In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
That's only good for actual living creators, corporations are immortal so they don't have to worry about dying nearly as much as real people do. That's why its stupid to give organizations/companies the same rights as actual people.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
Porn, no. But what about fan fiction turned into a commercial movie, and which goes in a very different direction than the owner wants to take it? That would be shelved next to the real work, and I think that's a problem.
Is there that much of a problem with the various Sherlock Holmes stories that exist? Lets not forget that there's still going to be trademarks (so your new Star Wars films couldn't be called Star Wars) and a significant period between your original and someone else's remake.
Plus the current system and your proposed extensions still leaves Alan Moore hating the various film adaptations of his work. As soon as we move away from the author and just move to the owner, then they've really got the same connection to the initial work as the consumer does. The rules exist as a means to more Art, the fact that this is done by making the creation of Art into a viable business is just because this is the best way to achieve this goal.
The important thing is that art is made, not money.
0
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Porn, no. But what about fan fiction turned into a commercial movie, and which goes in a very different direction than the owner wants to take it? That would be shelved next to the real work, and I think that's a problem.
Is there that much of a problem with the various Sherlock Holmes stories that exist? Lets not forget that there's still going to be trademarks (so your new Star Wars films couldn't be called Star Wars) and a significant period between your original and someone else's remake.
Plus the current system and your proposed extensions still leaves Alan Moore hating the various film adaptations of his work. As soon as we move away from the author and just move to the owner, then they've really got the same connection to the initial work as the consumer does. The rules exist as a means to more Art, the fact that this is done by making the creation of Art into a viable business is just because this is the best way to achieve this goal.
The important thing is that art is made, not money.
I think the important thing is that people are compensated for their work and that rights holders don't have their exclusive rights to control infringed on. Alan Moore choosing to work for a company in a creative capacity or to sell his work to a company and then not liking how it is used is completely different from someone else just taking his work and copying/using it.
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
True, but easements and eminent domain are a thing. A real thing, that affects literally every piece of property - intellectual, physical, or real, that you could possibly own.
It's not a question IF government has the power to do those things - it certainly does, with certain requirements for due process (which, conveniently, are defined by the government)...the question is that if the government, which at least nominally represents the will of the people is willing (and in practical matters, capable) of doing those things.
In general, the answer is no. People won't allow that unless there is an overarching and recognized need that serves the public good. Hence why we have things like 'fair use', DPRA / DCMA royalty rates / schedules, etc.
We can argue up and down if those rates / schedules and the other baggage that goes along with the laws do more harm than good, and if they protect corporate interests more than the rights / interests of the people, but that's secondary to the fact that they are there to at least nominally serve the public good.
That's only good for actual living creators, corporations are immortal so they don't have to worry about dying nearly as much as real people do. That's why its stupid to give organizations/companies the same rights as actual people.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
I think that the best way to go would be a set schedule of X years (like 7 or so) after initial publication the creator / their estate (or whomever purchases it from the creator) would have full rights, with the ability to extend it another term - no strings attached.
Then, at the end of that period (~15-20 years from initial publication), the work would go into the public domain unless the rights holder applied for a limited license. This limited license would amount to public domain for non-commercial use (so books / other work could be re-published at cost, etc) with a set licensing rate for any commercial use. Kind of like how any song that has been released is free to cover regardless of the writer / license holder's wishes, but the person covering the song must pay at most a statutory rate.
Make this a 15-30 year period before full public domain, but allow that limited rights period to be extended for the original creator's lifetime IF they still hold the rights.
This would allow the original creator (or the individual / corporation purchasing their rights) a lengthy period of time to profit from valuable works (30-50 years, pretty much a full adult lifetime and longer than most people receive income from their job). No more of the 'dying poor while people profit off their work' stories. If the creator wants to tightly control their work beyond the law, they don't need to publish it in the first place. No going for the reward without accepting the risk.
Movies, books, software, and other works that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist will be available in a reasonable amount of time for everyone, and if people want to create derivative commerical works they would be able to do so but obligated to compensate the original creator for a set amount of time.
Of course, for a franchise like say...Star Wars...while the original trilogy may be in the 'statutory licensing' period, the derivative works (EU, Prequels, games, etc) might still be in the 'full control' period. That would give the franchise rights holders a huge market advantage.
You've also got the whole issue of trademark, which last forever as long as they are in use, so someone couldn't just slap the Disney / Mickey logo (or Star Wars logo) on their box and pass it off as the 'real thing'.
+1
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
True, but easements and eminent domain are a thing. A real thing, that affects literally every piece of property - intellectual, physical, or real, that you could possibly own.
It's not a question IF government has the power to do those things - it certainly does, with certain requirements for due process (which, conveniently, are defined by the government)...the question is that if the government, which at least nominally represents the will of the people is willing (and in practical matters, capable) of doing those things.
In general, the answer is no. People won't allow that unless there is an overarching and recognized need that serves the public good. Hence why we have things like 'fair use', DPRA / DCMA royalty rates / schedules, etc.
We can argue up and down if those rates / schedules and the other baggage that goes along with the laws do more harm than good, and if they protect corporate interests more than the rights / interests of the people, but that's secondary to the fact that they are there to at least nominally serve the public good.
That's only good for actual living creators, corporations are immortal so they don't have to worry about dying nearly as much as real people do. That's why its stupid to give organizations/companies the same rights as actual people.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
I think that the best way to go would be a set schedule of X years (like 7 or so) after initial publication the creator / their estate (or whomever purchases it from the creator) would have full rights, with the ability to extend it another term - no strings attached.
Then, at the end of that period (~15-20 years from initial publication), the work would go into the public domain unless the rights holder applied for a limited license. This limited license would amount to public domain for non-commercial use (so books / other work could be re-published at cost, etc) with a set licensing rate for any commercial use. Kind of like how any song that has been released is free to cover regardless of the writer / license holder's wishes, but the person covering the song must pay at most a statutory rate.
Make this a 15-30 year period before full public domain, but allow that limited rights period to be extended for the original creator's lifetime IF they still hold the rights.
This would allow the original creator (or the individual / corporation purchasing their rights) a lengthy period of time to profit from valuable works (30-50 years, pretty much a full adult lifetime and longer than most people receive income from their job). No more of the 'dying poor while people profit off their work' stories. If the creator wants to tightly control their work beyond the law, they don't need to publish it in the first place. No going for the reward without accepting the risk.
Movies, books, software, and other works that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist will be available in a reasonable amount of time for everyone, and if people want to create derivative commerical works they would be able to do so but obligated to compensate the original creator for a set amount of time.
Of course, for a franchise like say...Star Wars...while the original trilogy may be in the 'statutory licensing' period, the derivative works (EU, Prequels, games, etc) might still be in the 'full control' period. That would give the franchise rights holders a huge market advantage.
You've also got the whole issue of trademark, which last forever as long as they are in use, so someone couldn't just slap the Disney / Mickey logo (or Star Wars logo) on their box and pass it off as the 'real thing'.
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
Not every creator has the resources to do that. If an artist is poor they don't have an estate to manage the IP and they shouldn't have to sell it to a corporation for that benefit since the creator's inheritors would lose out on profit sharing partially or completely - which is unacceptable.
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
There's an overlap, sometimes, but you know why there's a distinction. You really need to say "owner" when you talk about this because that's what you mean, not creator. Owners aren't creators if they never participated in creating the content. The claim is lesser because the owner didn't do shit to create the IP, they either bought it or
had a contract which the company is given the rights since they're an employee. That shouldn't be an equal claim on the IP, that's an insult to the actual creators. It shouldn't matter if the owners gave them the resources to make the IP, either.
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
True, but easements and eminent domain are a thing. A real thing, that affects literally every piece of property - intellectual, physical, or real, that you could possibly own.
It's not a question IF government has the power to do those things - it certainly does, with certain requirements for due process (which, conveniently, are defined by the government)...the question is that if the government, which at least nominally represents the will of the people is willing (and in practical matters, capable) of doing those things.
In general, the answer is no. People won't allow that unless there is an overarching and recognized need that serves the public good. Hence why we have things like 'fair use', DPRA / DCMA royalty rates / schedules, etc.
We can argue up and down if those rates / schedules and the other baggage that goes along with the laws do more harm than good, and if they protect corporate interests more than the rights / interests of the people, but that's secondary to the fact that they are there to at least nominally serve the public good.
That's only good for actual living creators, corporations are immortal so they don't have to worry about dying nearly as much as real people do. That's why its stupid to give organizations/companies the same rights as actual people.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
I think that the best way to go would be a set schedule of X years (like 7 or so) after initial publication the creator / their estate (or whomever purchases it from the creator) would have full rights, with the ability to extend it another term - no strings attached.
Then, at the end of that period (~15-20 years from initial publication), the work would go into the public domain unless the rights holder applied for a limited license. This limited license would amount to public domain for non-commercial use (so books / other work could be re-published at cost, etc) with a set licensing rate for any commercial use. Kind of like how any song that has been released is free to cover regardless of the writer / license holder's wishes, but the person covering the song must pay at most a statutory rate.
Make this a 15-30 year period before full public domain, but allow that limited rights period to be extended for the original creator's lifetime IF they still hold the rights.
This would allow the original creator (or the individual / corporation purchasing their rights) a lengthy period of time to profit from valuable works (30-50 years, pretty much a full adult lifetime and longer than most people receive income from their job). No more of the 'dying poor while people profit off their work' stories. If the creator wants to tightly control their work beyond the law, they don't need to publish it in the first place. No going for the reward without accepting the risk.
Movies, books, software, and other works that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist will be available in a reasonable amount of time for everyone, and if people want to create derivative commerical works they would be able to do so but obligated to compensate the original creator for a set amount of time.
Of course, for a franchise like say...Star Wars...while the original trilogy may be in the 'statutory licensing' period, the derivative works (EU, Prequels, games, etc) might still be in the 'full control' period. That would give the franchise rights holders a huge market advantage.
You've also got the whole issue of trademark, which last forever as long as they are in use, so someone couldn't just slap the Disney / Mickey logo (or Star Wars logo) on their box and pass it off as the 'real thing'.
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
Well, if there is a statutory licensing model in place for all IP, it does admittedly take away a lot of the need for a full public domain model. I'd probably find that alone (haggle on price and timelines) acceptable reform to copyright.
The reason I see a need for a full public domain model is that works become so fully assimilated and part of culture that allowing any individual company / corporation (Disney...) to control their release and availability does a public disservice. This goes away with a statutory licensing model, where if Disney wants to lock something in a vault for decades, someone else can then provide it (but need to provide Disney a cut).
In that statutory licensing model, Disney still has the ability to do the 'authentic Disney' / collectable / bundle their exclusive franchise works as a major value-add. They lose a lot of control over timing and the 'Disney Vault' model suffers a decent loss of value, but it would be a fair compromise.
I'd still say the renewals should be voluntary, and failure to renew or make a published work commercially available would result in it being considered 'abandoned' or 'orphaned' and fall to the public domain in some timeline.
The thing I see with a creator / owner distinction is mostly appeal to emotion. I don't like the idea of an artist dying in poverty while their works make $TEXAS. The 'creator' is an artist. If they own the rights, they (may have - not always) created that work out of their own time and effort. Maybe to sell for money, maybe the profit was incidental. Whereas a rights 'owner' purchased those rights or funded that creation as an investment. Which is good and all that, but it was a business decision.
I am not a fan of perpetual anything. I think that - at death, or some designated point afterwards, rights must pass or expire. Since corporations are effectively immortal, this results in a necessarily absurd situation where rights to ideas are effectively only owned by the first person to come up with that idea - forever, or discrimination against real people for only being able to live ~120 years at best.
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
There's an overlap, sometimes, but you know why there's a distinction. You really need to say "owner" when you talk about this because that's what you mean, not creator. Owners aren't creators if they never participated in creating the content. The claim is lesser because the owner didn't do shit to create the IP, they either bought it or
had a contract which the company is given the rights since they're an employee. That shouldn't be an equal claim on the IP, that's an insult to the actual creators. It shouldn't matter if the owners gave them the resources to make the IP, either.
I don't think it's an insult to the "actual creators" - in many cases the company provides more input in terms of time and resources than the end "creator", especially when it's the product of a team with a changing group of members.
In addition, the company almost always bears the risk of the creation process. There are plenty of "inventions" that don't result in anything of value - plenty of pharmaceuticals that fail in their field trials, books that no-one buys, songs that never break the iTunes charts. On one hand you get The Avengers making billions of dollars, and on the other you get John Carter writing off $200million. Those who endorse "creators rights" often demand only the profits of success, and never the penalties of failure. Being able to provide creators with a guaranteed income regardless of the failures of their products is the strongest action companies can take to promote creativity (well, unless the string of failures takes down the company).
+4
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
Not every creator has the resources to do that. If an artist is poor they don't have an estate to manage the IP and they shouldn't have to sell it to a corporation for that benefit since the creator's inheritors would lose out on profit sharing partially or completely - which is unacceptable.
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
There's an overlap, sometimes, but you know why there's a distinction. You really need to say "owner" when you talk about this because that's what you mean, not creator. Owners aren't creators if they never participated in creating the content. The claim is lesser because the owner didn't do shit to create the IP, they either bought it or
had a contract which the company is given the rights since they're an employee. That shouldn't be an equal claim on the IP, that's an insult to the actual creators. It shouldn't matter if the owners gave them the resources to make the IP, either.
Wait, so you are saying that because some creators are poor and can't manage IP, no one should have the benefit of enforcing their claims?
The participation in creating the content is funding it. That is relevant, no? Not to mention that companies don't usually passively fund one artist to sit around making whatever art he likes. The more common model is a team, all hired by the company, working together collaboratively to create something. I don't see how someone could say that the Walt Disney corporation wasn't involved in the creation of Mulan, for example. They assembled the team, and that team was all employees of the company doing the work the company hired them to do.
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
True, but easements and eminent domain are a thing. A real thing, that affects literally every piece of property - intellectual, physical, or real, that you could possibly own.
It's not a question IF government has the power to do those things - it certainly does, with certain requirements for due process (which, conveniently, are defined by the government)...the question is that if the government, which at least nominally represents the will of the people is willing (and in practical matters, capable) of doing those things.
In general, the answer is no. People won't allow that unless there is an overarching and recognized need that serves the public good. Hence why we have things like 'fair use', DPRA / DCMA royalty rates / schedules, etc.
We can argue up and down if those rates / schedules and the other baggage that goes along with the laws do more harm than good, and if they protect corporate interests more than the rights / interests of the people, but that's secondary to the fact that they are there to at least nominally serve the public good.
That's only good for actual living creators, corporations are immortal so they don't have to worry about dying nearly as much as real people do. That's why its stupid to give organizations/companies the same rights as actual people.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
I think that the best way to go would be a set schedule of X years (like 7 or so) after initial publication the creator / their estate (or whomever purchases it from the creator) would have full rights, with the ability to extend it another term - no strings attached.
Then, at the end of that period (~15-20 years from initial publication), the work would go into the public domain unless the rights holder applied for a limited license. This limited license would amount to public domain for non-commercial use (so books / other work could be re-published at cost, etc) with a set licensing rate for any commercial use. Kind of like how any song that has been released is free to cover regardless of the writer / license holder's wishes, but the person covering the song must pay at most a statutory rate.
Make this a 15-30 year period before full public domain, but allow that limited rights period to be extended for the original creator's lifetime IF they still hold the rights.
This would allow the original creator (or the individual / corporation purchasing their rights) a lengthy period of time to profit from valuable works (30-50 years, pretty much a full adult lifetime and longer than most people receive income from their job). No more of the 'dying poor while people profit off their work' stories. If the creator wants to tightly control their work beyond the law, they don't need to publish it in the first place. No going for the reward without accepting the risk.
Movies, books, software, and other works that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist will be available in a reasonable amount of time for everyone, and if people want to create derivative commerical works they would be able to do so but obligated to compensate the original creator for a set amount of time.
Of course, for a franchise like say...Star Wars...while the original trilogy may be in the 'statutory licensing' period, the derivative works (EU, Prequels, games, etc) might still be in the 'full control' period. That would give the franchise rights holders a huge market advantage.
You've also got the whole issue of trademark, which last forever as long as they are in use, so someone couldn't just slap the Disney / Mickey logo (or Star Wars logo) on their box and pass it off as the 'real thing'.
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
Well, if there is a statutory licensing model in place for all IP, it does admittedly take away a lot of the need for a full public domain model. I'd probably find that alone (haggle on price and timelines) acceptable reform to copyright.
The reason I see a need for a full public domain model is that works become so fully assimilated and part of culture that allowing any individual company / corporation (Disney...) to control their release and availability does a public disservice. This goes away with a statutory licensing model, where if Disney wants to lock something in a vault for decades, someone else can then provide it (but need to provide Disney a cut).
In that statutory licensing model, Disney still has the ability to do the 'authentic Disney' / collectable / bundle their exclusive franchise works as a major value-add. They lose a lot of control over timing and the 'Disney Vault' model suffers a decent loss of value, but it would be a fair compromise.
I'd still say the renewals should be voluntary, and failure to renew or make a published work commercially available would result in it being considered 'abandoned' or 'orphaned' and fall to the public domain in some timeline.
The thing I see with a creator / owner distinction is mostly appeal to emotion. I don't like the idea of an artist dying in poverty while their works make $TEXAS. The 'creator' is an artist. If they own the rights, they (may have - not always) created that work out of their own time and effort. Maybe to sell for money, maybe the profit was incidental. Whereas a rights 'owner' purchased those rights or funded that creation as an investment. Which is good and all that, but it was a business decision.
I am not a fan of perpetual anything. I think that - at death, or some designated point afterwards, rights must pass or expire. Since corporations are effectively immortal, this results in a necessarily absurd situation where rights to ideas are effectively only owned by the first person to come up with that idea - forever, or discrimination against real people for only being able to live ~120 years at best.
I think we are largely on the same page here. The only thing is that I don't see why a corporation shouldn't be able to hold the rights forever, as long as it is using them. I agree that the Disney vault model is a net harm to society, and I would have no problem telling right holders that if they don't make their IP available, then they either lose the right to control it or lose the ability to tell anyone who is willing to pay a nominal fee that they can distribute it. If Disney is told that they need to either actively sell Cinderella on blu ray and dvd or let someone else do it in exchange for a $1 per disc sold, I suspect they will stop putting things in the vault pretty quickly.
Another interesting issue is format. I think that even if Disney is selling Cinderalla on blu ray and dvd, that doesn't mean that someone shouldn't be able to also sell it digitally if disney is not doing that. Again, we either force right holders to make their property available in a socially beneficial way, or we take away their exclusive control. That seems eminently reasonable to me. We'll protect your property rights and control over decisions, as long as your decision isn't to literally withhold your property from the world.
It's interesting how people seem less willing to protect IP rights the more essential and, arguably, more valuable the protected IP is.
Yeah some people value human life over money. It's a crazy concept.
Well, we don't really. If we valued human life over money then we would just pool our money to pay the drug companies for the life saving drugs necessary to save strangers. We value human life over the drug companies' money.
Yes, you and the mouse in your pocket. We, me and other folks who support single payer healthcare, foreign aid, and government support of medical research are a tad less logically inconsistent.
Yes, I am in favor of all those things as well. It doesn't make statements like "some people value human life over money" any less absurd.
If we're going to encourage the innovation of useful goods with the reward limited monopoly, it seems inconsistent to then suggest that creators of life saving goods, which, to me, seems like the kind of innovation we most want to incentivize, are less entitled to reward because their inventions are too important.
The purpose of encouraging innovation of useful goods is to actually get to use more useful goods. The limited monopoly fails to serve that purpose if the holder uses the monopoly in such a way as to deny the use to a large swath of people. In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
Every now and then the public interest in micromanaging how the limited monopoly is used trumphs the introduced ineffeciencies of carrying out that micromanagement and the government steps it.
Its only inconcistent if we view the law without considering its purpose.
This sounds a lot like need = entitlement. Is that what you are saying? Or are you saying that the government should be able to force sales of products at a discount to certain people?
In the general sense, need does bring entitlement. The parts worth quibbling about are what types of need warrants what types of entitlement, but I daresay there's precious few moral or legal codes that don't have provisions where need infers rights not otherwise held.
And as zagdrob pointed out eminent domain is indeed A Thing.
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
It would be mighty hard to foment communist revolution if people, in general, held a dislike for the idea that the government should be redistributing assets based on need.
Since communist revolutions did indeed occur, with a mind-blowingly large number of adherents, I think its fairly safe to say that the problem with five year plans is that they're poor reflections of a shifting reality and thus an ineffecient use of the means of production, rather than an inability to find people who think implementing a five year plan is a good idea.
It's interesting how people seem less willing to protect IP rights the more essential and, arguably, more valuable the protected IP is.
Yeah some people value human life over money. It's a crazy concept.
Well, we don't really. If we valued human life over money then we would just pool our money to pay the drug companies for the life saving drugs necessary to save strangers. We value human life over the drug companies' money.
Yes, you and the mouse in your pocket. We, me and other folks who support single payer healthcare, foreign aid, and government support of medical research are a tad less logically inconsistent.
Yes, I am in favor of all those things as well. It doesn't make statements like "some people value human life over money" any less absurd.
If we're going to encourage the innovation of useful goods with the reward limited monopoly, it seems inconsistent to then suggest that creators of life saving goods, which, to me, seems like the kind of innovation we most want to incentivize, are less entitled to reward because their inventions are too important.
The purpose of encouraging innovation of useful goods is to actually get to use more useful goods. The limited monopoly fails to serve that purpose if the holder uses the monopoly in such a way as to deny the use to a large swath of people. In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
Every now and then the public interest in micromanaging how the limited monopoly is used trumphs the introduced ineffeciencies of carrying out that micromanagement and the government steps it.
Its only inconcistent if we view the law without considering its purpose.
This sounds a lot like need = entitlement. Is that what you are saying? Or are you saying that the government should be able to force sales of products at a discount to certain people?
In the general sense, need does bring entitlement. The parts worth quibbling about are what types of need warrants what types of entitlement, but I daresay there's precious few moral or legal codes that don't have provisions where need infers rights not otherwise held.
And as zagdrob pointed out eminent domain is indeed A Thing.
Eminent Domain also requires the government to pay fair market value - which isn't the same as confiscating in a communist revolution. Speaking of which...
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
It would be mighty hard to foment communist revolution if people, in general, held a dislike for the idea that the government should be redistributing assets based on need.
Since communist revolutions did indeed occur, with a mind-blowingly large number of adherents, I think its fairly safe to say that the problem with five year plans is that they're poor reflections of a shifting reality and thus an ineffecient use of the means of production, rather than an inability to find people who think implementing a five year plan is a good idea.
Really. You're using the communist revolutions to make inferences about 5 year plans. Okay... *backs away slowly*
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
When your argument against IP is communism, I don't think you're doing so well. . . .
I like how the extremist notion that governments are somehow not allowed to dictate the nature of IP because it Belongs To Someone has - correctly - then traipsed down the garden path of anarcho-capitalism. Because the logical implication is that government isn't allowed to dictate the nature of ownership at all!
Why not apply the reductio in reverse here? Governments can legitimately tax. Governments can legitimately nationalize. And governments can legitimately withdraw or redefine the boundaries of intellectual property.
What we reject is presumably arbitrariness and abuse of discretion, rather than the notion of circumscription of property rights.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I like how the extremist notion that governments are somehow not allowed to dictate the nature of IP because it Belongs To Someone has - correctly - then traipsed down the garden path of anarcho-capitalism. Because the logical implication is that government isn't allowed to dictate the nature of ownership at all!
Why not apply the reductio in reverse here? Governments can legitimately tax. Governments can legitimately nationalize. And governments can legitimately withdraw or redefine the boundaries of intellectual property.
What we reject is presumably arbitrariness and abuse of discretion, rather than the notion of circumscription of property rights.
I agree with that, but there is a whole different element when it is not your government that nationalizes your property. We have kind of moved away from the international issue over the last few pages, and I think that is why the conversation has moderated so much. If other governments also abided by an understood standard that was agreed on as fair, we wouldn't have a problem, but it seems like in the third world (and in manufacturing powerhouses like China) the governments just say "lol, IP?" which is. . . not satisfying.
I like how the extremist notion that governments are somehow not allowed to dictate the nature of IP because it Belongs To Someone has - correctly - then traipsed down the garden path of anarcho-capitalism. Because the logical implication is that government isn't allowed to dictate the nature of ownership at all!
Why not apply the reductio in reverse here? Governments can legitimately tax. Governments can legitimately nationalize. And governments can legitimately withdraw or redefine the boundaries of intellectual property.
What we reject is presumably arbitrariness and abuse of discretion, rather than the notion of circumscription of property rights.
I agree with that, but there is a whole different element when it is not your government that nationalizes your property. We have kind of moved away from the international issue over the last few pages, and I think that is why the conversation has moderated so much. If other governments also abided by an understood standard that was agreed on as fair, we wouldn't have a problem, but it seems like in the third world (and in manufacturing powerhouses like China) the governments just say "lol, IP?" which is. . . not satisfying.
Why is that different? Don't foreigners pay taxes too? Has some grave injustice been committed when a government opts to raise taxes on highly liquid investments, investments that foreigners may have purchased in the expectation of low taxes?
It's interesting how people seem less willing to protect IP rights the more essential and, arguably, more valuable the protected IP is.
Yeah some people value human life over money. It's a crazy concept.
Well, we don't really. If we valued human life over money then we would just pool our money to pay the drug companies for the life saving drugs necessary to save strangers. We value human life over the drug companies' money.
Yes, you and the mouse in your pocket. We, me and other folks who support single payer healthcare, foreign aid, and government support of medical research are a tad less logically inconsistent.
Yes, I am in favor of all those things as well. It doesn't make statements like "some people value human life over money" any less absurd.
If we're going to encourage the innovation of useful goods with the reward limited monopoly, it seems inconsistent to then suggest that creators of life saving goods, which, to me, seems like the kind of innovation we most want to incentivize, are less entitled to reward because their inventions are too important.
The purpose of encouraging innovation of useful goods is to actually get to use more useful goods. The limited monopoly fails to serve that purpose if the holder uses the monopoly in such a way as to deny the use to a large swath of people. In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
Every now and then the public interest in micromanaging how the limited monopoly is used trumphs the introduced ineffeciencies of carrying out that micromanagement and the government steps it.
Its only inconcistent if we view the law without considering its purpose.
This sounds a lot like need = entitlement. Is that what you are saying? Or are you saying that the government should be able to force sales of products at a discount to certain people?
In the general sense, need does bring entitlement. The parts worth quibbling about are what types of need warrants what types of entitlement, but I daresay there's precious few moral or legal codes that don't have provisions where need infers rights not otherwise held.
And as zagdrob pointed out eminent domain is indeed A Thing.
Eminent Domain also requires the government to pay fair market value - which isn't the same as confiscating in a communist revolution. Speaking of which...
First of all, "fair market value" for, say, AIDS medication in South Africa still leaves an incredibly large space between what the government might be willing/able to pay and what the owner of the intellectual property might demand. A fairly fundamental portion of the free market is, well, you know, just that: The Free Market. If one party has no choice but to sell at a particular value, meh, calling that the fair market price is something of a misnomer.
The point is that the government, in the interest of public wellbeing, can do violate property rights to a large degree, and SKFMs question about whether the government could mandate discounts to certain groups is odd - that's how it already work.
Really. You're using the communist revolutions to make inferences about 5 year plans. Okay... *backs away slowly*
No. I'm making inferences about peoples willingness to have their assets redistributed by the government based on their participation in communist revolutions - where large scale governmental redistribution of all property was a major part of the whole idea. You tried to suggest that people generally oppose having the government take your car and give it to your neighbour and that's why this isn't done. I feel the millions of people who actively fought to ensure that the government could do just that, means that people "in general" do not actually dislike having the fruits of their labour appropriated by the government.
The fact that this is an economically inefficient way of doing things, and thus a really fucking bad idea, is completely separate from whether people think its a good idea -and any history book will tell you a fuckton of people used to think it was a fairly good idea.
When your argument against IP is communism, I don't think you're doing so well. . . .
Please, show me where I used the smashing success of communism to suggest that we should do away with all intellectual property laws.
Was it when I said five years plans don't actually work? Yeah, I thought that part was unclear and might be misinterpretated as praise for communism when I wrote it, sorry about that.
I like how the extremist notion that governments are somehow not allowed to dictate the nature of IP because it Belongs To Someone has - correctly - then traipsed down the garden path of anarcho-capitalism. Because the logical implication is that government isn't allowed to dictate the nature of ownership at all!
Why not apply the reductio in reverse here? Governments can legitimately tax. Governments can legitimately nationalize. And governments can legitimately withdraw or redefine the boundaries of intellectual property.
What we reject is presumably arbitrariness and abuse of discretion, rather than the notion of circumscription of property rights.
I agree with that, but there is a whole different element when it is not your government that nationalizes your property. We have kind of moved away from the international issue over the last few pages, and I think that is why the conversation has moderated so much. If other governments also abided by an understood standard that was agreed on as fair, we wouldn't have a problem, but it seems like in the third world (and in manufacturing powerhouses like China) the governments just say "lol, IP?" which is. . . not satisfying.
I'm not sure that those issues are so much issues with IP (so to speak) as they are problems that arise from dealing with different countries, with a variety of different laws. The only solution I can see to that is global hegemony and law enforcement practices that are consistent throughout the world. Neither of which are particularly practical.
Doing business in other countries (or even other states) means dealing with varying standards. As a business, you need to make different assumptions depending on where you choose to do business - most likely, you are going to have a different calculated loss shipping a truck full of DVD players across Kazakhstan than Kansas. Or even a retail locations in Camden vs. Manhattan.
If you're a company - say, Shell or BP - doing business internationally, there is a certain amount of risk that is built in (and adjusted for) that your foreign assets will be nationalized. It's something that any competent business should consider and prepare for. It's certainly not something favorable, but I fail to see how it's any different for physical property or intellectual property.
We're pretty much dealing with another case where the risks / costs of doing business should be socialized, but the benefits / profits are privatized. Using American diplomatic capital internationally to protect business profits in a way that doesn't benefit America as a whole is just another example of this.
If the companies whose IP is being stolen really wish to, they are more than welcome to refuse to sell in those areas, implement DRM or other IP protection methods, add value to their own products to compete with the knock-offs, utilize their market position and economies of scale to make piracy uneconomical, offer education programs, etc.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I like how the extremist notion that governments are somehow not allowed to dictate the nature of IP because it Belongs To Someone has - correctly - then traipsed down the garden path of anarcho-capitalism. Because the logical implication is that government isn't allowed to dictate the nature of ownership at all!
Why not apply the reductio in reverse here? Governments can legitimately tax. Governments can legitimately nationalize. And governments can legitimately withdraw or redefine the boundaries of intellectual property.
What we reject is presumably arbitrariness and abuse of discretion, rather than the notion of circumscription of property rights.
I agree with that, but there is a whole different element when it is not your government that nationalizes your property. We have kind of moved away from the international issue over the last few pages, and I think that is why the conversation has moderated so much. If other governments also abided by an understood standard that was agreed on as fair, we wouldn't have a problem, but it seems like in the third world (and in manufacturing powerhouses like China) the governments just say "lol, IP?" which is. . . not satisfying.
I'm not sure that those issues are so much issues with IP (so to speak) as they are problems that arise from dealing with different countries, with a variety of different laws. The only solution I can see to that is global hegemony and law enforcement practices that are consistent throughout the world. Neither of which are particularly practical.
Doing business in other countries (or even other states) means dealing with varying standards. As a business, you need to make different assumptions depending on where you choose to do business - most likely, you are going to have a different calculated loss shipping a truck full of DVD players across Kazakhstan than Kansas. Or even a retail locations in Camden vs. Manhattan.
If you're a company - say, Shell or BP - doing business internationally, there is a certain amount of risk that is built in (and adjusted for) that your foreign assets will be nationalized. It's something that any competent business should consider and prepare for. It's certainly not something favorable, but I fail to see how it's any different for physical property or intellectual property.
We're pretty much dealing with another case where the risks / costs of doing business should be socialized, but the benefits / profits are privatized. Using American diplomatic capital internationally to protect business profits in a way that doesn't benefit America as a whole is just another example of this.
If the companies whose IP is being stolen really wish to, they are more than welcome to refuse to sell in those areas, implement DRM or other IP protection methods, add value to their own products to compete with the knock-offs, utilize their market position and economies of scale to make piracy uneconomical, offer education programs, etc.
I agree 100% on the practical side. I think the difference (which goes back to what Ronya said) is a fear that government authority will not be exercised fairly or in good faith. And when a foreign government says "you stepped in my borders, so now I am taking all of your rights" and that policy is in violation of treaties? That just seem like pretty much the worst faith action you can take. So the problem isn't inherent to the global community. The problem, again, is that some countries are just jerks and there isn't an adequate way to make them stop being jerks.
In a lot of cases, having the government micromanaging who uses their limited monopoly "appropriately" is impossible to do effeciently, so we don't.
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
True, but easements and eminent domain are a thing. A real thing, that affects literally every piece of property - intellectual, physical, or real, that you could possibly own.
It's not a question IF government has the power to do those things - it certainly does, with certain requirements for due process (which, conveniently, are defined by the government)...the question is that if the government, which at least nominally represents the will of the people is willing (and in practical matters, capable) of doing those things.
In general, the answer is no. People won't allow that unless there is an overarching and recognized need that serves the public good. Hence why we have things like 'fair use', DPRA / DCMA royalty rates / schedules, etc.
We can argue up and down if those rates / schedules and the other baggage that goes along with the laws do more harm than good, and if they protect corporate interests more than the rights / interests of the people, but that's secondary to the fact that they are there to at least nominally serve the public good.
That's only good for actual living creators, corporations are immortal so they don't have to worry about dying nearly as much as real people do. That's why its stupid to give organizations/companies the same rights as actual people.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
I think that the best way to go would be a set schedule of X years (like 7 or so) after initial publication the creator / their estate (or whomever purchases it from the creator) would have full rights, with the ability to extend it another term - no strings attached.
Then, at the end of that period (~15-20 years from initial publication), the work would go into the public domain unless the rights holder applied for a limited license. This limited license would amount to public domain for non-commercial use (so books / other work could be re-published at cost, etc) with a set licensing rate for any commercial use. Kind of like how any song that has been released is free to cover regardless of the writer / license holder's wishes, but the person covering the song must pay at most a statutory rate.
Make this a 15-30 year period before full public domain, but allow that limited rights period to be extended for the original creator's lifetime IF they still hold the rights.
This would allow the original creator (or the individual / corporation purchasing their rights) a lengthy period of time to profit from valuable works (30-50 years, pretty much a full adult lifetime and longer than most people receive income from their job). No more of the 'dying poor while people profit off their work' stories. If the creator wants to tightly control their work beyond the law, they don't need to publish it in the first place. No going for the reward without accepting the risk.
Movies, books, software, and other works that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist will be available in a reasonable amount of time for everyone, and if people want to create derivative commerical works they would be able to do so but obligated to compensate the original creator for a set amount of time.
Of course, for a franchise like say...Star Wars...while the original trilogy may be in the 'statutory licensing' period, the derivative works (EU, Prequels, games, etc) might still be in the 'full control' period. That would give the franchise rights holders a huge market advantage.
You've also got the whole issue of trademark, which last forever as long as they are in use, so someone couldn't just slap the Disney / Mickey logo (or Star Wars logo) on their box and pass it off as the 'real thing'.
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
If it goes public domain, it will become a commodity and will basically be sold at a stock value, much like the article you referenced previously inidicated that pretty much any reproduction of a movie sold in China is being sold at $0.70 regardless of initial production value or popularity. So the profit will become very limited, and society as a whole will benifit from being given affortable access to the work of culture.
And at the same time, if the original creator/owner has not been able to recoup their original investment, they likely never will. So all that's left at this point is owners who have already made a profit, continuing to make a profit. This becomes just another way to make the rich get richer.
I am in no way against the rich getting richer on principal, but it should be done through investment into industry (including creative industries) rather than just riding the coattails of something that was originally done 30 years ago. One clearly benifits society, the other clearly benifits only the copywright owner.
Also, can someone point me to a good article discussing the differences between patent, trademark, and copyright? I feel like we may be bandying some terms around when we mean another.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
Good thing copyrights aren't property.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
@ronya - we also should not lose site of what a drastic measure nationalization is. Even eminent domain is not exercised much, and that involves compensation to the injured party! To say that a nation will just take the property of a citizen if another nation without due compensation. . . It strike me as one of the most aggressive acts a nation can take. Not to mention that you make your country a pariah for corporations as well. If one poor nation in Africa respects property rights and one does not, that seems like a signifigant competitive advantage for the right respecting nation in attracting corporate investment, no?
Also, lets not forget that these countries by and large are already required to enforce IP laws as a matter of treaty, so unlike the country that makes a lawful exercise of its power of eminent domain, the country that takes property from other like this does so illegally.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
They do think it belongs to you though - as has been raised several times, if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights.
The problem is that they don't actually do that, technically in violation of their own laws. They ignore it when convenient in an arbitrary manner - which is exactly what you said we reject.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
They do think it belongs to you though - as has been raised several times, if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights.
The problem is that they don't actually do that, technically in violation of their own laws. They ignore it when convenient in an arbitrary manner - which is exactly what you said we reject.
the world would be an interesting place if other countries could freely play constitutional court to your own laws!
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
Of course tax laws can be changed, but such change is affected through a prescribed, lawful process. It is also an axiom of tax design that taxes should only be prospective in nature, and that effective dates should be far enough from the date of passage to give people that chance to plan ahead.
What we are talking about is not akin to a tax anyway. It is the illegal (i.e., in contravention of treaties), ad hoc total taking of one individual's rights. If a country was to pass a law with a prospective effective date saying that from that date on they will not respect any IP, that would be fine IMO. But they are never so consistent or above board.
The prescribed, lawful process is up to each country to determine for itself and it's entirely possible for tax law to change in a day if they wanted to, and be effective immediately.
The prescribed, lawful process is up to each country to determine for itself and it's entirely possible for tax law to change in a day if they wanted to, and be effective immediately.
It is but its terrible policy. Of the type that can lead to widespread noncompliance or even revolution if done enough.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
They do think it belongs to you though - as has been raised several times, if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights.
The problem is that they don't actually do that, technically in violation of their own laws. They ignore it when convenient in an arbitrary manner - which is exactly what you said we reject.
the world would be an interesting place if other countries could freely play constitutional court to your own laws!
It would be nice if I had said that, but in the interests of clarity:
"if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights to the extent of the local law"
This changes nothing about the arbitrariness of how the local government ignores their own local law when convenient.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
They do think it belongs to you though - as has been raised several times, if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights.
The problem is that they don't actually do that, technically in violation of their own laws. They ignore it when convenient in an arbitrary manner - which is exactly what you said we reject.
the world would be an interesting place if other countries could freely play constitutional court to your own laws!
It would be nice if I had said that, but in the interests of clarity:
"if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights to the extent of the local law"
This changes nothing about the arbitrariness of how the local government ignores their own local law when convenient.
and making that judgement is, I am sorry to say, not a right that is granted via Berne.
I note that we have moved from "they don't legislate laws we find acceptable" to "well... okay maybe they do. But they don't enforce them enough!"
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
Of course tax laws can be changed, but such change is affected through a prescribed, lawful process. It is also an axiom of tax design that taxes should only be prospective in nature, and that effective dates should be far enough from the date of passage to give people that chance to plan ahead.
What we are talking about is not akin to a tax anyway. It is the illegal (i.e., in contravention of treaties), ad hoc total taking of one individual's rights. If a country was to pass a law with a prospective effective date saying that from that date on they will not respect any IP, that would be fine IMO. But they are never so consistent or above board.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
They do think it belongs to you though - as has been raised several times, if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights.
The problem is that they don't actually do that, technically in violation of their own laws. They ignore it when convenient in an arbitrary manner - which is exactly what you said we reject.
the world would be an interesting place if other countries could freely play constitutional court to your own laws!
It would be nice if I had said that, but in the interests of clarity:
"if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights to the extent of the local law"
This changes nothing about the arbitrariness of how the local government ignores their own local law when convenient.
and making that judgement is, I am sorry to say, not a right that is granted via Berne.
I note that we have moved from "they don't legislate laws we find acceptable" to "well... okay maybe they do. But they don't enforce them enough!"
Can you quote me on that first one? I think you'll find when I first introduced Berne to this thread I mentioned exactly that it hinges on local law.
I am referring to the thread of argument that my post was responding to, before you quoted it.
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
The way I see it, laws are ultimately intended to help protect the happiness/fulfillment/etc of the people they apply to. Rampant selective enforcement of laws can undermine a society by undermining the legitimacy of the law and the government that upholds them, particularly if they tend to be enforced more consistently against some groups of people than others.
That said, there are times when enforcing a law will cause more harm than benefit even when you account for the secondary effects of not doing so. In such cases enforcing the law defeats the purpose of having the law in the first place and thus makes no sense. In this vein the benefit of infringement for countries whose citizens perform more infringement than they receive is obvious, particularly (but not exclusively) for live-saving medicines and the like.
But what about citizens of "net infringed" countries? Why aren't we generally up in arms about it? There are many good answers to that, including the answers many of us have provided previously in the thread regarding the concept of ownership of duplicatable items, and how no significant harm is being done in the first place.
But as if everything else wasn't enough, add to it the fact that the vast majority of the infringed content is very likely "owned" by the same mega-corporations that are corrupting the political process and the media all for the sake of higher profits. Aside from that, while we generally may not be saints who empty our wallets and spend all our free time helping others, we're also not sociopaths and actually care about other people to some degree even if we'll never meet them.
We're supposed to support action that, in order to be effective, must cause harm of some sort to people in foreign countries, and that theoretically might escalate to the point where people from one or both countries might get killed? When the people on one side are police or military forces from home, and the people from the other country are very likely poor and struggling to get by? When the supposed benefits of all this would go primarily to the same entities that are doing so much to screw things up at home? Would you like to know my feelings on this subject which can only be conveyed in all caps?
FUCK
THAT
SHIT.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
Of course tax laws can be changed, but such change is affected through a prescribed, lawful process. It is also an axiom of tax design that taxes should only be prospective in nature, and that effective dates should be far enough from the date of passage to give people that chance to plan ahead.
What we are talking about is not akin to a tax anyway. It is the illegal (i.e., in contravention of treaties), ad hoc total taking of one individual's rights. If a country was to pass a law with a prospective effective date saying that from that date on they will not respect any IP, that would be fine IMO. But they are never so consistent or above board.
While I disagree with that law pretty strongly, yes, that legitimizes the actions of these countries w/r/t drugs. Still doesn't help with things like DVDs or handbags though.
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
Of course tax laws can be changed, but such change is affected through a prescribed, lawful process. It is also an axiom of tax design that taxes should only be prospective in nature, and that effective dates should be far enough from the date of passage to give people that chance to plan ahead.
What we are talking about is not akin to a tax anyway. It is the illegal (i.e., in contravention of treaties), ad hoc total taking of one individual's rights. If a country was to pass a law with a prospective effective date saying that from that date on they will not respect any IP, that would be fine IMO. But they are never so consistent or above board.
While I disagree with that law pretty strongly, yes, that legitimizes the actions of these countries w/r/t drugs. Still doesn't help with things like DVDs or handbags though.
On what grounds do you disagree with that law?
You've already made allowances for violations of property rights in times of grave need - technically, its called necessity, and it includes cases where you need to break into a house to get a phone to call an ambulance, stealing a car to rush someone to the hospital etcetc - so you're on board with the principle that property rights can be violated if the need is sufficiently large on the individual scale.
You've previously argument that a government legitimately engage in ethnic cleansing, and aside from outright genocide, there's no violation of property rights more fundamental than using the threat of force and/or adverse economic conditions to force someone of their land, so you can't object to the idea of the TRIPS exception by arguing that the government has some obligation to maintain property rights that goes aboves the individuals obligation to respect them. Nor can you really object to the fundamental idea that the government can seize property "from anyone at an any time" - there's hardly any property seizure more arbitrary than one precceded by a military invasion.
How can you express dislike for a law that enshrines the legality of an act you've argued a government is obliged to take whether its illegal or not?
If you put it to a democratic one-man-one-vote, most of the world's population would be in favour of things that work for poor countries rather than rich countries, because most people alive today are poor.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
Of course tax laws can be changed, but such change is affected through a prescribed, lawful process. It is also an axiom of tax design that taxes should only be prospective in nature, and that effective dates should be far enough from the date of passage to give people that chance to plan ahead.
What we are talking about is not akin to a tax anyway. It is the illegal (i.e., in contravention of treaties), ad hoc total taking of one individual's rights. If a country was to pass a law with a prospective effective date saying that from that date on they will not respect any IP, that would be fine IMO. But they are never so consistent or above board.
While I disagree with that law pretty strongly, yes, that legitimizes the actions of these countries w/r/t drugs. Still doesn't help with things like DVDs or handbags though.
On what grounds do you disagree with that law?
You've already made allowances for violations of property rights in times of grave need - technically, its called necessity, and it includes cases where you need to break into a house to get a phone to call an ambulance, stealing a car to rush someone to the hospital etcetc - so you're on board with the principle that property rights can be violated if the need is sufficiently large on the individual scale.
You've previously argument that a government legitimately engage in ethnic cleansing, and aside from outright genocide, there's no violation of property rights more fundamental than using the threat of force and/or adverse economic conditions to force someone of their land, so you can't object to the idea that the government has some obligation to maintain property rights that goes aboves the individuals obligation to respect them. Or really the fundamental idea that the government can seize property "from anyone at an any time" - there's hardly any property seizure more arbitrary than one precceded by a military invasion.
How can you express dislike for a law that enshrines the legality of an act you've argued a government is obliged to take whether its illegal or not?
And along these lines, SKFM's opinion is that a government is supposed to put the interests of its own citizens above those of all others - presumably including foreign IP holders. With the pharmaceutical examples, that's literally your citizens' lives vs a foreign corporation's profits. I don't see how he could expect any other course of action given they can't actually pay the asked price in the first place
Even in the case of sanctions, there may be a net benefit to not having your citizens die from preventable causes and hope to get through the sanctions better off anyway
Posts
I don't think it's government inefficiency that's the main hurdle for governments micromanaging limited monopolies, I think it's because in general people dislike the fruits of their labour being appropriated by the government in the same way they don't like the government raiding their bank accounts to pay for stuff.
You think Cyprus caused a few ripples? I think you'd be pretty annoyed if the government decided your car could be better used by the family on food stamps down the street.
I've never liked the "lifetime of the creator" factors that go into copyright duration. I'm not sure how a work can be deemed to have an amortization lifetime half that of another simply because one author was 80 and one author was 20. I do think that limited lifetimes before full copyright expiry and the work enters into public domain are appropriate - after a certain point, the reason why a particular work is still considered to have value is due to the body of work that the community has created around it. Star Wars wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it is now if kids (and adults) didn't want to dress up as their favorite characters, create fanfiction, or write criticism and discourse to enhance discussion.
It would be pretty hilarious if it were applied literally to companies though - any acquisition or merger could potentially wipe out hundreds of protections by causing the "death" of one of the legal entities.
Plus the current system and your proposed extensions still leaves Alan Moore hating the various film adaptations of his work. As soon as we move away from the author and just move to the owner, then they've really got the same connection to the initial work as the consumer does. The rules exist as a means to more Art, the fact that this is done by making the creation of Art into a viable business is just because this is the best way to achieve this goal.
The important thing is that art is made, not money.
I think the important thing is that people are compensated for their work and that rights holders don't have their exclusive rights to control infringed on. Alan Moore choosing to work for a company in a creative capacity or to sell his work to a company and then not liking how it is used is completely different from someone else just taking his work and copying/using it.
True, but easements and eminent domain are a thing. A real thing, that affects literally every piece of property - intellectual, physical, or real, that you could possibly own.
It's not a question IF government has the power to do those things - it certainly does, with certain requirements for due process (which, conveniently, are defined by the government)...the question is that if the government, which at least nominally represents the will of the people is willing (and in practical matters, capable) of doing those things.
In general, the answer is no. People won't allow that unless there is an overarching and recognized need that serves the public good. Hence why we have things like 'fair use', DPRA / DCMA royalty rates / schedules, etc.
We can argue up and down if those rates / schedules and the other baggage that goes along with the laws do more harm than good, and if they protect corporate interests more than the rights / interests of the people, but that's secondary to the fact that they are there to at least nominally serve the public good.
I think that the best way to go would be a set schedule of X years (like 7 or so) after initial publication the creator / their estate (or whomever purchases it from the creator) would have full rights, with the ability to extend it another term - no strings attached.
Then, at the end of that period (~15-20 years from initial publication), the work would go into the public domain unless the rights holder applied for a limited license. This limited license would amount to public domain for non-commercial use (so books / other work could be re-published at cost, etc) with a set licensing rate for any commercial use. Kind of like how any song that has been released is free to cover regardless of the writer / license holder's wishes, but the person covering the song must pay at most a statutory rate.
Make this a 15-30 year period before full public domain, but allow that limited rights period to be extended for the original creator's lifetime IF they still hold the rights.
This would allow the original creator (or the individual / corporation purchasing their rights) a lengthy period of time to profit from valuable works (30-50 years, pretty much a full adult lifetime and longer than most people receive income from their job). No more of the 'dying poor while people profit off their work' stories. If the creator wants to tightly control their work beyond the law, they don't need to publish it in the first place. No going for the reward without accepting the risk.
Movies, books, software, and other works that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist will be available in a reasonable amount of time for everyone, and if people want to create derivative commerical works they would be able to do so but obligated to compensate the original creator for a set amount of time.
Of course, for a franchise like say...Star Wars...while the original trilogy may be in the 'statutory licensing' period, the derivative works (EU, Prequels, games, etc) might still be in the 'full control' period. That would give the franchise rights holders a huge market advantage.
You've also got the whole issue of trademark, which last forever as long as they are in use, so someone couldn't just slap the Disney / Mickey logo (or Star Wars logo) on their box and pass it off as the 'real thing'.
Why go to the full public domain model at all though? I can support statutory licensing fees, but I really don't understand why at any point in time while there is an extent right holder for Star Wars someone else should be able to just take the movies and sell them for profit. Why on earth should that be the case?
I also don't understand why we would care about the creator/owner distinction. If I hire you to do creative work, you have been compensated for it. Why should my claim be lesser than yours would if you made it yourself (which probably would not have happened without me paying you a salary so that you can create full time)?
Not every creator has the resources to do that. If an artist is poor they don't have an estate to manage the IP and they shouldn't have to sell it to a corporation for that benefit since the creator's inheritors would lose out on profit sharing partially or completely - which is unacceptable.
There's an overlap, sometimes, but you know why there's a distinction. You really need to say "owner" when you talk about this because that's what you mean, not creator. Owners aren't creators if they never participated in creating the content. The claim is lesser because the owner didn't do shit to create the IP, they either bought it or
had a contract which the company is given the rights since they're an employee. That shouldn't be an equal claim on the IP, that's an insult to the actual creators. It shouldn't matter if the owners gave them the resources to make the IP, either.
Well, if there is a statutory licensing model in place for all IP, it does admittedly take away a lot of the need for a full public domain model. I'd probably find that alone (haggle on price and timelines) acceptable reform to copyright.
The reason I see a need for a full public domain model is that works become so fully assimilated and part of culture that allowing any individual company / corporation (Disney...) to control their release and availability does a public disservice. This goes away with a statutory licensing model, where if Disney wants to lock something in a vault for decades, someone else can then provide it (but need to provide Disney a cut).
In that statutory licensing model, Disney still has the ability to do the 'authentic Disney' / collectable / bundle their exclusive franchise works as a major value-add. They lose a lot of control over timing and the 'Disney Vault' model suffers a decent loss of value, but it would be a fair compromise.
I'd still say the renewals should be voluntary, and failure to renew or make a published work commercially available would result in it being considered 'abandoned' or 'orphaned' and fall to the public domain in some timeline.
The thing I see with a creator / owner distinction is mostly appeal to emotion. I don't like the idea of an artist dying in poverty while their works make $TEXAS. The 'creator' is an artist. If they own the rights, they (may have - not always) created that work out of their own time and effort. Maybe to sell for money, maybe the profit was incidental. Whereas a rights 'owner' purchased those rights or funded that creation as an investment. Which is good and all that, but it was a business decision.
I am not a fan of perpetual anything. I think that - at death, or some designated point afterwards, rights must pass or expire. Since corporations are effectively immortal, this results in a necessarily absurd situation where rights to ideas are effectively only owned by the first person to come up with that idea - forever, or discrimination against real people for only being able to live ~120 years at best.
In addition, the company almost always bears the risk of the creation process. There are plenty of "inventions" that don't result in anything of value - plenty of pharmaceuticals that fail in their field trials, books that no-one buys, songs that never break the iTunes charts. On one hand you get The Avengers making billions of dollars, and on the other you get John Carter writing off $200million. Those who endorse "creators rights" often demand only the profits of success, and never the penalties of failure. Being able to provide creators with a guaranteed income regardless of the failures of their products is the strongest action companies can take to promote creativity (well, unless the string of failures takes down the company).
Wait, so you are saying that because some creators are poor and can't manage IP, no one should have the benefit of enforcing their claims?
The participation in creating the content is funding it. That is relevant, no? Not to mention that companies don't usually passively fund one artist to sit around making whatever art he likes. The more common model is a team, all hired by the company, working together collaboratively to create something. I don't see how someone could say that the Walt Disney corporation wasn't involved in the creation of Mulan, for example. They assembled the team, and that team was all employees of the company doing the work the company hired them to do.
I think we are largely on the same page here. The only thing is that I don't see why a corporation shouldn't be able to hold the rights forever, as long as it is using them. I agree that the Disney vault model is a net harm to society, and I would have no problem telling right holders that if they don't make their IP available, then they either lose the right to control it or lose the ability to tell anyone who is willing to pay a nominal fee that they can distribute it. If Disney is told that they need to either actively sell Cinderella on blu ray and dvd or let someone else do it in exchange for a $1 per disc sold, I suspect they will stop putting things in the vault pretty quickly.
Another interesting issue is format. I think that even if Disney is selling Cinderalla on blu ray and dvd, that doesn't mean that someone shouldn't be able to also sell it digitally if disney is not doing that. Again, we either force right holders to make their property available in a socially beneficial way, or we take away their exclusive control. That seems eminently reasonable to me. We'll protect your property rights and control over decisions, as long as your decision isn't to literally withhold your property from the world.
And as zagdrob pointed out eminent domain is indeed A Thing. It would be mighty hard to foment communist revolution if people, in general, held a dislike for the idea that the government should be redistributing assets based on need.
Since communist revolutions did indeed occur, with a mind-blowingly large number of adherents, I think its fairly safe to say that the problem with five year plans is that they're poor reflections of a shifting reality and thus an ineffecient use of the means of production, rather than an inability to find people who think implementing a five year plan is a good idea.
Why not apply the reductio in reverse here? Governments can legitimately tax. Governments can legitimately nationalize. And governments can legitimately withdraw or redefine the boundaries of intellectual property.
What we reject is presumably arbitrariness and abuse of discretion, rather than the notion of circumscription of property rights.
I agree with that, but there is a whole different element when it is not your government that nationalizes your property. We have kind of moved away from the international issue over the last few pages, and I think that is why the conversation has moderated so much. If other governments also abided by an understood standard that was agreed on as fair, we wouldn't have a problem, but it seems like in the third world (and in manufacturing powerhouses like China) the governments just say "lol, IP?" which is. . . not satisfying.
Why is that different? Don't foreigners pay taxes too? Has some grave injustice been committed when a government opts to raise taxes on highly liquid investments, investments that foreigners may have purchased in the expectation of low taxes?
The point is that the government, in the interest of public wellbeing, can do violate property rights to a large degree, and SKFMs question about whether the government could mandate discounts to certain groups is odd - that's how it already work.
No. I'm making inferences about peoples willingness to have their assets redistributed by the government based on their participation in communist revolutions - where large scale governmental redistribution of all property was a major part of the whole idea. You tried to suggest that people generally oppose having the government take your car and give it to your neighbour and that's why this isn't done. I feel the millions of people who actively fought to ensure that the government could do just that, means that people "in general" do not actually dislike having the fruits of their labour appropriated by the government.
The fact that this is an economically inefficient way of doing things, and thus a really fucking bad idea, is completely separate from whether people think its a good idea -and any history book will tell you a fuckton of people used to think it was a fairly good idea. Please, show me where I used the smashing success of communism to suggest that we should do away with all intellectual property laws.
Was it when I said five years plans don't actually work? Yeah, I thought that part was unclear and might be misinterpretated as praise for communism when I wrote it, sorry about that.
I'm not sure that those issues are so much issues with IP (so to speak) as they are problems that arise from dealing with different countries, with a variety of different laws. The only solution I can see to that is global hegemony and law enforcement practices that are consistent throughout the world. Neither of which are particularly practical.
Doing business in other countries (or even other states) means dealing with varying standards. As a business, you need to make different assumptions depending on where you choose to do business - most likely, you are going to have a different calculated loss shipping a truck full of DVD players across Kazakhstan than Kansas. Or even a retail locations in Camden vs. Manhattan.
If you're a company - say, Shell or BP - doing business internationally, there is a certain amount of risk that is built in (and adjusted for) that your foreign assets will be nationalized. It's something that any competent business should consider and prepare for. It's certainly not something favorable, but I fail to see how it's any different for physical property or intellectual property.
We're pretty much dealing with another case where the risks / costs of doing business should be socialized, but the benefits / profits are privatized. Using American diplomatic capital internationally to protect business profits in a way that doesn't benefit America as a whole is just another example of this.
If the companies whose IP is being stolen really wish to, they are more than welcome to refuse to sell in those areas, implement DRM or other IP protection methods, add value to their own products to compete with the knock-offs, utilize their market position and economies of scale to make piracy uneconomical, offer education programs, etc.
I agree 100% on the practical side. I think the difference (which goes back to what Ronya said) is a fear that government authority will not be exercised fairly or in good faith. And when a foreign government says "you stepped in my borders, so now I am taking all of your rights" and that policy is in violation of treaties? That just seem like pretty much the worst faith action you can take. So the problem isn't inherent to the global community. The problem, again, is that some countries are just jerks and there isn't an adequate way to make them stop being jerks.
If it goes public domain, it will become a commodity and will basically be sold at a stock value, much like the article you referenced previously inidicated that pretty much any reproduction of a movie sold in China is being sold at $0.70 regardless of initial production value or popularity. So the profit will become very limited, and society as a whole will benifit from being given affortable access to the work of culture.
And at the same time, if the original creator/owner has not been able to recoup their original investment, they likely never will. So all that's left at this point is owners who have already made a profit, continuing to make a profit. This becomes just another way to make the rich get richer.
I am in no way against the rich getting richer on principal, but it should be done through investment into industry (including creative industries) rather than just riding the coattails of something that was originally done 30 years ago. One clearly benifits society, the other clearly benifits only the copywright owner.
Also, can someone point me to a good article discussing the differences between patent, trademark, and copyright? I feel like we may be bandying some terms around when we mean another.
It's not that they are jerks, inasmuch as they think that this doesn't belong to you.
And now we are returning to the type of rhetoric that first prompted the suggestion that more force ought to be used against these countries. Countries can lose legitimacy when they fail to protect their people's property rights. It seems to me that telling foreign citizens from powerful nations that you don't care about their property and are taking it from them would not be the most prudent course of action if said nation cares about remaining a nation in good standing in the international community.
Good thing copyrights aren't property.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Also, lets not forget that these countries by and large are already required to enforce IP laws as a matter of treaty, so unlike the country that makes a lawful exercise of its power of eminent domain, the country that takes property from other like this does so illegally.
which, as I pointed out, is true of pretty much every raising of taxes that affects foreigners to some degree
now there is much to be said against the notion of going to war against countries that dare to nationalize your stuff, on moral grounds, but as a practical matter this is no longer credible as a threat. even at the height of colonial extraction, expenses generally exceeded gains. it was only ever attractive because the gains went to a tiny elite, whereas the costs could be widely distributed. today war is even more costly and non-war is ever more attractive, even if it means accepting that someone has the audacity to tax you. If you still desire war, your opponents are not five thousand miles across the sea. Your opponents are sitting opposite you, across the benches, and they very much doubt that the allegedly fabulous gains from proto-colonial conquest will accrue to them.
I am the last person to object to the argument from prudence. There are endless frothing socialists who are shocked, shocked that when a plucky anti-colonial revolutionary movement seized farmland and mines, their newfound revolutionary government suddenly found all their nearby enemies being armed with Western guns. We only failed because the capitalists of the world turned against us! Well, yeah, I wonder why? But I also recognize that in general Americans did not benefit much from Latin American adventurism.
The problem is that they don't actually do that, technically in violation of their own laws. They ignore it when convenient in an arbitrary manner - which is exactly what you said we reject.
This again goes back to your point about consistent enforcement. A tax is the result of a formal government enactment, and once you know of it, you can plan accordingly. Not so with the illegal and random seizure of rights by a foreign government. I grant that governments have the right to tax, but that does not mean that they have the right to just seize anything from anyone at any time.
the world would be an interesting place if other countries could freely play constitutional court to your own laws!
Really? So governments are not allowed to change tax law, merely because someone has already bought stuff in anticipation of such and such a level of taxes on its return?
Of course tax laws can be changed, but such change is affected through a prescribed, lawful process. It is also an axiom of tax design that taxes should only be prospective in nature, and that effective dates should be far enough from the date of passage to give people that chance to plan ahead.
What we are talking about is not akin to a tax anyway. It is the illegal (i.e., in contravention of treaties), ad hoc total taking of one individual's rights. If a country was to pass a law with a prospective effective date saying that from that date on they will not respect any IP, that would be fine IMO. But they are never so consistent or above board.
It is but its terrible policy. Of the type that can lead to widespread noncompliance or even revolution if done enough.
"if they have their own copyright or patent laws (which almost all of them do) then the Berne and Paris conventions oblige them to defend your rights to the extent of the local law"
This changes nothing about the arbitrariness of how the local government ignores their own local law when convenient.
and making that judgement is, I am sorry to say, not a right that is granted via Berne.
I note that we have moved from "they don't legislate laws we find acceptable" to "well... okay maybe they do. But they don't enforce them enough!"
well this should make you happy then
Can you quote me on that first one? I think you'll find when I first introduced Berne to this thread I mentioned exactly that it hinges on local law.
That said, there are times when enforcing a law will cause more harm than benefit even when you account for the secondary effects of not doing so. In such cases enforcing the law defeats the purpose of having the law in the first place and thus makes no sense. In this vein the benefit of infringement for countries whose citizens perform more infringement than they receive is obvious, particularly (but not exclusively) for live-saving medicines and the like.
But what about citizens of "net infringed" countries? Why aren't we generally up in arms about it? There are many good answers to that, including the answers many of us have provided previously in the thread regarding the concept of ownership of duplicatable items, and how no significant harm is being done in the first place.
But as if everything else wasn't enough, add to it the fact that the vast majority of the infringed content is very likely "owned" by the same mega-corporations that are corrupting the political process and the media all for the sake of higher profits. Aside from that, while we generally may not be saints who empty our wallets and spend all our free time helping others, we're also not sociopaths and actually care about other people to some degree even if we'll never meet them.
We're supposed to support action that, in order to be effective, must cause harm of some sort to people in foreign countries, and that theoretically might escalate to the point where people from one or both countries might get killed? When the people on one side are police or military forces from home, and the people from the other country are very likely poor and struggling to get by? When the supposed benefits of all this would go primarily to the same entities that are doing so much to screw things up at home? Would you like to know my feelings on this subject which can only be conveyed in all caps?
FUCK
THAT
SHIT.
While I disagree with that law pretty strongly, yes, that legitimizes the actions of these countries w/r/t drugs. Still doesn't help with things like DVDs or handbags though.
You've already made allowances for violations of property rights in times of grave need - technically, its called necessity, and it includes cases where you need to break into a house to get a phone to call an ambulance, stealing a car to rush someone to the hospital etcetc - so you're on board with the principle that property rights can be violated if the need is sufficiently large on the individual scale.
You've previously argument that a government legitimately engage in ethnic cleansing, and aside from outright genocide, there's no violation of property rights more fundamental than using the threat of force and/or adverse economic conditions to force someone of their land, so you can't object to the idea of the TRIPS exception by arguing that the government has some obligation to maintain property rights that goes aboves the individuals obligation to respect them. Nor can you really object to the fundamental idea that the government can seize property "from anyone at an any time" - there's hardly any property seizure more arbitrary than one precceded by a military invasion.
How can you express dislike for a law that enshrines the legality of an act you've argued a government is obliged to take whether its illegal or not?
edit: I misplaced an important negation >_>
And along these lines, SKFM's opinion is that a government is supposed to put the interests of its own citizens above those of all others - presumably including foreign IP holders. With the pharmaceutical examples, that's literally your citizens' lives vs a foreign corporation's profits. I don't see how he could expect any other course of action given they can't actually pay the asked price in the first place
Even in the case of sanctions, there may be a net benefit to not having your citizens die from preventable causes and hope to get through the sanctions better off anyway