Consumers vs. IP Owners: The Future of Copyright 415
conJunk writes "The BBC has a thoughtful article about new challenges in copyright. The problem: The rights to the audio recordings of the Beatles first album will expire in 2013. While consumers stand to benefit from competing releases of the materials, the copyright owners are of course terrified. And the artists? This one doesn't even seem to affect them."
Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
US copyright will be extended by then (Score:3, Insightful)
That gives them seven years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "owners" (Score:5, Insightful)
What copyright *is* is a time-limited monopoly granted by the state, with the expectation that you will use this incentive to create stuff that society as a whole benefits from; it's not and never was supposed to be a never-ending money making machine.
Using words like "property" and "own" to describe copyright just reinforces the (wrong) idea that copyrights should not ever run out in the minds of the general, uninformed public.
It's essential that this happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Limited copyright is an essential element to maintaining a consistent creative human spirit. By allowing works to be protected for a limited amount of time, the artist can comfortably turn some profit on their creation. But by allowing that protection to lapse, another creator can pick up the work of the original artist and manipulate it, turning it into something different. The whole of human creativity depends on building upon the works of others.
It's pretty frightening to think about the incredible lengths that IP holders are going to these days to increase the length of copyright ever further, all in the name of limited, short-term profits. They represent an immeasurable threat. Think about it: if copyright never expired, where would the motivation to innovate come from? There would be none, if you could indefinitely profit from one or two ideas.
Free Culture [amazon.com] by Lawrence Lessig has some very enlightened analysis on this subject.Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not an incentive to produce. Prior to copyright law content creators had to keep creating to feed themselves, whereas the system we have now says, "Create a winner, milk it for the rest of your life."
the summary says it all .. (Score:2, Insightful)
wait ... i'm not a citizen, i'm a consumer/taxpayer
i exist to provide revenue streams for corporations and governmentsDamn you Marx !! How could you let us down like this ??!!
/rant
long week in the cubicle forest. i'll shut up and go home now ... and drown my angst with ... consumption
Why is copyright assignable? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of copyright problems would obviated if this were enforced as written. The Beatles' works for instance would be controlled by Sir Paul and Ringo. Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain because his inventor and author is dead. Bands, not labels, would control their music. Inventors, not IP holding corporations, would control their inventions.
You cannot sign away your inherent legal rights--no matter how many contracts I sign with you, it does not allow you to act fraudulently or negligently toward. Imagine if copyright worked the same way--if it were illegal to sign away your copyright. A lot of bullshit would be avoided IMO.
Consumers vs. IP holders my foot! (Score:5, Insightful)
This about those who would treat copyright as a pure property right vs. those who don't. Almost everybody who wants copyright treated as a pure property right doesn't create anything. They are a publisher or corporation who aggregates the copyrights of all its employees, or some other entity concerned with the accumulation of coprights.
Accumulating an asset that has a built in time when it becomes utterly worthless is a very unpleasant proposition. It is much nicer and more convenient to treat the asset as some sort of durable good like a box of bolts or something. In fact, copyright has the potential for being the perfect asset since it doesn't decay at all!
But, the people who do create know that being able to create relies on a rich environment of ideas to draw from. Treating copyrights as a pure asset destroys that environment and creates an environment where the only things that get created are those the primary holders of copyrights are willing to allow to be created.
It really irritates me when I see the word 'consumer' when I hear talk about copyrights. There are no 'consumers', there are people. Everybody writes things and says stuff, and many people sing or dance or make up silly lyrics or any number of things.
This isn't about 'consumers', those incredibly dumb entities that eat products and shit cash. Casting it as that kind of a fight is inane.
Re:That gives them seven years... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I could freely get any song or movie (and you can be sure that people would post online mirrors of DVDs and CDs) in just 3 years, I don't know if I'd every buy another one during the time of protection.
The situation with software is different because there are (sometimes) actual productivity gains from newer versions. But you can bet that I wouldn't buy the latest copy of Visual Studio unless I was doing something in C# that needed generics (2003 works well enough), wouldn't buy Office, wouldn't buy Photoshop (not that I have it now), etc. With a 2-3 year span, that's barely the release cycle. You think you see compatibility problems now? Wait until software companies REALLY have to force you to upgrade.
I *really* don't think I'm in the minority here. I'm perhaps a bit more patient than some would be with regards to the movies and music, but stuff that's more than 3 years old are still big movers in stores.
The original copyright term was 14 yr, renewable once. I personally think that this is about as short as you should get, and I like the idea of protection for the life of the author or an equivalent term for companies.
So what do the beatles have to say about it? (Score:2, Insightful)
He got monkey finger he shoot coca-cola
He say I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me
Re:Compromise (Score:1, Insightful)
Somewhere along the line people got convinced that copyright was actually a right and not a social contract, and now we have people suggesting compromises when the system is already overfair for the copyright holder.
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rediculously, as opposed to Greendiculously or Bluediculously.
Let's face it, some films don't even make it to the screen but are marketed straight to DVD. Most popular music is going to see it's highest percentage of payoff in the first year, declining over time with only spurts when it comes back to public conciousness, as an old song in a movie (i.e. Satchmo's It's a Beautiful World, revived in Good Morning Viet Nam)
Films are in the theater and then on store shelves within the year, unless you are George "Let's actually have Han shoot first" Lucas.
3 years is plenty of time.
Re:Not "owners" (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. From "I don't own this music, but I do own this copy of the music" I can deduce "I have the right to give this copy of the music to my friend, but I do not have the right to copy it and keep a copy when I give it to my friend. I also have the right to let my friend listen to my copy of this music. I also have the right to let my friend borrow my copy of this music. I also have the right to sell my copy of this music for whatever price I set if I can find someone willing to pay that price."
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, you are in the minority. Look how many people see movies in theatres and pay $25+ for 2 people to get a single viewing. They can wait 3 months and buy the DVD for $15 or rent it for $3 (a savings of 88%). Yet millions of people still go to the theatre for most movies, and 10's of millions go for big hits.
2 or 3 years is a long time for movies. To put the timescale in perspective, in 2003, we had the release of LotR: Return of the King, Seabiscuit, Pirates of the Carribean, and Finding Nemo. To save $3 on a rental, you think people would have waited until later this year to seem the for free? First, life is just too short for that kind of waiting, and second you're 3 years behind the pop culture and current events references; you lose a lot of the enjoyment of the movie. In 2008, when we're rid of Bush, do you really thing the "Shock and Awe" and "If you're not with me you're against me" type quotes from Anakin in Revenge of the Sith will be timely and funny?
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most creative works have no copyright-related economic value at all. Slashdot posts fall into this category; no one is publishing compilations of their best posts and selling them because they'd never make money at it.
Of the small fraction of works that have such value, the value usually is front-loaded. That is, the vast majority of all the value the work will ever have is realizable right away. For example, a movie makes most of the money it will ever make from theatrical releases on opening weekend. When it hits pay-per-view, it again makes most of its money on the first weekend. Ditto for when it becomes available to rent or buy. The amount of money that can be extracted later on typically declines, and is pretty small compared to the initial amount. We're talking about 70-90% up front, you see.
Of course there are exceptions, but remember that they are tremendously rare. It is foolish to design copyright policy around aberrations. For an author to make a work like that is on par with winning the lottery. They would make a lot of money even with short terms. We don't need to help them. Rather, help should be tailored around the needs of more common artists. After all, copyright is a subsidy in the form of a monopoly on commodity goods and it's just dumb to give subsidies to the people that need them the least.
Some studies have been done as to the economic life expectancy of works. IIRC, the number tends to be 10-20 years. For some works, such as software, I can easily imagine the number being a lot shorter.
Life terms are totally unacceptable. They make the system unpredictable: author A could have a copyright that lasts fifty years, and author B could have a copyright that lasts one. Adding yet more time doesn't help. And as already noted, the economic worth to authors is usually minimal. The CTEA extension was valued on average at about a nickel, IIRC, and that was 20 years more. Better to have a fixed length term (or better still, to make it granular with many short terms that need to be renewed) so that artists know that there is a time limit, and the public can anticipate the regular release of works into the public domain and act accordingly. (E.g. you can run a business when you know that you can reprint a book in 20 years, but you can't when it could be any damn time in the future)
Long copyrights do not help provide for artists in their old age, or for their families, except in the rare cases mentioned above (in which case it is almost certain that the author already got a lot of money). This is because old copyrights are usually not valuable. If artists want to be secure in the future, they should rely on the same things everyone else relies on: savings, investments, pensions, social security, life insurance, etc. Not only is it more fair, but artists have far, far better odds of being better off with these things than betting that their book will still sell very well decades in the future and against all odds.
Long copyrights as a widows and orphans fund is as irresponsible as giving them scratch off lottery tickets would be. The only people who do tend to come out well are the ones that got rich right at the beginning, and they don't really need our help to become much more rich, do they? They're not going to be struggling in their old age, unless they're crazy irresponsible, right? Why are we treating them specially then?
Re:Drowning in media (Score:1, Insightful)
try making similar arguments for civil engineers and bridges/buildings/roads. or any tangible physical human creation for that matter.
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Which amounts to an incentive to create a winner
But we had a DEAL! (Score:2, Insightful)
Once that time expires, it is time for the artist/vendor to pay up on their half of the bargain: the work passes into the public domain.
You should not be able to renegotiate the deal after the fact. The Beatles or their agents knew the terms of the deal when they made the work, distributed it, and made loads of money off it. If they did not like the terms, they should not have distributed the work. They should have kept it to themselves.
We had a deal. It's now due (well, in 2013). Suck it up and live with it, or make us (the public, to which the artists/vendors now owe) a better offer.
For example, are copyright holders going to grant the public a little broader fair use terms? Or offer us a low, flat rate for certain types of copying? SOMETHING. You can't just say, after decades of making boatloads of money from the arrangement, that you don't want to pay off your side of the contract.
Worse is the fact that, actually, many copyright holders have done everything in their power to destroy/limit/technologically eliminate "fair use" using DRM and other such techniques.
Re:Not "owners" (Score:4, Insightful)
Tom Jefferson, who was also instrumental in developing our copyright and patent system, had no problem pointing out that the only natural right to property was the right to own whatever you could personally grab and defend. Everything else has to arise out of common agreement: I'll respect your right to own plot A, but only because I want you to respect my right to own plot B. Not for some ideological reason that happens to favor you over others. Better to just put land to maximally productive uses (n.b. that even fallow land can be productive -- pave over too much stuff and it's bad for the environment that supports everyone's lives) and have a system such that people don't fight too much and can get things done. God talk, whether it's 'God gave the land to the king who parcels it out to his vassals and so on down the chain' or 'God gave me a right to own stuff I can't actually defend unless other, equally self-interested people help me to do it' often tends to muddle things.
Explain this to me then (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyrights on songs by the Beatles are about to run out but Robert Jonhsnon's lyrics [deltahaze.com] are still copyrighted? Robert Johnson died during the 1930s and his works should be public domain but apparenlty aren't. And who owns the copyright anyhow? It damn well can't be his heirs because he didn't have any (legitimately that is... you know how bluesmen are). Is Robert Johnson's work relevant now? Ask Eric Clapton [ericclapton.com]. And since they aren't RJ's heirs why should they have the copyrights anyway? I mean, I can understand Janie Hendrix having the copyright to Jimi's work but someone unrelated to him decades from now?
As to the Beatles copyright holder being terrified... too bad. Want to make money? Do something! I haven't been living comfortably off something someone else did for decades, why should you? Why should anyone be able to do something like write a song or a book and live off it their whole lives when the rest of us can't live off a few months of work our whole lives? That's why the entire system is completely screwed. I don't know how many times every day it's pounded into our heads "think of the artists" but if they've made plenty of money off of something already why should I care? Not only that but some corporation can apparently just take the copyright to a dead man's work and keep it out of the public domain decades after it should've passed into that as well. The original 14 years is plenty of time and no one but the heirs of someone should be able to have the copyright after their death. It may be legal but as far as I'm concerned this is just copyright theft.
Think about that the next time someone calls file-sharers thieves. Legally, a corporation can own the copyright long after the person who made the work is dead. They can legally steal from us, the people, but we can't legally steal anything back.
It will soon be irrelevant :-) (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to worry :-) The usefulness of record labels is now at an end. Creation, publishing, distribution, and marketing can now be had practically for free. Check out Tunecore [tunecore.com] to see what I mean. Why would any band give up their copyright and settle for second class shelf space and loan payments when they can post their works in their pajamas? Create music with software and instruments, distribute online, done. There is no step three ;-) As more new bands go direct, more revenue streams disappear for the big labels. The big labels will eventually be unable to afford lobbyists.
Re:Drowning in media (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is a list of bestsellers in the 20th century. I doubt that you'll recognize many works or names that aren't pretty recent. This is because the main thing authors compete with are not old books, they're new books. Everyone wants to read the new Harry Potter, rather than the old Tom Brown. Novelty tends to drive sales. And old works which were quite popular for a time tend to fade not only in the face of newer works but also because they may not have been all that great anyhow.
I mean honestly, do you think that the crowds going to see the latest Star Wars would have even possibly preferred to see Destination Moon if it had also been in theaters? No. Most audiences like whatever's new, and that's where the money is. Older works also have their fans and benefit from being culled over the years so that it's easy to know what's good, but they're really never more popular.
Also, why should the public, which vastly outnumbers artists, care what artists think? If we can get them to create just as much with less copyright (which we can be pretty sure of, given historical example), then why shouldn't we? That kind of frugality is just common sense.
Re:Congress calls them "copyright owners" (Score:5, Insightful)
This important distinction bolsters the grand-parent's point (well regarding the term intellectual property at least). One may own the copyright to a piece of creative work, but one does not own the idea. (Of course one may own any expression fixed in a tangible medium, because then we are talking about property.)
There is no property in expressions and ideas. The term "intellectual property" is loaded in terms of public debate.
I'm not debating your valid point that copyrights can be owned and have owners in the same sense that any monopoly may be owned and traded.
Anyhow, if we're going to go with the language of the statute we're all going to stop saying "IP holders", "IP owners" and "music owners" and start saying "copyright holders" or "monopolists" (or "exclusive, time-limited rights holders"). Well that will never happen, because the moderators of public debate are the monopolists (i.e., corporate media). YAY!
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just freaking ridiculous. When will it end if copyright just keeps being extended? It quite frankly never will. It's ludicris to think that the creator of something _needs_ to be able to make profits on that something for over 40 years, even 20 years is pushing it. 40 years is HALF OF A PERSON'S LIFE EXPECTANCY. I'm starting to think twice about DeBeer's slogan, it should be "A copyright is forever".
A copyright longer than 20 years serves one and only one purpose, to make the rich richer. That's it. It does nothing for the consumer or aspiring content makers.
Re:Explain something... (Score:2, Insightful)
Society provides an incentive to the artist to produce works by gauranteeing the artist can have rewards sufficient to justify his labour. In return, society gets new creative works.
The problem with having infinitely long copyright is that there is no longer the same incentive for artists (or their children for that matter) to create new works.
It would be like you getting paid forever because of the first years work you did (as say, a doctor or something). There's hardly any incentive for you to keep going to work and making more stuff/fixing problems, and that hurts society.
What if a doctor kept getting paid forever by every patient that he had cured? or a plumber got paid for every litre of water that went down your pipes? You can see that you would be paying way too much for the benefit received, which prevents you being able to afford other things.
The third problem is that works can be lost forever.
In summary, there are three problems with infinite copyright:
1) Leaves you with less cash to spend on new creative works.
2) Gives artists less incentive to make additional new creative works.
3) old works can be lost because they are not allowed to be copied, yet have gone out of print (because they are not seen as commerially viable, or the publishing company wants to promote some other product they own - perhaps one that they have the artists even more screwed over on than normal). Result: Everyone looses.
Re:Whats the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Propaganda. Prior to copyright law? You mean, before the Statute of Anne [wikipedia.org] in 1710, when the government was so unable to control the publishing industry that they had to pass a law giving the rights to the authors? At that time, the authors had no real rights. Or do you mean before the monopoly granted to the Stationer's Company [wikipedia.org] in 1556, when older authors could remember a time before the printing press? Before that, the church owned all knowledge for five hundred years, and "content creators" like Galileo Galilei were censored and arrested.
It's a pleasant illusion we tell ourselves, that things used to be OK in the 'good old days'. The problem is that the publishing companies still have too much power, despite the Statute of Anne, despite the Copyright Act of 1976. The authors are supposed to have the power, dammit. They are supposed to be rewarded for their efforts. Yet industry contracts take away all their power, because too many authors and musicians cheaply sell that which kings and congresses have given them.
The solution is quite simple, but would destroy the profit-making power of entire industries so it will never happen. Make copyright unalienable. Make it so you can't sell your copyright. Make it so only the author(s) of a work can own the work. The incentive that copyright is supposed to provide exists only in primary creators, not in third parties looking to make a dollar.
A natural consequence is to limit copyright terms to the lifetime of the authors. Once they die, rewards will give their inheritors a disincentive to further create. They may not even have the 'creative spark'. There is no reasonable incentive policy in line with the Constitution's plain language and the intent of its drafters, that rewards someone other than the content creator for his or her work.
Re:Congress calls them "copyright owners" (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is a limitted monopoly, granted by the public. If you are given one, you get to hold it for a number of years, after which, the monopoly is disolved, and the work becomes part of the public domain.
At least, that is how I remember how things used to be. I am sure whoever sponsored changing the language from "holder" to "owner" was intentionally slanting the language in this war of perception, much like the push to stop calling things "infringement" and instead "theft".
Not so hard a question . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright exists upon original creation, without respect to novelty, and requires no effort to protect. Patents do not exist until application is made and examined for compliance with statute.
The scope of copyright, which requires copying, is far far narrower than patents. This is why, for example, you can clean room a computer program to avoid copyright infringement, but clean rooming provides no protection.
Different rights to protect different things in different ways with different protections and limitations. This is why their terms are not necessarily the same.
Re:The Horror! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not yours. You don't want me to copy it? Don't publish it. Copyright is not a natural right. It's a fiat monopoly granted as part of an exchange. We grant you the right to forbid me to sing a song in exchange for something. It's a trade. You don't want to negotiate? Don't enter the market.
The moment any of them write a song thats good enough to be a hit, we should punish them as much as we can and ensure they dont make any cash.
Straw man. I didn't say zero. I said five years. And I'm saying it to benefit the poor upstart musicians you claim to be defending. Cover bands without license from the original artists are illegal. Put a five year limit on copyright and those poor startup musicians you are talking about will be able to cover bands from five years ago to put food on the table and pay for studio time while they work out their first CD. It also gets the labels out of the picture - if the musician can support him/her self and pay for the studio, they don't need to get screwed by a record exec to cover their expenses.