So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Yup. When you start to dig into the details the entire system is revealed to be an elaborate scam.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders? If to create work for hire, then you have been paid for it already.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders?
Why should it be about rights holders, instead of creators? You don't seem to have justified your position any more than Donnicton justified his. At least, at far as I can tell you haven't justified it...
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Privileging "right holding" over "creation" doesn't necessarily make any more sense than another arrangement. With creation we can at least discern some link between the existence of, say, "The concept of Captain America" and some historical narrative in which we attribute the origin of that concept to a particular individual.
When we privilege "right holding", we're placing more value in the ability of a person / group of persons to exploit a particular legal system.
If we're going to exist in a world in which someone can "own" Captain America, it seems to be more intuitive to think that ownership is based upon the origin story of the concept of Captain America, rather than basing ownership in the ability to navigate a legal system and so "acquire" the "right" by means of a monetary exchange.
Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that all of that shit is complete and utter nonsense.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
You have more..."faith" in the copyright system than the majority of the people on these forums/internet, so it's unlikely that you'll really be convinced that that's all that's going to happen.
However, the fact that you acknowledged the existence of an "if" as the idea that they won't is a good start.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders? If to create work for hire, then you have been paid for it already.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
"Right's holders" have already proven they cannot be trusted with this kind of power (see the aforementioned false claims on videos on Youtube). So I think this is quite the naive view.
So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders? If to create work for hire, then you have been paid for it already.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
It'd kind of have to be faith, rather than confidence; to believe in something that has, in fact, been disproven pretty thoroughly up to this point.
The part that bugs me most about this is them almost literally taking the law into their own hands with a move like this. They're instituting punishments for "criminal activity" without respecting or consulting the legal process at all.
So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders? If to create work for hire, then you have been paid for it already.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
Because the (tea party-esque) argument from MPAA/RIAA from day one has been that creators needs to be paid or they wont create and, despite reality showing the exact opposite for at least a decade, "piracy" will destroy creation. Looks like that argument was a complete lie from day one, just like "pirates" said it was. Looks like "pirates" are the ones who understand the system...
Which means that after almost 2 decades the "right-holders" have produced absolutely 0 actual arguments in their favor.
So wait, public domain should go away because you don't think that people who didn't put time into creating art shouldn't get to profit off of it, but publishers and distributors are more important than artists...?
Am I reading your opinions wrong or are they really this convoluted, Space?
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders? If to create work for hire, then you have been paid for it already.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
"Right's holders" have already proven they cannot be trusted with this kind of power (see the aforementioned false claims on videos on Youtube). So I think this is quite the naive view.
You are talking to the person who said if he could nuke Youtube from orbit, that he'd do it in a heartbeat.
So basically you would just abolish public domain.
Yes. Why should anyone be entitled to someone else's work for free, while there is still an owner of that work?
The second part confuses me, what do you mean "while there is still an owner of that work".
The answer to the first part "why should anyone be entitled to someone else's work for free" is "because its economically efficient in a Pareto way"
This isn't really the right place for discussing the economics of copyright. But know that the general consensus in the literature is that you're stupidly amazingly wrong.
I'm not wrong, because I'm not making an economic argument here. I'm making one based on a sting conception of copyrights. The idea that while Disney is still a company selling its movies for profit (and while it is highly reliant in its back catalog) its actual movies (to say nothing of the characters) could move into the public domain and be sold for profit by another unrelated companies strikes be as absolutely absurd. Then when you combine the characters (and TM is much more limited than copyright) and create a situation where, for example, another company could be competing with Disney by making movies with the actual Disney characters, I feel like we have moved into the twilight zone.
It's not even stories or inspirations that concern me. It's the actual sale of the exact product someone else made without their permission, or the use of their exact characters without their permission (thereby stealing creative control of them) that I think is absurd.
Are you familiar with a company known as Zynga? This is basically their entire market strategy.
Also see: Evony and Art4Love
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.
- John Stuart Mill
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders?
Why should it be about rights holders, instead of creators? You don't seem to have justified your position any more than Donnicton justified his. At least, at far as I can tell you haven't justified it...
The creator has a right, and that right can be sold. I don't distinguish between classes of right holders, I just care about who has the right.
Privileging "right holding" over "creation" doesn't necessarily make any more sense than another arrangement. With creation we can at least discern some link between the existence of, say, "The concept of Captain America" and some historical narrative in which we attribute the origin of that concept to a particular individual.
When we privilege "right holding", we're placing more value in the ability of a person / group of persons to exploit a particular legal system.
If we're going to exist in a world in which someone can "own" Captain America, it seems to be more intuitive to think that ownership is based upon the origin story of the concept of Captain America, rather than basing ownership in the ability to navigate a legal system and so "acquire" the "right" by means of a monetary exchange.
Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that all of that shit is complete and utter nonsense.
I can exchange my money for goods and services. I have an exclusive right to those things you provide me, because I bought then from you at arms length. If the thing I hire you to do is create a distinctive character for use in films, tv, books, etc., then that is what I have bought from you, and I see no reason why it should be any different. But you are starting from an assumption that property ownership in any firm is specious, so I doubt we will find any common ground here.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
Literally no one is arguing otherwise.
Do you honestly think that every high school drama department in existence should have to give royalties to the Shakespeare estate every time they want to give a plucky adaptation of Romeo and Juliet a go? Because that system is what you're advocating.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
Literally no one is arguing otherwise.
Do you honestly think that every high school drama department in existence should have to give royalties to the Shakespeare estate every time they want to give a plucky adaptation of Romeo and Juliet a go? Because that system is what you're advocating.
I think that every high school drama department that wants to perform Les Mis or the Phantom of the Opera should have to pay the owners. Shakespeare is only more complicated because of the years in which they were not entitled to protection under the law. In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
If Miyamoto was working for Sony at the time then Sony would be able to use Mario all they want, since Sony would be the "right holder" that you so highly revere, no? Well I am sure that Sony would allow one of their employees to keep the rights to a creation that made Sony money and that said employee could take those rights with him when he left Sony.
Sounds you are now arguing that right-holder > creator is not a good thing after all.
As for your direct question, yes, once Mario enters the public domain (say 20 years after conception, double that of pharmaceuticals) anyone can use the mario concept. This forces companies to keep innovating.
In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
You have very strange, and problematic, ideals.
Edit: Also, most people, when doing rights talk, tend to articulate rights as things given by God, or given by the state, or given by society. You seem to be the first person with whom I have interacted who focuses upon the notions of rights being something one obtains by means of a monetary exchange. That's...something.
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
If Miyamoto was working for Sony at the time then Sony would be able to use Mario all they want, since Sony would be the "right holder" that you so highly revere, no? Well I am sure that Sony would allow one of their employees to keep the rights to a creation that made Sony money and that said employee could take those rights with him when he left Sony.
Sounds you are now arguing that right-holder > creator is not a good thing after all.
As for your direct question, yes, once Mario enters the public domain (say 20 years after conception, double that of pharmaceuticals) anyone can use the mario concept. This forces companies to keep innovating.
Except, Mario isn't a trademark of the Nintendo brand. So Sony can't make a game with Mario in it anyway?
The question is a bit of a red herring, if that is the case.
Trademark wouldn't prevent a total conversion with all the Mario removed or some limited reuse of code.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
Literally no one is arguing otherwise.
Do you honestly think that every high school drama department in existence should have to give royalties to the Shakespeare estate every time they want to give a plucky adaptation of Romeo and Juliet a go? Because that system is what you're advocating.
I think that every high school drama department that wants to perform Les Mis or the Phantom of the Opera should have to pay the owners. Shakespeare is only more complicated because of the years in which they were not entitled to protection under the law. In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
Much simpler to just say "Yes, I do."
But then you wouldn't be able to deflect how incredibly silly this is. It goes against our entire history regarding the industry.
In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
2800 years of back dated royalties paid to the ancestors of Homer, or rather the multi-national corporation that would now own those rights. No that certainly wouldn't have crippled at birth the whole flow of pan Hellenic/Roman/Western thought and literature.
Even funnier, publishers of The Bible paying royalties to the estate of Hammurabi and others.
In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
You have very strange, and problematic, ideals.
Edit: Also, most people, when doing rights talk, tend to articulate rights as things given by God, or given by the state, or given by society. You seem to be the first person with whom I have interacted who focuses upon the notions of rights being something one obtains by means of a monetary exchange. That's...something.
The "right" to eat the turnip you traded. The "right" to use the turnip (for eating). The "right" to use a fiction (for performing a play).
The "something" is an abstraction.
Another problem with the "Sony using Nintendo characters" comparison is that the thread isn't about companies using one another's intellectual property. The Copyright Alert System is about, "a file is being shared illegally" and that seems to be a very odd thing, given the nature of computer files. I'm not taking your toaster from your house. Rather, I'm replicating units of data.
So, what i'm curious about, is what actual legal claim a particular corporation has to any particular...um...sequence of data. I know that for youtube, users cannot post video files of television programs they recorded on digital media, but if they record the program, and mirror the image, then the copyright issues get muddled.
I'd just like to know what the particular corporation claims to own. With file sharing, they seem to claim to own particular sequences of digital data. But do they own the data sequence, or the pixel configuration, or the visual phenomenal qualia of what-it-is-to-see The Avengers or what? Because, again, toasters and ideas and digital files are fundamentally, qualitatively, different "things" of different natures. And they each "exist" in quite different senses.
In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
2800 years of back dated royalties paid to the ancestors of Homer, or rather the multi-national corporation that would now own those rights. No that certainly wouldn't have crippled at birth the whole flow of pan Hellenic/Roman/Western thought and literature.
Even funnier, publishers of The Bible paying royalties to the estate of Hammurabi and others.
:rotate:
I'd like to know who owns the Epic of Gilgamesh. Because we need to get those royalties to the correct Sumerians.
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).
---
On topic, similar things to this Copyright Alert System have been around for a few years now so this particular thing doesn't bother me. In that, I find the entire thing worrisome but the CAS specifically doesn't raise my alert level any more than it already was.
Another problem with the "Sony using Nintendo characters" comparison is that the thread isn't about companies using one another's intellectual property. The Copyright Alert System is about, "a file is being shared illegally" and that seems to be a very odd thing, given the nature of computer files. I'm not taking your toaster from your house. Rather, I'm replicating units of data.
So, what i'm curious about, is what actual legal claim a particular corporation has to any particular...um...sequence of data. I know that for youtube, users cannot post video files of television programs they recorded on digital media, but if they record the program, and mirror the image, then the copyright issues get muddled.
I'd just like to know what the particular corporation claims to own. With file sharing, they seem to claim to own particular sequences of digital data. But do they own the data sequence, or the pixel configuration, or the visual phenomenal qualia of what-it-is-to-see The Avengers or what? Because, again, toasters and ideas and digital files are fundamentally, qualitatively, different "things" of different natures. And they each "exist" in quite different senses.
Fucking nonsense.
The own the original work, and any works derived from it. So they own the pixels, the compressed file describing the pixels the encrypted stream containing the compressed file and the result of any transformation of the pixels, and because copyright can limit how work is displayed, they basically own the image being watched.
They claim to own everything, basically. Like, a telepathy with photographic memory might get in trouble.
We aren't talking about ideas. Copyright deals in works and derivatives there of. They are things that exist in a media.
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.
Another problem with the "Sony using Nintendo characters" comparison is that the thread isn't about companies using one another's intellectual property. The Copyright Alert System is about, "a file is being shared illegally" and that seems to be a very odd thing, given the nature of computer files. I'm not taking your toaster from your house. Rather, I'm replicating units of data.
So, what i'm curious about, is what actual legal claim a particular corporation has to any particular...um...sequence of data. I know that for youtube, users cannot post video files of television programs they recorded on digital media, but if they record the program, and mirror the image, then the copyright issues get muddled.
I'd just like to know what the particular corporation claims to own. With file sharing, they seem to claim to own particular sequences of digital data. But do they own the data sequence, or the pixel configuration, or the visual phenomenal qualia of what-it-is-to-see The Avengers or what? Because, again, toasters and ideas and digital files are fundamentally, qualitatively, different "things" of different natures. And they each "exist" in quite different senses.
Fucking nonsense.
The own the original work, and any works derived from it. So they own the pixels, the compressed file describing the pixels the encrypted stream containing the compressed file and the result of any transformation of the pixels, and because copyright can limit how work is displayed, they basically own the image being watched.
They claim to own everything, basically. Like, a telepathy with photographic memory might get in trouble.
We aren't talking about ideas. Copyright deals in works and derivatives there of. They are things that exist in a media.
So, they claim to own a "visual representation" and particular bits of data that can be used to project that visual representation?
The Enlightenment was predicated entirely upon copyright abuse, and the rights to many texts were, and still are bought by people seeking to squash and suppress them.
That said, my ponzi argument still stands. ISP's are attempting to invent morality clauses to use as an excuse for failure to provide the services they promised, and if one wishes to contest their arbitrary bullshit they then have to go to a pinkerton paycourt.
Another problem with the "Sony using Nintendo characters" comparison is that the thread isn't about companies using one another's intellectual property. The Copyright Alert System is about, "a file is being shared illegally" and that seems to be a very odd thing, given the nature of computer files. I'm not taking your toaster from your house. Rather, I'm replicating units of data.
So, what i'm curious about, is what actual legal claim a particular corporation has to any particular...um...sequence of data. I know that for youtube, users cannot post video files of television programs they recorded on digital media, but if they record the program, and mirror the image, then the copyright issues get muddled.
I'd just like to know what the particular corporation claims to own. With file sharing, they seem to claim to own particular sequences of digital data. But do they own the data sequence, or the pixel configuration, or the visual phenomenal qualia of what-it-is-to-see The Avengers or what? Because, again, toasters and ideas and digital files are fundamentally, qualitatively, different "things" of different natures. And they each "exist" in quite different senses.
Fucking nonsense.
The own the original work, and any works derived from it. So they own the pixels, the compressed file describing the pixels the encrypted stream containing the compressed file and the result of any transformation of the pixels, and because copyright can limit how work is displayed, they basically own the image being watched.
They claim to own everything, basically. Like, a telepathy with photographic memory might get in trouble.
We aren't talking about ideas. Copyright deals in works and derivatives there of. They are things that exist in a media.
So, they claim to own a "visual representation" and particular bits of data that can be used to project that visual representation?
Maybe more owning any bits of data or representations created from the original representation.
Specifying visual representation is a little too limiting because it applies to music, actual performances(and unauthorized recording of performances), software(with respect to both the binary and underlying source code even if recompiled for another environment).
So they own the original work, and they own any and all thing which exist because they are a copy/recording/result of mechanical transformation of that work.
I think.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Here's the thing.
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.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Tomanta actually raises an interesting point.
In a world with infinite copyright, wouldn't that basically be the end of entertainment? The very threat of a legal challenge based on certain similarities in story or images is likely enough to kill off new works. The owner of Shakespeare's estate basically has control over a vast number of stories that can no longer be done without paying them for permission. And if your story isn't actually based off a similar concept, they can still argue in court long enough to discourage any competition. Copyright becomes a bludgeon to end new works because, as was written before "There is nothing new under the sun."
So basically you would just abolish public domain.
Yes. Why should anyone be entitled to someone else's work for free, while there is still an owner of that work?
So that people like you can't just buy up the rights to all of popular entertainment and sit on it, making millions of dollars for doing nothing except sue everyone who tries to come up with an original idea that is vaguely similar to yours into the ground?
Sometimes you really make it clear how few shits you give about anyone outside of your social class.
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.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face actually don't imagine anything because someone has already thought of, and thus owns, everything— forever.
In a world with infinite copyright, wouldn't that basically be the end of entertainment? The very threat of a legal challenge based on certain similarities in story or images is likely enough to kill off new works. The owner of Shakespeare's estate basically has control over a vast number of stories that can no longer be done without paying them for permission. And if your story isn't actually based off a similar concept, they can still argue in court long enough to discourage any competition. Copyright becomes a bludgeon to end new works because, as was written before "There is nothing new under the sun."
Shit, I owe somebody some money.
Quick, someone figure out how I can get a copyright on the monomyth. I swear I'll share the profits with you guys.
Eventually you gotta let things go into the public domain because our culture is a shared resource.
I agree. The only change I would make is to remove the word "eventually".
When you write something, design a game, film a television show you aren't constructing it ex nihilo. You're utilizing cultural relics, themes, notions, etc. You're just rearranging aspects of reality that were already there in conjunction with other human beings who also participate in the shared culture of ideas.
Superman, Captain America, Mickey Mouse, and Degrassi are not unique, atomistic creations that are completely estranged from any and all influence. They're piecemeal restructurings of components of our shared cultural zeitgeist.
Because we're societal, cultural beings, rather than atomistic Cartesian egos.
Does anyone here think that Sony should be able to make Super Mario Brothers games using art assets from Nintendo made games, and market them in direct competition with Nintendo? Would it matter if Miyamoto was working at Sony at the time? I think the answer to both should clearly be no.
Literally no one is arguing otherwise.
Do you honestly think that every high school drama department in existence should have to give royalties to the Shakespeare estate every time they want to give a plucky adaptation of Romeo and Juliet a go? Because that system is what you're advocating.
I think that every high school drama department that wants to perform Les Mis or the Phantom of the Opera should have to pay the owners. Shakespeare is only more complicated because of the years in which they were not entitled to protection under the law. In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
Then I trust that as a point of principle you will send the appropriate sum to the rights holders for using the names of owned IP in your post.
Listen, I get that IP owners want to be able to own ideas and culture forever. Of course they do! I myself would like everyone in the world to pay me a dollar a year for a particularly spectacular shit I took when I was in my early 20s and started getting good at making Indian food. What I don't get is why we should give any respect to that desire. The original copyright deal was "Look obviously you can't 'own ideas' because that's a ludicrous concept, but if authors, painters, composers, etc starve to death, everyone gets less art and stuff. We'll make it so that they get a temporary monopoly on commercial exploitation so they can stay alive and make more art". This was a contract between society at large temporarily forfeiting the free exchange of culture and ideas in order to gain an overall benefit or more books, plays, paintings, music and so on, thus enduring a temporary harm of restricting the flow of cultuer art and ideas. In return for this cultural cost, society enured that the artists got paid for their work, didn't starve, kept on producing and in total, society got more art. Everyone was happy because both sides benefitted
But everyone who isn't a Disney shareholder gets no benefit from the perpetual copyright of the Mouse.
Since there's nothing in this deal for us, society at large, my proposal is that Disney shareholders can suck our collective balls. (Not least since the current legal situation was created in an openly corrupt fashion)
Pay particular attention to the last two paragraphs of his speech which are absolutely accurate:
I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honourable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months.
The speech is really long because he's a wordy bastard, but you really should read it. He absolutely fucking nails it to the wall, and every single one of his predictions of consequence has come perfectly true.
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?
It's futile anyway, since you can easily put half a dozen blu-ray movies on a USB keychain. It might slow down the bandwidth a little, but all that will happen is that people will get a little choosier about which movies they bother to pirate instead of just downloading everything.
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Yeah! Screw alla dese peoples!
Copyright in your world ain't for the benefit of the creator/creativity after all, it's only for the benefit of whoever can get their fist clenched around it.
Yup. When you start to dig into the details the entire system is revealed to be an elaborate scam.
Why should it be about creators, instead of rights holders? If to create work for hire, then you have been paid for it already.
More on topic, if this initiative sticks to BitTorrent and other file sharing services, I'm pretty confident that most noninfringing users will not have a problem.
Why should it be about rights holders, instead of creators? You don't seem to have justified your position any more than Donnicton justified his. At least, at far as I can tell you haven't justified it...
Privileging "right holding" over "creation" doesn't necessarily make any more sense than another arrangement. With creation we can at least discern some link between the existence of, say, "The concept of Captain America" and some historical narrative in which we attribute the origin of that concept to a particular individual.
When we privilege "right holding", we're placing more value in the ability of a person / group of persons to exploit a particular legal system.
If we're going to exist in a world in which someone can "own" Captain America, it seems to be more intuitive to think that ownership is based upon the origin story of the concept of Captain America, rather than basing ownership in the ability to navigate a legal system and so "acquire" the "right" by means of a monetary exchange.
Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that all of that shit is complete and utter nonsense.
You have more..."faith" in the copyright system than the majority of the people on these forums/internet, so it's unlikely that you'll really be convinced that that's all that's going to happen.
However, the fact that you acknowledged the existence of an "if" as the idea that they won't is a good start.
"Right's holders" have already proven they cannot be trusted with this kind of power (see the aforementioned false claims on videos on Youtube). So I think this is quite the naive view.
It'd kind of have to be faith, rather than confidence; to believe in something that has, in fact, been disproven pretty thoroughly up to this point.
Because the (tea party-esque) argument from MPAA/RIAA from day one has been that creators needs to be paid or they wont create and, despite reality showing the exact opposite for at least a decade, "piracy" will destroy creation. Looks like that argument was a complete lie from day one, just like "pirates" said it was. Looks like "pirates" are the ones who understand the system...
Which means that after almost 2 decades the "right-holders" have produced absolutely 0 actual arguments in their favor.
You are talking to the person who said if he could nuke Youtube from orbit, that he'd do it in a heartbeat.
Are you familiar with a company known as Zynga? This is basically their entire market strategy.
Also see: Evony and Art4Love
- John Stuart Mill
I can exchange my money for goods and services. I have an exclusive right to those things you provide me, because I bought then from you at arms length. If the thing I hire you to do is create a distinctive character for use in films, tv, books, etc., then that is what I have bought from you, and I see no reason why it should be any different. But you are starting from an assumption that property ownership in any firm is specious, so I doubt we will find any common ground here.
Literally no one is arguing otherwise.
Do you honestly think that every high school drama department in existence should have to give royalties to the Shakespeare estate every time they want to give a plucky adaptation of Romeo and Juliet a go? Because that system is what you're advocating.
I think that every high school drama department that wants to perform Les Mis or the Phantom of the Opera should have to pay the owners. Shakespeare is only more complicated because of the years in which they were not entitled to protection under the law. In my ideal world, everyone would always have paid them for the right.
If Miyamoto was working for Sony at the time then Sony would be able to use Mario all they want, since Sony would be the "right holder" that you so highly revere, no? Well I am sure that Sony would allow one of their employees to keep the rights to a creation that made Sony money and that said employee could take those rights with him when he left Sony.
Sounds you are now arguing that right-holder > creator is not a good thing after all.
As for your direct question, yes, once Mario enters the public domain (say 20 years after conception, double that of pharmaceuticals) anyone can use the mario concept. This forces companies to keep innovating.
You have very strange, and problematic, ideals.
Edit: Also, most people, when doing rights talk, tend to articulate rights as things given by God, or given by the state, or given by society. You seem to be the first person with whom I have interacted who focuses upon the notions of rights being something one obtains by means of a monetary exchange. That's...something.
Except, Mario isn't a trademark of the Nintendo brand. So Sony can't make a game with Mario in it anyway?
The question is a bit of a red herring, if that is the case.
Trademark wouldn't prevent a total conversion with all the Mario removed or some limited reuse of code.
Much simpler to just say "Yes, I do."
But then you wouldn't be able to deflect how incredibly silly this is. It goes against our entire history regarding the industry.
*shrug*
2800 years of back dated royalties paid to the ancestors of Homer, or rather the multi-national corporation that would now own those rights. No that certainly wouldn't have crippled at birth the whole flow of pan Hellenic/Roman/Western thought and literature.
Even funnier, publishers of The Bible paying royalties to the estate of Hammurabi and others.
:rotate:
The "right" to eat the turnip you traded. The "right" to use the turnip (for eating). The "right" to use a fiction (for performing a play).
The "something" is an abstraction.
Panta rhei.
So, what i'm curious about, is what actual legal claim a particular corporation has to any particular...um...sequence of data. I know that for youtube, users cannot post video files of television programs they recorded on digital media, but if they record the program, and mirror the image, then the copyright issues get muddled.
I'd just like to know what the particular corporation claims to own. With file sharing, they seem to claim to own particular sequences of digital data. But do they own the data sequence, or the pixel configuration, or the visual phenomenal qualia of what-it-is-to-see The Avengers or what? Because, again, toasters and ideas and digital files are fundamentally, qualitatively, different "things" of different natures. And they each "exist" in quite different senses.
Fucking nonsense.
I'd like to know who owns the Epic of Gilgamesh. Because we need to get those royalties to the correct Sumerians.
Fucking. Nonsense.
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).
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On topic, similar things to this Copyright Alert System have been around for a few years now so this particular thing doesn't bother me. In that, I find the entire thing worrisome but the CAS specifically doesn't raise my alert level any more than it already was.
The own the original work, and any works derived from it. So they own the pixels, the compressed file describing the pixels the encrypted stream containing the compressed file and the result of any transformation of the pixels, and because copyright can limit how work is displayed, they basically own the image being watched.
They claim to own everything, basically. Like, a telepathy with photographic memory might get in trouble.
We aren't talking about ideas. Copyright deals in works and derivatives there of. They are things that exist in a media.
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.
So, they claim to own a "visual representation" and particular bits of data that can be used to project that visual representation?
That said, my ponzi argument still stands. ISP's are attempting to invent morality clauses to use as an excuse for failure to provide the services they promised, and if one wishes to contest their arbitrary bullshit they then have to go to a pinkerton paycourt.
Maybe more owning any bits of data or representations created from the original representation.
Specifying visual representation is a little too limiting because it applies to music, actual performances(and unauthorized recording of performances), software(with respect to both the binary and underlying source code even if recompiled for another environment).
So they own the original work, and they own any and all thing which exist because they are a copy/recording/result of mechanical transformation of that work.
I think.
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.
In a world with infinite copyright, wouldn't that basically be the end of entertainment? The very threat of a legal challenge based on certain similarities in story or images is likely enough to kill off new works. The owner of Shakespeare's estate basically has control over a vast number of stories that can no longer be done without paying them for permission. And if your story isn't actually based off a similar concept, they can still argue in court long enough to discourage any competition. Copyright becomes a bludgeon to end new works because, as was written before "There is nothing new under the sun."
Shit, I owe somebody some money.
So that people like you can't just buy up the rights to all of popular entertainment and sit on it, making millions of dollars for doing nothing except sue everyone who tries to come up with an original idea that is vaguely similar to yours into the ground?
Sometimes you really make it clear how few shits you give about anyone outside of your social class.
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.
Quick, someone figure out how I can get a copyright on the monomyth. I swear I'll share the profits with you guys.
I agree. The only change I would make is to remove the word "eventually".
When you write something, design a game, film a television show you aren't constructing it ex nihilo. You're utilizing cultural relics, themes, notions, etc. You're just rearranging aspects of reality that were already there in conjunction with other human beings who also participate in the shared culture of ideas.
Superman, Captain America, Mickey Mouse, and Degrassi are not unique, atomistic creations that are completely estranged from any and all influence. They're piecemeal restructurings of components of our shared cultural zeitgeist.
Because we're societal, cultural beings, rather than atomistic Cartesian egos.
Then I trust that as a point of principle you will send the appropriate sum to the rights holders for using the names of owned IP in your post.
Listen, I get that IP owners want to be able to own ideas and culture forever. Of course they do! I myself would like everyone in the world to pay me a dollar a year for a particularly spectacular shit I took when I was in my early 20s and started getting good at making Indian food. What I don't get is why we should give any respect to that desire. The original copyright deal was "Look obviously you can't 'own ideas' because that's a ludicrous concept, but if authors, painters, composers, etc starve to death, everyone gets less art and stuff. We'll make it so that they get a temporary monopoly on commercial exploitation so they can stay alive and make more art". This was a contract between society at large temporarily forfeiting the free exchange of culture and ideas in order to gain an overall benefit or more books, plays, paintings, music and so on, thus enduring a temporary harm of restricting the flow of cultuer art and ideas. In return for this cultural cost, society enured that the artists got paid for their work, didn't starve, kept on producing and in total, society got more art. Everyone was happy because both sides benefitted
But everyone who isn't a Disney shareholder gets no benefit from the perpetual copyright of the Mouse.
Since there's nothing in this deal for us, society at large, my proposal is that Disney shareholders can suck our collective balls. (Not least since the current legal situation was created in an openly corrupt fashion)
Macaulay was dead right about perpetual copyright over a century ago: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/1345/03329
Pay particular attention to the last two paragraphs of his speech which are absolutely accurate:
I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress?
Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill could be so amended in the Committee that my objections might be removed, I would not divide the House in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alteration which would not seem insupportable to my honourable and learned friend, could render his measure supportable to me, that I must move, though with regret, that this bill be read a second time this day six months.
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?