old profited from their workings. Right-Of-Copy was invented as a means to make scribes beholden to the court, and to see such ignorance on the subject angers me like none else.
Also, fuck fuck fuck fuck people who think that copyright is necessary to the success of artists living in an age of paypal and kickstarter.
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Imagine, other industries where people could do one or two things and then they and two generations down can retire for the rest of their lives.
What an inspiring story.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I write, right. I write prose and scripts and whatever. Been known to write a technical manual for my employer now and then.
It would be nice to be able to get paid for writing, because if you're good at something never do it for free, but do I think AMFE International should have the rights to any characters or ideas I create from now until the dissolution of this reality?
Fuck no.
Creators should be able to protect their creations while they're active, say lifetime of author + a decade or two, so that you don't have the Asylum just ripping off things verbatim and so that society has to work a little at coming up with new ideas, but not until the end of time. Eventually you gotta let things go into the public domain because our culture is a shared resource. It shouldn't be the domain of a few wealthy individuals to play in on their own.
Anyway, that's the way an actual content creator feels, rather than the musings of someone who has no connection to the industry.
I don't really have a problem with AMFE Inc. owning the rights to some game/movie it paid a few hundred people to create. I thing basing thing on the lifetime of the creator, rather than a number of years from first publication, makes ownership of corporate financed works of many people overly complicated.
Sure, either way you do it, X years or life of author (though I believe life of author is the standard now for some forms of art). The point I was making was just that it shouldn't be a permanent thing.
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Imagine, other industries where people could do one or two things and then they and two generations down can retire for the rest of their lives.
What an inspiring story.
I thought the social network was OK. Not really inspiring per se.
another industry largely driven by IP of course.
redx on
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Imagine, other industries where people could do one or two things and then they and two generations down can retire for the rest of their lives.
What an inspiring story.
Imagine, a world in which people don't crawl up their own ass and die and instead have a decent conversation.
There is a balance to be struck between the desires of artists to protect their work and eternal copyright.
(also, fwiw, there are plenty of industries where a guy can do a thing and then his family is set for life)
So what's in this for the telecoms that have agreed to do this? Some kickback from the RIAA and MPAA? A vague promise of future savings because of lower overall bandwidth usage? (If you kick out the torrent users, you can deliver stable service into the future without doing as many upgrades as they otherwise would have.)
Because not a single customer is going to be happy with this. At best they will be indifferent and at worst they are going to get pissed off (both the infringers and the falsely accused) and cancel their service.
If the telecoms really go all in on this and these notifications turn out to be a widespread thing, what happens to them when they start losing a large percentage of their users?
Who will they turn to? The biggest players, the ones who over the course of the past ten years have been absorbing so many of the other telecom companies have decided to band together to have their way with our asses. Because they know unless something really big happens, as in the government stepping in and tearing their little scheme apart, we have no one else to turn to for internet connectivity.
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Imagine, other industries where people could do one or two things and then they and two generations down can retire for the rest of their lives.
What an inspiring story.
Imagine, a world in which people don't crawl up their own ass and die and instead have a decent conversation.
There is a balance to be struck between the desires of artists to protect their work and eternal copyright.
(also, fwiw, there are plenty of industries where a guy can do a thing and then his family is set for life)
Oh of course, but "life of the author" is something that made more sense when people were living an average of 40-50 years tops. Now we're seeing people into 80 with regularity, there's little use for it to be locked up that long.
Under ideal circumstances a quality artist-of-something would still create from his own drive, and such things would ensure his continued livelihood. Of course such things could be protected for a reasonable time to allow them to profit from it(assuming it even proves popular). But on the other hand, I don't see any reason that they should be able to take one creation, trot it out of the Disney Vault once every ten years and then rest on their own complacency for the next four(or more) decades.
It's not exactly founding a family business here.
Donnicton on
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Fuck, guys. I need some advice. This novel I just published about this guy and this girl from families that hate each other but they fall in love anyway, are forced apart, then both die tragically was a moderate success but now I have a lawsuit being filed against me from this "Shakespeare Estate" because they say I stole a lot of things from some play that they have copyrighted that was written 400 years ago. This is worse than the lawsuit I went through for my novel about a guy that was framed and sent to jail, escaped and spent years planning his revenge.
Yeah, perpetual copyright is a terrible thing.
I'd prefer a solution that carefully bumps up trademark protection within narrow restrictions that include upkeep. So as long as Disney keeps doing things with Mickey Mouse no one else can use the name or specific look/voice/etc (but they could, say, make their own version of Steamboat Willie with a different cartoon mouse). But if Mickey sits on a shelf for a period of time, Disney loses their trademark on him, probably by tossing it into public domain to prevent anyone else from snatching a trademark on it.
DC keeps Superman and related names and looks, but if someone else comes out with a story about an alien from another planet that is really powerful but keeps a farmboy persona that ends up being better than Superman, great! But they also have an uphill battle since DC has a 70-year head start.
I am relatively ok with a somewhat lengthy copyright. For copyright held by an individual, life of the author + 10-20 years. For corporations, 50-70 years (long enough for them to clearly establish themselves) as long as they continue to use said copyright. So no sitting on the rights to a book that hasn't had a significant printing for 40 years (and no printing a 10-copy run every 5 years just to hold onto it, although the exact rules here can get tricky).
Once upon a time human societies treated their stories as products of a culture, rather than the property of a particular individual. So, no one "owned" the Iliad; it was a story passed on through the generations of a culture in order to communicate particular societal ideals.
Then people like SKFM came along, and decided that system was shitty, because "profit".
So now we get to answer the question of how long a particular individual can claim ownership of the likeness of the idea of a particular imagined talking mouse that was initially created by a group of people all of whom are fucking dead.
Progress.
Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Imagine, other industries where people could do one or two things and then they and two generations down can retire for the rest of their lives.
What an inspiring story.
Imagine, a world in which people don't crawl up their own ass and die and instead have a decent conversation.
There is a balance to be struck between the desires of artists to protect their work and eternal copyright.
(also, fwiw, there are plenty of industries where a guy can do a thing and then his family is set for life)
Oh of course, but "life of the author" is something that made more sense when people were living an average of 40-50 years tops. Now we're seeing people into 80 with regularity, there's little use for it to be locked up that long.
Under ideal circumstances a quality artist-of-something would still create from his own drive, and such things would ensure his continued livelihood. Of course such things could be protected for a reasonable time to allow them to profit from it(assuming it even proves popular). But on the other hand, I don't see any reason that they should be able to take one creation, trot it out of the Disney Vault once every ten years and then rest on their own complacency for the next four(or more) decades.
It's not exactly founding a family business here.
I would absolutely agree that life of the author becomes a tricky proposition when people are living longer.
I write, right. I write prose and scripts and whatever. Been known to write a technical manual for my employer now and then.
It would be nice to be able to get paid for writing, because if you're good at something never do it for free, but do I think AMFE International should have the rights to any characters or ideas I create from now until the dissolution of this reality?
Fuck no.
Creators should be able to protect their creations while they're active, say lifetime of author + a decade or two, so that you don't have the Asylum just ripping off things verbatim and so that society has to work a little at coming up with new ideas, but not until the end of time. Eventually you gotta let things go into the public domain because our culture is a shared resource. It shouldn't be the domain of a few wealthy individuals to play in on their own.
Anyway, that's the way an actual content creator feels, rather than the musings of someone who has no connection to the industry.
I don't really have a problem with AMFE Inc. owning the rights to some game/movie it paid a few hundred people to create. I thing basing thing on the lifetime of the creator, rather than a number of years from first publication, makes ownership of corporate financed works of many people overly complicated.
Sure, either way you do it, X years or life of author (though I believe life of author is the standard now for some forms of art). The point I was making was just that it shouldn't be a permanent thing.
Current copyright duration is for the Life of the Author + 70 years for individual works. For works done for hire the duration is 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from creation if the work was never published (whichever is shorter so you can't wait 119 years then publish the work and claim copyright for the next century).
While I understand the desire for a work to last as protected for the 'life of the author' since the person is still kicking around that's always struck me as problematic since it's not always that easy to discern the death date. So I've always preferred an approach that is date certain. Not that it matters seeing how I'm not about to influence copyright laws. But simply giving somebody a clear 25 or 50 year monopoly (or even a straight century if we're going to give up all hope to having a growing public domain accessible to the peoples influenced by the works that they grew up with) always struck me as more manageable.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Life if the author simply does not make sense when the author does not own the work. The author is irrelevant then. Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever. I like the suggestion from earlier that DC owns the name superman, the appearance of him, and all the works actually created with him forever, but it does not own the idea of a superpowered man who falls from the sky.
Also, fuck fuck fuck fuck people who think that copyright is necessary to the success of artists living in an age of paypal and kickstarter.
Explain how paypal and kickstarter are going to help me if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of my songs so is going to release it as his own work
It is probably in reference to the kickstarter like model of securing funding in advance of doing the work from interested parties, rather than doing the work speculatively and relying on selling it, as is the current model.
It is popularly presented as a panacea to the issue of mass copyright infringement, despite its obvious drawbacks.
Life if the author simply does not make sense when the author does not own the work. The author is irrelevant then. Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever. I like the suggestion from earlier that DC owns the name superman, the appearance of him, and all the works actually created with him forever, but it does not own the idea of a superpowered man who falls from the sky.
I think a lot of people focus on the role of copyright in preventing a starving artist from up and stealing disney's shit without considering that copyright is the only thing preventing disney from up and stealing some starving artist's shit.
Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever.
The Abrahamic God (c) (TM) written by some Jewish dude in a Babylonian shack circa 580BC, rights now owned by whatever company paid his heirs a pittance or slapped their seal on it first. Same for Snow White, Gilgamesh, King Arthur, Odysseus, Romeo, Aladdin, etc. from here to Domesday. I slipped some characters that Disney has benefited from through works that have entered the public domain for a laugh.
Rights to ones own work are fine. A lifetime (without taking the piss and counting downloadable sentience into robot bodies) plus a negotiable decade or 3 after death sounds like a reasonable deal. Between 'FOREVER' and 'NONE' there is a sensible middle ground.
Life if the author simply does not make sense when the author does not own the work. The author is irrelevant then. Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever. I like the suggestion from earlier that DC owns the name superman, the appearance of him, and all the works actually created with him forever, but it does not own the idea of a superpowered man who falls from the sky.
[The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The purpose of both copyright and patents is to ensure that progress is promoted, and to do that it ensures that people can make a profit off of their creativity. Why does copyright deserve to run for more than 4 times as long as a patent? Also, given that the goal is progress, how does locking something up in a box ensure that derivative works can be created?
Abolishing copyright entirely is clearly silly, because that could trivially stop people from getting paid. On the other hand, stopping things from falling into the public domain defeats the reason we have copyright (generating things that will fall into the public domain). This would tend to suggest that there's some sort of reasonable compromise around the length of time copyright should last. I suspect 10[1] years, with a reasonable fee[2] for a 10 year extension would be quite sufficient to both allow a profit and to move things into the public domain before everyone forgets they existed.
1: You could reasonably debate this, but you'd need a strong argument to suggest they should get a longer term than patents (20 years with a similar extension scheme)
2: You'd want to set it high enough to ensure that people only take the option if the work is still popular but low enough that it's not crippling to people who aren't Disney.
edit: The name Superman is covered by trademark, and his uniform may be as well. That, under current law, lasts as long as you're using it and actively defending it. This seems reasonable, as the limitations that trademark imposes on others are very nearly limited to competing in the same market with duplicate branding. I'm not convinced it belongs in a discussion on intellectual property, but people frequently have other opinions (to me, it's a fraud issue where one party is claiming to be another).
For works done for hire the duration is 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from creation if the work was never published (whichever is shorter so you can't wait 119 years then publish the work and claim copyright for the next century).
Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever. I like the suggestion from earlier that DC owns the name superman, the appearance of him, and all the works actually created with him forever, but it does not own the idea of a superpowered man who falls from the sky.
So you believe that the Disney Corporation should be liquidated and all their assets transferred to the Crown of Great Britain and the City of Athens? I humbly disagree.
From a "good of society" standpoint, I can't see any real reason why copyright should last longer than 10 years, and even that is generous.
If the purpose of copyright is to allow an artist to profit from their works, 10 years is more than enough time for a popular artist to establish themselves and make enough profit to produce additional works. The purpose of Copyright isn't to allow artists to sit on a work and profit from it forever, and I don't see how society as a whole benefits from them doing so. Can anyone explain to me the benefit of allowing that?
Most importantly though, a 10-year copyright would force artists to innovate over their career. Under the current system, artists are heavily incentivized to create a single popular work and either continue to profit on it forever, or make rehashed versions and sequels. Companies like Disney and Nintendo would have to create entirely original content, and movie sequels would only remain a viable business model until that 10-year deadline passed. One drawback with the current system is that it forces a lot of the best creators into a cycle where they are constantly rehashing derivative versions of their own creative work, because the rights and name-recognition are so much more valuable than creating something new. Making endless sequels and remakes may be a rational move on the part of artists and rights-holders, but the prevalence of it suggests to me that we could do with some shifting of incentives.
From a "good of society" standpoint, I can't see any real reason why copyright should last longer than 10 years, and even that is generous.
If the purpose of copyright is to allow an artist to profit from their works, 10 years is more than enough time for a popular artist to establish themselves and make enough profit to produce additional works.
An argument for having a longer period under copyright is to incentive unpopular artists. Someone who makes the Top 40 charts makes enough money to cover the production costs/food/whatnot within a few years at most. Someone who makes an unpopular movie might not make it back until they become a cult movie a decade or two down the road.
If one wanted to be a little bit clever about setting up copyright law, one might be able to set something up that implements a sliding scale based on either number of sales, total revenue or total costs. You probably want some mix of those for an ideal solution, but the more conditions you add the more of a pain the record keeping gets.
Also, fuck fuck fuck fuck people who think that copyright is necessary to the success of artists living in an age of paypal and kickstarter.
Explain how paypal and kickstarter are going to help me if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of my songs so is going to release it as his own work
Paypal will gets you sympathy dosh and Kickstarter will allow you to pay your fines or fund albums once you're out of jail, and possibly fight the judge's ruling that you are no longer allowed to seek money for any music you claim to have written
Now explain how copyright is going to help you if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of your songs and is going to release it as his own work.
Now explain how copyright is going to help you if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of your songs and is going to release it as his own work.
Because if I can prove that he's copying my work (which for the sake of this example, he inarguably is) I can sue him into the fucking ground. I much prefer that option to your option of "well maybe people will give you money because they feel bad". I didn't address the rest of your first paragraph because it is gibberish.
From a "good of society" standpoint, I can't see any real reason why copyright should last longer than 10 years, and even that is generous.
If the purpose of copyright is to allow an artist to profit from their works, 10 years is more than enough time for a popular artist to establish themselves and make enough profit to produce additional works.
An argument for having a longer period under copyright is to incentive unpopular artists. Someone who makes the Top 40 charts makes enough money to cover the production costs/food/whatnot within a few years at most. Someone who makes an unpopular movie might not make it back until they become a cult movie a decade or two down the road.
If one wanted to be a little bit clever about setting up copyright law, one might be able to set something up that implements a sliding scale based on either number of sales, total revenue or total costs. You probably want some mix of those for an ideal solution, but the more conditions you add the more of a pain the record keeping gets.
From a societal standpoint the goal is to incentivize artists to create. It seems like the guy who produced the cult movie wasn't incentivized to create in either case. If he had to wait a full 20 years to see profit on his movie, what incentive has been created for him to make another one in the interim? Sure, he sees profit eventually, but it's so delayed it probably doesn't affect his output at that point.
It's also a pretty rare case at this point. I can't think of a single recent example of a movie that bombed at release but became a cult hit 10+ years afterwards. The internet has made us fairly good at discovering things we like, and sharing them with others.
Now explain how copyright is going to help you if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of your songs and is going to release it as his own work.
Because if I can prove that he's copying my work (which for the sake of this example, he inarguably is) I can sue him into the fucking ground. I much prefer that option to your option of "well maybe people will give you money because they feel bad". I didn't address the rest of your first paragraph because it is gibberish.
The Jonathan Coulton / Glee story seems relevant. Glee rips off a Jonathan Coulton cover. Jonathan Coulton says, "Hey, internet, get a load of this shit!" and the internet responds by giving Coulton money. I can't find an article that says how much money Coulton got from copies of the song, but the publicity and Coulton fans trashing the Glee cover through reviews seems to indicate that something vaguely advantageous happened to help Coulton and hurt the Glee machine.
Now explain how copyright is going to help you if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of your songs and is going to release it as his own work.
Because if I can prove that he's copying my work (which for the sake of this example, he inarguably is) I can sue him into the fucking ground. I much prefer that option to your option of "well maybe people will give you money because they feel bad". I didn't address the rest of your first paragraph because it is gibberish.
The Jonathan Coulton / Glee story seems relevant. Glee rips off a Jonathan Coulton cover. Jonathan Coulton says, "Hey, internet, get a load of this shit!" and the internet responds by giving Coulton money. I can't find an article that says how much money Coulton got from copies of the song, but the publicity and Coulton fans trashing the Glee cover through reviews seems to indicate that something vaguely advantageous happened to help Coulton and hurt the Glee machine.
Due to peculiarities with copyright law and covers, Coulton wasn't covered by copyright law on this (or, at least, was very poorly covered). You could easily fix that by fixing how covers are managed but as it stands it's a poor comparison to someone ripping off an original work.
The Jonathan Coulton / Glee story seems relevant. Glee rips off a Jonathan Coulton cover. Jonathan Coulton says, "Hey, internet, get a load of this shit!" and the internet responds by giving Coulton money. I can't find an article that says how much money Coulton got from copies of the song, but the publicity and Coulton fans trashing the Glee cover through reviews seems to indicate that something vaguely advantageous happened to help Coulton and hurt the Glee machine.
Not as much money as Jonathon Coulton would have gotten if he'd copyrighted his arrangement* and sued Glee into the fucking ground. The Glee Machine has not been effected by this in any meaningful way, the only people who give a shit about this are people who weren't going to watch the show or buy Glee records anyway. The Coulton example is making the case for more protection of copyright, not less.
*this may not be possible in the US. I'm told Coulton was informed he had no legal recourse, presumably accurately.
The Coulton/Glee thing is probably an example of a large organisation being willing to gamble that they have the legal firepower to win an attempted suit in a legal grey area (specifically, if coulton has rights to his particular appropriately licensed arrangement of someone else's work, given that Fox also appropriately licensed the same original work).
I think a lot of people focus on the role of copyright in preventing a starving artist from up and stealing disney's shit without considering that copyright is the only thing preventing disney from up and stealing some starving artist's shit.
Corporations are extremely good at filing off the numbers of people's property just enough to win a court battle. They also have strong legal teams that can make life brutal for any artist who tries to fight them.
Regular folks do not. That's why you see thousands of copyright enforcement actions for the most innocuous infringements - i.e. Disney suing smalltown daycare centers for having a Mickey Mouse mural. The regular guy winning these battles is so rare as to be a major news item.
So. if Justin Bieber stole your shit and you sued, it is far more likely that Bieberco would end up owning the rights to your song while you lose your house because you had to take out a second mortgage to pay legal costs than the reverse. It is one of those examples of how things working in real life trumping what the law is supposed to do.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
For works done for hire the duration is 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from creation if the work was never published (whichever is shorter so you can't wait 119 years then publish the work and claim copyright for the next century).
Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever. I like the suggestion from earlier that DC owns the name superman, the appearance of him, and all the works actually created with him forever, but it does not own the idea of a superpowered man who falls from the sky.
So you believe that the Disney Corporation should be liquidated and all their assets transferred to the Crown of Great Britain and the City of Athens? I humbly disagree.
There is no reason that we can't choose a date from which creations would be covered by perpetual copyright, just like we have with ordinary copyrights now.
I'm not arguing from societal good, incidentally. I just believe that people should have exclusive control over their creative works, or the works they purchase the rights to, as a matter if fairness. It just seems manifestly unjust to me that someone should ever profit from my work without my permission.
Life if the author simply does not make sense when the author does not own the work. The author is irrelevant then. Corporations potentially live forever, and I think that as long as they are actively selling works under the copyright, it should stand forever. I like the suggestion from earlier that DC owns the name superman, the appearance of him, and all the works actually created with him forever, but it does not own the idea of a superpowered man who falls from the sky.
You are conflating copyright and trademark. To go back to Disney as an example, Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, so that means in 2023, we will finally be blessed with a remake of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, rescored to Gangnam Style.
Well, no, as it happens. In 2023, what will fall into the public domain is Steamboat Willie, and the version of Mickey that was in that short. The later works all carry separate copyrights with separate durations. in addition, you can be sure that Disney has copyrights on every incarnation of the mouse that they have released, so the only version of Mickey that will be public domain will be that which showed up in Steamboat Willie. Still, surely we could use that classic Mickey for our own nefarious anti-Disney ends?
No, again, as it turns out. You see, this is where trademark comes into play, and you can be sure that Disney has trademarked the [complicated pictogram] out of every version of Mickey Mouse out there. If you try to make a cartoon starring the original Mickey, even after it hits public domain, Disney will bugger you ragged for trademark infringement. The same goes for just about any other product you might want to slap his image on. About the only thing you could do is sell or broadcast copies of the original cartoon, and even then, I am not sure if you wouldn't be looking at a lawsuit, because Disney has the war chest to make it more trouble than it is worth.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
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Imagine, people wanting to get paid for their work. Thank god people like SKFM came along. It's nice to tell a good story, but it's not a lot of fun to die a penniless artist.
Man, if there's one thing that truly motivates a starving artist, it's knowing that just one more generation of 1%ers is going to be making money off his work, long after he's dead.
AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.
Pretty sure all of those companies also make money charging people to access content.
Why would a cable company not want people to download Dexter instead of paying for Showtime? I can't imagine.
I think a few of those are also affiliated with content producers.
I think there's certainly a difference between infinite rights and rights that go as long as you go. That's the issue, right? When rights are held by a company as opposed to a person? That's a tricky one. But the actual concept is not faulty, it's simply a way to make sure people are paid for their work.
Dropbox.
Hundreds of productives died under such beneficent patronage while the fat, grublike nobility of old profited from their workings. Right-Of-Copy was invented as a means to make scribes beholden to the court, and to see such ignorance on the subject angers me like none else.
Also, fuck fuck fuck fuck people who think that copyright is necessary to the success of artists living in an age of paypal and kickstarter.
Imagine, other industries where people could do one or two things and then they and two generations down can retire for the rest of their lives.
What an inspiring story.
Sure, either way you do it, X years or life of author (though I believe life of author is the standard now for some forms of art). The point I was making was just that it shouldn't be a permanent thing.
I thought the social network was OK. Not really inspiring per se.
another industry largely driven by IP of course.
Imagine, a world in which people don't crawl up their own ass and die and instead have a decent conversation.
There is a balance to be struck between the desires of artists to protect their work and eternal copyright.
(also, fwiw, there are plenty of industries where a guy can do a thing and then his family is set for life)
Who will they turn to? The biggest players, the ones who over the course of the past ten years have been absorbing so many of the other telecom companies have decided to band together to have their way with our asses. Because they know unless something really big happens, as in the government stepping in and tearing their little scheme apart, we have no one else to turn to for internet connectivity.
Oh of course, but "life of the author" is something that made more sense when people were living an average of 40-50 years tops. Now we're seeing people into 80 with regularity, there's little use for it to be locked up that long.
Under ideal circumstances a quality artist-of-something would still create from his own drive, and such things would ensure his continued livelihood. Of course such things could be protected for a reasonable time to allow them to profit from it(assuming it even proves popular). But on the other hand, I don't see any reason that they should be able to take one creation, trot it out of the Disney Vault once every ten years and then rest on their own complacency for the next four(or more) decades.
It's not exactly founding a family business here.
I would absolutely agree that life of the author becomes a tricky proposition when people are living longer.
Current copyright duration is for the Life of the Author + 70 years for individual works. For works done for hire the duration is 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from creation if the work was never published (whichever is shorter so you can't wait 119 years then publish the work and claim copyright for the next century).
While I understand the desire for a work to last as protected for the 'life of the author' since the person is still kicking around that's always struck me as problematic since it's not always that easy to discern the death date. So I've always preferred an approach that is date certain. Not that it matters seeing how I'm not about to influence copyright laws. But simply giving somebody a clear 25 or 50 year monopoly (or even a straight century if we're going to give up all hope to having a growing public domain accessible to the peoples influenced by the works that they grew up with) always struck me as more manageable.
Explain how paypal and kickstarter are going to help me if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of my songs so is going to release it as his own work
It is probably in reference to the kickstarter like model of securing funding in advance of doing the work from interested parties, rather than doing the work speculatively and relying on selling it, as is the current model.
It is popularly presented as a panacea to the issue of mass copyright infringement, despite its obvious drawbacks.
The Abrahamic God (c) (TM) written by some Jewish dude in a Babylonian shack circa 580BC, rights now owned by whatever company paid his heirs a pittance or slapped their seal on it first. Same for Snow White, Gilgamesh, King Arthur, Odysseus, Romeo, Aladdin, etc. from here to Domesday. I slipped some characters that Disney has benefited from through works that have entered the public domain for a laugh.
Rights to ones own work are fine. A lifetime (without taking the piss and counting downloadable sentience into robot bodies) plus a negotiable decade or 3 after death sounds like a reasonable deal. Between 'FOREVER' and 'NONE' there is a sensible middle ground.
Abolishing copyright entirely is clearly silly, because that could trivially stop people from getting paid. On the other hand, stopping things from falling into the public domain defeats the reason we have copyright (generating things that will fall into the public domain). This would tend to suggest that there's some sort of reasonable compromise around the length of time copyright should last. I suspect 10[1] years, with a reasonable fee[2] for a 10 year extension would be quite sufficient to both allow a profit and to move things into the public domain before everyone forgets they existed.
1: You could reasonably debate this, but you'd need a strong argument to suggest they should get a longer term than patents (20 years with a similar extension scheme)
2: You'd want to set it high enough to ensure that people only take the option if the work is still popular but low enough that it's not crippling to people who aren't Disney.
edit: The name Superman is covered by trademark, and his uniform may be as well. That, under current law, lasts as long as you're using it and actively defending it. This seems reasonable, as the limitations that trademark imposes on others are very nearly limited to competing in the same market with duplicate branding. I'm not convinced it belongs in a discussion on intellectual property, but people frequently have other opinions (to me, it's a fraud issue where one party is claiming to be another).
So you believe that the Disney Corporation should be liquidated and all their assets transferred to the Crown of Great Britain and the City of Athens? I humbly disagree.
If the purpose of copyright is to allow an artist to profit from their works, 10 years is more than enough time for a popular artist to establish themselves and make enough profit to produce additional works. The purpose of Copyright isn't to allow artists to sit on a work and profit from it forever, and I don't see how society as a whole benefits from them doing so. Can anyone explain to me the benefit of allowing that?
Most importantly though, a 10-year copyright would force artists to innovate over their career. Under the current system, artists are heavily incentivized to create a single popular work and either continue to profit on it forever, or make rehashed versions and sequels. Companies like Disney and Nintendo would have to create entirely original content, and movie sequels would only remain a viable business model until that 10-year deadline passed. One drawback with the current system is that it forces a lot of the best creators into a cycle where they are constantly rehashing derivative versions of their own creative work, because the rights and name-recognition are so much more valuable than creating something new. Making endless sequels and remakes may be a rational move on the part of artists and rights-holders, but the prevalence of it suggests to me that we could do with some shifting of incentives.
If one wanted to be a little bit clever about setting up copyright law, one might be able to set something up that implements a sliding scale based on either number of sales, total revenue or total costs. You probably want some mix of those for an ideal solution, but the more conditions you add the more of a pain the record keeping gets.
Paypal will gets you sympathy dosh and Kickstarter will allow you to pay your fines or fund albums once you're out of jail, and possibly fight the judge's ruling that you are no longer allowed to seek money for any music you claim to have written
Now explain how copyright is going to help you if Justin Bieber decides he likes one of your songs and is going to release it as his own work.
I meant to say royalties, but this works too.
Because if I can prove that he's copying my work (which for the sake of this example, he inarguably is) I can sue him into the fucking ground. I much prefer that option to your option of "well maybe people will give you money because they feel bad". I didn't address the rest of your first paragraph because it is gibberish.
From a societal standpoint the goal is to incentivize artists to create. It seems like the guy who produced the cult movie wasn't incentivized to create in either case. If he had to wait a full 20 years to see profit on his movie, what incentive has been created for him to make another one in the interim? Sure, he sees profit eventually, but it's so delayed it probably doesn't affect his output at that point.
It's also a pretty rare case at this point. I can't think of a single recent example of a movie that bombed at release but became a cult hit 10+ years afterwards. The internet has made us fairly good at discovering things we like, and sharing them with others.
The Jonathan Coulton / Glee story seems relevant. Glee rips off a Jonathan Coulton cover. Jonathan Coulton says, "Hey, internet, get a load of this shit!" and the internet responds by giving Coulton money. I can't find an article that says how much money Coulton got from copies of the song, but the publicity and Coulton fans trashing the Glee cover through reviews seems to indicate that something vaguely advantageous happened to help Coulton and hurt the Glee machine.
Not as much money as Jonathon Coulton would have gotten if he'd copyrighted his arrangement* and sued Glee into the fucking ground. The Glee Machine has not been effected by this in any meaningful way, the only people who give a shit about this are people who weren't going to watch the show or buy Glee records anyway. The Coulton example is making the case for more protection of copyright, not less.
*this may not be possible in the US. I'm told Coulton was informed he had no legal recourse, presumably accurately.
Corporations are extremely good at filing off the numbers of people's property just enough to win a court battle. They also have strong legal teams that can make life brutal for any artist who tries to fight them.
Regular folks do not. That's why you see thousands of copyright enforcement actions for the most innocuous infringements - i.e. Disney suing smalltown daycare centers for having a Mickey Mouse mural. The regular guy winning these battles is so rare as to be a major news item.
So. if Justin Bieber stole your shit and you sued, it is far more likely that Bieberco would end up owning the rights to your song while you lose your house because you had to take out a second mortgage to pay legal costs than the reverse. It is one of those examples of how things working in real life trumping what the law is supposed to do.
There is no reason that we can't choose a date from which creations would be covered by perpetual copyright, just like we have with ordinary copyrights now.
I'm not arguing from societal good, incidentally. I just believe that people should have exclusive control over their creative works, or the works they purchase the rights to, as a matter if fairness. It just seems manifestly unjust to me that someone should ever profit from my work without my permission.
No shit?
First you need to prove that your work does not resemble a 500 year old poem that belongs to some random investment fund or estate.
Because chances are, it's close enough that you're violating their copyright you monster.
You are conflating copyright and trademark. To go back to Disney as an example, Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, so that means in 2023, we will finally be blessed with a remake of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, rescored to Gangnam Style.
Well, no, as it happens. In 2023, what will fall into the public domain is Steamboat Willie, and the version of Mickey that was in that short. The later works all carry separate copyrights with separate durations. in addition, you can be sure that Disney has copyrights on every incarnation of the mouse that they have released, so the only version of Mickey that will be public domain will be that which showed up in Steamboat Willie. Still, surely we could use that classic Mickey for our own nefarious anti-Disney ends?
No, again, as it turns out. You see, this is where trademark comes into play, and you can be sure that Disney has trademarked the [complicated pictogram] out of every version of Mickey Mouse out there. If you try to make a cartoon starring the original Mickey, even after it hits public domain, Disney will bugger you ragged for trademark infringement. The same goes for just about any other product you might want to slap his image on. About the only thing you could do is sell or broadcast copies of the original cartoon, and even then, I am not sure if you wouldn't be looking at a lawsuit, because Disney has the war chest to make it more trouble than it is worth.
- John Stuart Mill
Y'know how recording/movie leeches say that literally every case of piracy is a lost sale as a sop to their stockholders?
ISP's are saying the same thing about coffee shops, and since they both have the same line of bull they've decided to back each other's stories.