Oh, you could still have a free press. It would just have to be organized as a sole proprietorship or as a partnership, without limited liability. American publishers worked that way for the 18th and probably much of the 19th centuries. It's viable.

Services isn't the only option. Patronage is another option, and if you can't find one big patron, try using kickstarter to find a thousand small ones. It may be difficult to get started as a new author, but that's true now, in a system where the publishers are effectively the patrons.

Purely as a matter of what rights you inherently hold as a human being, and what rights they inherently hold (whether as a corporate entity or a collection of people makes no difference), yes, you can.

But if we add in artificial rights which we, through the mechanism of a democratically elected government which holds legitimacy because we give it the power to govern, grant to the Times, then and only then do they have some power to stop you. But we can always take their power away, or change it, as it suits us; they only have what we ultimately choose to give them.

You can see this for yourself by printing up and selling copies of Shakespeare's works (we gave no power to him or his heirs) as well. The Times may act against you but the hard never will.

Well, copyright does value quantity over quality.

I don't think you're right, what with there having been quite a lot of music made and performed before it was copyrightable. But assuming you're right, people would either be okay with it or would willingly find a different way to encourage the creation of the music they want, including, perhaps, dialing copyright back up somewhat. I think it's a worthy experiment.

While that can conceivably happen, the general rule is that a compilation is a single work for the purposes of calculating statutory damages. The relevant statutory language is at the end of 17 USC 504(c)(1).

Well, you do get more than one of the one year terms. For a book, probably in the neighborhood of 15-20 years after first publication, if you renew annually.

Well, publication is what would start the clock ticking for sure, and require a proper copyright. There should be some kind of protection for unpublished manuscripts to avoid people pirating them, but not so much that authors sit on them. Eventually, allowing manuscript piracy is more rewarding for society than never seeing works published at all!

That's what the one year terms are meant to accomplish. If we used your twenty year terms and the work was orphaned in year five, you've got us sitting around for fifteen years waiting for no good reason. Short terms get works into the public domain faster, if the author fails to renew. And if the author does renew, I'm okay with that.

Look, we aren't arguing over the meaning of an existing statute (although I am trying to follow in the example of 17 USC 1008), I'm telling you what I would like to see. Commercial use would be defined for the purposes of this law so as to accomplish the purpose I am describing to you.

So mere downloading of a work as I described would not be commercial regardless of whether you could argue it to be in the absence of a definition. Sorry if this wasn't clear before, but I didn't feel like drafting bulletproof statutory language for the purpose of a quick Slashdot post.

I just wrote a post about this, but the gist is that I seek to allow generic file sharing and other currently infringing behavior as long as no money is involved and it operates at a loss. Here's the post.

Just poor wording. Authors are free to publish or not. If an author (or someone they've authorized) chooses to publish with DRM, all that happens is that they don't get a copyright. The choice of copyright without DRM or DRM without copyright is up to them, they're just mutually exclusive in much the same way (and for much the same reason) as how you cannot have a trade secret on a patented invention due to patents having disclosure requirements. (You can have trade secrets on non patented inventions or non patented parts of inventions, but there is not overlap)

Well, since the DRMed works are in the public domain, surely it fits into the mission of our national library to help ensure that all Americans can freely access those works. It would cost little other than some server space and bandwidth in practice. Go to the LOC website sometime; some of their collection is online and it's pretty neat stuff. It would be nice for more of it to be available. We can probably afford to cancel one overpriced military aircraft for such massive improvements for culture.

I'd rather have us withdraw from them instead of violate them whilst still a party. It's nicer if nothing else. And treaty obligations are commonly used to pressure Congress, so that's a strike against them too. And lacking treaties, we would need a unilateral national treatment statute.

That would swallow the exception. Fair use is meant to consider the effect on sales of the work, but a review that quotes from a work under fair use in order to discourage people from buying the work (because it is bad) would still be okay.

Roughly, commercial use in this context means that the person using the exception is profiting in some way other than merely obtaining the work in question. So users of this exception could not use ad-supported sites, could not have tip jars or accept donations, could not ask for people to reimburse their costs, could not sell merchandise associated with the exception, could not have file sharing ratios, etc.

Basically, if you want to use the exception, you do so at a personal financial loss for the costs of the mechanism used (whether its burning optical discs or bandwidth or whatever).

That's basically the idea. Copyrights should be granted where they do actually incentivize the author to create and publish works which otherwise would not be created and published. But they should not be granted if the author would've done it anyway; to do so in that case would be unnecessary and wasteful. The best mechanism I know of to determine which is which is to let the authors opt in: if copyright is important to them, they'll act to get one, and won't if not. It doesn't work for opting out, as authors who don't care about copyright usually won't be bothered to take affirmative steps to disclaim it.

That having been said, the registration formality should be a small hurdle. I don't want to discourage authors seeking or getting copyrights, just their getting them when they don't need them. The form would surely be not much more complex than a change of address form, and the filing fee could be a token dollar (more perhaps for claimants who claim a lot and can afford it, like Disney).

Well, first, if not doing a bit of paperwork is worth more to you than a copyright, that's the sort of thing that would make me think the copyright is not too important to you. Second, you can already, depending on the precise circumstances, have group registrations for multiple works, and I have no problem with that. It could even be online and largely automated (though it'll still be charging fees to your bank account or credit card which may give you cause to pause).

Why 14 years? What is your rationale? Surely nostalgia isn't a good reason. The term lengths and maximum lengths with renewal should have some objective reasoning behind them.

Why do you think that you couldn't get paid by offering your creative talents as a service, as opposed to what I imagine is your current practice of creating a work at your own expense and then selling copies?

Before I went to law school, I used to be a professional artist. And I supported myself quite comfortably selling my artistic services. I didn't need copyright to get by, and my clients didn't care about it either.

And there are other ways of making money from art. Fine artists (painters, sculptors, etc.) typically get paid for particular pieces. An original painting can command prices that no other copy of the same work can. A Van Gogh can go for millions; the life-sized poster of the same thing is a few bucks, because people will pay for provenance.

As a lawyer, I sell my services because I can't sell anything like copies. What would I do? Sell copies of a brief or a memo tailored for one case to some completely different client? Sell the outcome of a court case? The idea is nonsensical. But lawyers, doctors, plumbers, and even a lot of programmers and artists work in the service economy. Give it a try sometime.

Yes, there would certainly be an equal vote for the legislators who would draft the reforms and (indirectly) the President who would sign it. And the reforms would certainly affect everyone equally. So that problem is solved.

If you thought, though, that authors as a profession are entitled to an equal share of the income made in this country, well, you must not know many authors. The cliche of the starving artist exists for a reason. Copyright never guaranteed you a living; just a chance at one. And it would still do so even if substantially altered.

Well, I'm opposed to adhesive contracts, at least in consumer settings. It wouldn't take much tweaking of the UCC to shut that down, but I felt it was outside the realm of a discussion about copyright.

Individually negotiated contracts, OTOH, are okay I guess. At the very least I'd be willing to take a wait and see attitude. I figure the transactional costs will handle it.

I'm guessing you hadn't reached point 4 yet, when you wrote that.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think that the basic idea of copyright is very good, but the implementation needs serious work. Abolition should remain on the table, but is obviously an option of last resort; it only makes sense when there is not a single possible copyright law that provides a greater public benefit than having no copyright law at all. I don't think this is likely anytime soon.

Of course, I have noticed more and more people who, frustrated with how bad the current law is, are supporting abolition just to be done with the whole thing. This is a dangerous side effect of copyright maximalism, IMO.

Again, I agree. When you have copyright laws, you take away my right to make copies of your published work. And while this can be justifiable, if I benefit more from that sacrifice than I lose, under the current law much otherwise unobjectionable behavior is being prohibited, the law is widely flouted, and it reminds me a lot of Prohibition.

If copyright were far more important -- like desegregation -- then I could see pushing it on a public that was not happy about it. But it's not anywhere near that level. Copyright really is of trifling importance in the grand scheme of things, somewhere in the neighborhood of building codes that require white picket fences or bans on jaywalking.

Melodramatic much?

Right now there are a plethora of ways that you, as an author, cannot get paid for your work. For example, if you sell a copy of a book, you can get paid for it that one time only; after that, everyone can resell that same copy again and again and again and you don't see a dime.

All I'm doing is creating a single exception which would allow natural persons (as distinct from artificial entities, like corporations) to act freely -- as they basically already do -- provided that it is strictly non-commerical. No ads, no tip jars, no file sharing ratios, nothing.
You can still sell copies to people; some of them will buy it. You can still sell copies to other entities, or to people engaged in commerce.

Copyright, remember, doesn't guarantee that the copyright holder will make money, it just funnels a goodly portion of whatever money there is in the direction of the copyright holder. The funnel is not changing, but the available pool of money may shrink somewhat.

I would agree that it is a big deal. I have traditionally thought of this as the nuclear bomb of copyright exceptions. But after a long time of mulling it over, I support it. Filesharing is the new drinking, and banning it is as futile and dangerous as Prohibition was. And Prohibition wasn't just bad because it conflicted with the will of the people for no good reason; That law being flouted led to the rise of organized crime, corruption, violence, murder, etc. For laws to be respected, they must be worthy of respect.

So please, suggest an alternative law that would not cause mere file sharers (and I think I identified the best of the bunch) to be infringers. When everyone from school children to (I have it on excellent authority) US Senators breaks the law in this way, it's time for a change. I'd love a less radical approach and maybe you've got an idea or two. Let's hear it!

Also capitalism existed before copyright ever did (1710 in England, not until well into the 19th and 20th centuries in most of the world) so don't be such a baby.

AFAIK most state bars do require practicing lawyers to provide some number of pro bono hours. It's a cost of doing business. Frankly, given how little practical training law schools provide, I'd like to see some sort of on-the-job apprenticeship requirement added in, even if this imposed a burden on practicing attorneys who could afford it. We don't have anything like med students being put on rotation, and I think it would really benefit the profession. (Legal clinics are good, but not enough, IMO)

If you don't want to do it, then don't do it. No one is forcing you to be an author.

I mean, I'd gladly turn the moon into a massive sculpture if only copyright lasted forever, and everyone had to pay me as much as I wanted. But without such strong copyright laws, I'm just not able to make a profit off of moon-sculpting. But instead of bitching about it, I just find something else to occupy my time. I'm sure you would too, if my reforms were enacted and your business could not get by as a result.

Get enough votes behind it and it won't matter what I support.

I never said that I expected authors to like certain copyright reforms. But that's no reason not to have the reforms, even if it means running roughshod over the authors and publishers.

And the law is what I want to change.

Indeed, my top five changes to copyright law would probably be:
1) A system of strict formalities (registration, deposit, fee, notice, renewal) in order to get a copyright on a published work;
2) Very short terms (probably 1 year), renewable a varying number of times depending on the type of work (more for, say, a movie, less for, say, a computer program) but probably no more than 20 terms altogether;
3) Making non-infringing (or at least non-actionable) any otherwise infringing act engaged in by a natural person, acting non-commercially;
4) Placing works in the public domain immediately if they are published, under the imprimatur of the copyright holder, with DRM, and having a government-run program of distributing those public domain works and assisting in cracking DRM systems;
5) Withdrawing from all copyright treaties, instead offering national treatment to everyone unilaterally (but using diplomacy to encourage other countries to do the same, as well as to avoid mutually incompatible laws that would leave authors in a bind)

Setting aside that something like copyright infringement isn't stealing property -- because stealing doesn't occur and there's no property at issue -- my point 3 above indicates that if it was me, personally, and I acted non-commercially in doing so, the level of punishment would be ... none.

You may have confused the previous poster, Mr. Slippery, with me.

Good rule of thumb: My posts that are not one-liners are usually a bit longer than that.