We need more examples?
Seriously, though, there are options in between keeping copyright as it is and removing it altogether. Shortening the term is one. Mandatory mechanical licensing is another (that is, allowing people to make copies for a fee set by the government or a nonpartisan board without requiring permission from the copyright owner, who does, however, receive the fee—the trick is setting the fee at a level that makes it reasonable for the average person making a single copy, but still high enough to make it unattractive for corporations churning out millions of them). We also need to overhaul how derivative works are handled, and some aspects of trademark law.
Another option is to not allow copying of digital copyrighted works, but do allow resale/gifting and require storefronts to offer something like that. I can do that with physical goods, and that’s most of the reason I’d want to copy a copyrighted work (e.g. to send to a friend).
I think trademark law is generally fine as-is, but patent and copyright law are atrocious. My proposal:
- cut copyright to the original 14 year term (or perhaps 10), and allow a one-time renewal if you can prove financial hardship (e.g. small creators who didn’t get traction with their product)
- cut patents to 7 years, and allow a one-time renewal of 5 years when going to market (so max 12 years if it takes 7 years to bring a product to market); maybe an exception if the product is stuck with regulators
- don’t require lawsuits to keep trademark, only require filing of a potential violation with the trademark office; you can sue, but that shouldn’t be necessary to “defend” your trademark
Well, I guess we’ll never see any developments in mathematics or theoretical physics. No copyright there except journals paywalling our work and paying us absolutely nothing. Oh wait…
We live in an era of copyblight - it’s an era we won’t leave until the caveman mentality of “this mine, no touch or I hurt” fizzles out. Give it another 5000 or so years maybe?
As an artist, I like having the ability to tell people they cannot host my commercial works, cannot claim my own writing or characters for themselves, cannot reproduce them for profit, need my permission to sell them.
I think copyright abuse is rampant and favors corporate entities far too much in most countries, but I think the solution is reform not destruction of the system.
I’m more open to burning the whole edifice of copyright law down than you are, but the key reform that I want that maybe we could agree on is that it should be legal to distribute coprighted works for free. No need to to let someone else try to make a profit by undercutting your sales, but if someone is willing to make and distribute copies (or ecopies) of a work to no profit for themselves they should be allowed to. What that would mean in practice if it was legal would be an online content library containing all human art and culture, freely available for download to all comers. It might hurt the income of some creators, but you’d still have a lot of other ways to make money that don’t entail depriving people of that library.
You can have that library today (see: Project Gutenberg), just on a delay. The problem, IMO, is that the delay is much too long. If copyright only lasted 10 years, it would be much more useful as a store of human knowledge. We could even allow an application for a longer term for smaller creators who need more time to monetize their works.
That’s pretty close to how it used to work in the US, it has just been twisted by large orgs like Disney and the RIAA.
Yeah Project Gutenberg really demonstrates how this is all pretty much already built, just illegal to include recent works in. Though of course that’s just books where the post copyright free library could also include all other art and culture such as tv, radio, movies, images, games, etc
Alright but Archiving is already an exception to most laws (clearly not well enforced seeing what happened to the IA) and your proposal would harm new artists who need to share their works in order to gain publicity for something they intend to sell and sustain themselves on.
“your proposal would harm young artists who need to share their works in order to gain publicity for something they intend to sell and sustain themselves on.”
The default is already for young artists to share a lot of their work hoping to get noticed. Getting rid of copyright would be reorienting the whole system to center that experience more rather than the established artists and art producing corporations who now are in a strong enough position to charge. “Making it” would just mean that your patreon was doing gangbusters rather than selling a lot of copies of whatever your art is.
Do you like suing people in a court of law to enforce these rights?
What if in a world of billions of people someone makes stories or characters similar to yours. Should you sue them? What if they sue you and have better lawyers and more money. Are you prepared to go to court?
I think you are experiencing a sunken cost fallacy. Unless you have the time and money to enforce copyright then it will never work for you, only against you.
I like having the options to sue in a court of law to enforce these rights a lot more than not having rights at all.
Keep saying that when a big corporation takes your work for theirs and then sues you.
We have already past the tipping point where content creators are now paying more for their work to be heard then getting paid for their work.
Corporations are controlling our very culture with the framework that makes you feel like you have rights. There is a major disconnect here.
cannot claim my own writing or characters for themselves
If by “claim” you mean falsify authorship, I suspect this would still be illegal even without all the copyright laws.
I like having the ability to tell people … cannot reproduce them
Well, this is a problem.
If by “claim” you mean falsify authorship, I suspect this would still be illegal even without all the copyright laws.
You would be wrong, in the USA at least.
The notion that every person has to somehow protect their works for all of their life and beyond the grave is obviously dumb and purely favors corporations at the cost of pitting artists against themselves and fans.
Let’s not forget that copyright enforcement is mostly funded by taxpayers. It’s a collectively massive cost to the rest of us.
It probably made sense for a limited time when we (society) were getting something of comparable value (cultural works) in return. But now that it’s effectively endless, and dominated by corporations, it looks an awful lot like systematic extraction of wealth… from us.
Well I for one have never heard about anybody doing anything creative without being paid for it.
/s
