One of the clearest demonstrations of how copyright is actively harmful is the lawsuit that four of the biggest publishers brought against the Internet Archive. As a result of the judge’s decision in favour of the publishers – currently being appealed – more than 500,000 books have been taken out of lending by the Internet Archive, including more than 1,300 banned and “challenged” books. In an open letter to the publishers in the lawsuit, the Internet Archive lists three core reasons why removing half a million ebooks is “having a devastating impact in the US and around the world, with far-reaching implications”.
Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17259314
Overhauling copyright is not the same as getting rid of copyright. How about those artists that make original art, graphic novels or movies, how are they supposed to sustain themselves? Are you saying that the copyright is held too long?
The purpose of copyright is to promote science and the useful arts. The purpose is to get art and inventions into the public domain. The purpose is not “to get artists paid”. Getting them paid for their works and discoveries is the method by which copyright achieves its purpose. It is not the purpose itself.
If they are only interested in keeping their works proprietary; if they are uninterested in pushing them into the public domain, they are not achieving the purpose for which copyright exists. They do not qualify for copyright protection. They can get bent.
Says someone that has never made anything. Do you think art, music, etc. comes magically out of nowhere? I don’t really care to fight about what the original intent of copyright is, artists and every person should own their own bodies, likeness, voices and creative outputs.
Then you can get bent.
Art and invention benefit the whole of humanity. A work whose sole beneficiary is its creator does not qualify as art or invention, and deserves no protection.
The current copyright system is absurd, but protecting an artist’s work in the short term is what copyright was meant for originally. 70 years post death is way beyond ridiculous, but something like 5 years from conception makes sense. That way a creator gets a short period to profit off their work while it’s protected, and then it would enter public domain and anyone could do as they wish with it.
Unfortunately it would still allow a situation where someone presents a screenplay to a studio, and gets turned down, and then 5 years later the studio makes a movie from that screenplay and makes a billion dollars without the creator getting anything from it. That’s what copyright is meant to prevent, but it has definitely gotten twisted and corrupted over the years, mostly thanks to Disney.
Exactly. I don’t have a problem with artists profiting from their work. I don’t have a problem with their temporary exclusivity. The problem I have is when they never intend for that work to belong to the people; when they think they can maintain control over an idea long after it has become “culture”.
For the problem you mention, I would suggest that any studio who has been offered the work during the five year period owes royalties for a 5-year period after the studio publishes the work, even if it has since entered the public domain. Something along those lines would likely become a standard clause between the screenwriter’s guild and the studios, and doesn’t necessarily need to be enacted in law.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a longer period for some major works. Start with a standard, 5-year period from the time of original publication, then allow an extended copyright registration with an exponentially increasing annual fee. A few additional years would likely be affordable. The fifth, possibly. The sixth, only for the most profitable franchises, and the seventh being a large fraction of the national GDP. If James Cameron wants to pay for the entire military establishment through the proceeds of Avatar III, he can get one more year of protection.
I personally think so. 20-30 years for the authors would be enough, in my opinion. For company held copyright, it should be 8-12 years, counting from the date of creation - transferring the rights back to an individual would NOT give any extra time
That’d make basically every game and movie become public domain after a decade or so. If you applied 30 years of copyright to everything, nowadays we’d have public access to every game released up to 1994, which means the majority of the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis catalogs.
Too bad any change wouldn’t apply retroactively, so we’d still have to wait for the 2030s to come by before 1940s stuff becomes public domain.
These changes could be applied retroactively; this isn’t like creating an ex post facto law and then jailing people for breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time of the event.
I agree with 20-30. Stuff I’ve sold 20 years ago I’m not going to touch again ever. If someone gets creative with it , go for it. In my opinion.
It can be a tough call depending on what type of creation it is. I’m more undecided on how to limit ongoing properties. Life of creator? I don’t know. That’s tough.
Technically unlimited, but with an exponentially increasing annual registration fee.
I think for ongoing properties, it could create an interesting competition between different companies/artists, and I’d expect the original creators to fully cash in on “I’m the creator of [whatever], this is the real canon!” in order to keep loyal customers/fans
I fully expect game companies to not like this one bit, because live service games, like World of Warcraft or Fortnite, would, sooner or later, have to release source code in the public domain, allowing anyone to check it, create identical, better or worse clones or, worse, hacking tools that might still work on the more current version.
For stuff like the current offering of Adobe that relies so fucking much on “the cloud”, now that would be tricky and another significant battle, as they’d eventually have to give up the code for Illustrator, Photoshop, etc, as well as whatever server software their cloud uses, or point to said cloud’s owner. The same would apply for Autodesk, Corel, Microsoft, Apple and Google. Imagine finally having an open source Windows XP! 😆
EDIT: What is a lot more likely to become problematic is server-side bank software and some government software that is used for a country’s respective army or intelligence services. Boy, THOSE will definitely fight, or want a very specific clause for their cases, which makes sense.
Generally speaking all the money is made in a very short time after release compared to the life of copyright
So? If you spent years making a movie, don’t you think you should keep the rights for the movie for awhile? I have many friends that have careers with their style of art.
I’m not against piracy in general, you should absolutely go after the evil corporations. I’m saying that for the small time artist, they need protections.
Yeah but it’s too long
I’m fairly sure that at this point pirating has been shown to lead to increased sales, even of small scale productions.
Also, no one said that people can’t keep the rights for a while, just that if you don’t let people access those things you don’t get to prosecute them for making the art available.