Another Interesting White House Petition: Reduce The Term Of Copyright
from the let-them-know-that-copyright-policy-is-important dept
The White House's use of its "We The People..." petition system has been interesting to watch over the last few months since it was introduced. While they quickly raised the "threshold" necessary to get a response, lately it's been used in some interesting ways. We've highlighted a few different petitions -- specifically those related to SOPA/PIPA, Chris Dodd and ACTA. In the case of SOPA, it was in finally responding to the two related petitions that the White House finally came out against the approach in SOPA/PIPA.The latest petition that some have mentioned is one petitioning for copyright terms to be reduced back to 56 years, like it was prior to 1978. Personally, I'd rather than before we pick an arbitrary time frame, that at least some research be done to figure out what might be the optimal time frame. But, clearly, reducing the term makes a lot of sense. Hell, even among many of the strongest copyright system defenders we hear them "admit" that perhaps copyright terms have been extended too far. Of course, if Congress ever did move to reduce the term, you can rest assured that all hell would break loose from the legacy players. They're not giving up any monopoly powers without a fight.
In the end, this petition might be a little pointless. Copyright law is left to Congress to determine, not the President. So petitioning the White House on this may come across as a little misguided. Of course, with the way politics runs these days, the White House often does set the legislative agenda, and under some weird mythical magic future where the President did take up this issue, it could potentially lead to a legislative attempt at reducing copyright term limits -- though, again, the freakout from the legacy players about how "the government is stealing from artists!!!!!@#!@#" would be deafening (of course, the flipside, that whenever Congress extends copyright they're "stealing" from the public, will never be acknowledged).
That said, even though the target here may be a bit misguided, I think it would be good to get this petition up to 25,000 signatures, pushing the White House to respond to it. Post-SOPA/PIPA, it would be nice for the White House to recognize that copyright policy is internet policy, and that the public really does care about this on a widescale basis. If copyright-related petitions keep hitting the 25,000 signature threshold, perhaps they'll realize that this never was about just the SOPA/PIPA bills...
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Filed Under: copyright, petition, term, white house
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What about software vs operating systems.
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Technological progress in industrial fabrication persists for very very very long time periods. Generally, until it can no longer be repaired.
Couldn't tell you how many times I've had to dig up a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy disk or brush up on my relay-driven logic when working on such systems.
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On the other hand, that means we'd have had three years to tinker with Windows 95, too
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The purpose is to ensure that more works are created, not that authors profit from them. Profit is the means by which the purpose is achieved.
(Of course, it doesn't actually work, but that's how it's supposed to work.)
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Also, stop and take a look at 95 and 98. Would you like to jump back to using them? I am willing to bet most people don't want to. Why is that? It is because of the new features found in new versions of windows. These new features would still be under copyright and protected. So someone copying 98 is little threat to microsoft.
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Liberating 95
What "new features" would you miss? Do you even have any clue in this regard?
More likely a Win98 clone would be considered less useful because of it's inability to run newer 3rd party Windows software. That's where all of the value of that platform resides.
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Frankly, I find the new features of XP and beyond, annoying. Like insisting on popping up a window every time I insert a disc or USB drive, no matter how many times I tell it to take no action. Or running everything as a 'service'. Or preventing third party file managers from directly accessing certain directories on the drive, even when logged in as administrator.
As for XP's alleged stability, I once installed a fresh copy of the game Max Payne, directly off factory original discs, patched it to the latest version, went into the tutorial level and the system promptly crashed about 30 seconds later. Not just frozen, but screwed up graphics and looping sound, making the system completely unusable. And since most modern systems no longer include a reset button (you know, since XP never crashes), I had to yank the power cord.
Windows 98 doesn't have much support today and I admit that it does have stability issues with badly written software, but it feels more responsive than virtually every XP system I've ever used.
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The right thing to do is to yank copyright entirely and tell them "Here's the internet. If amateurs on YouTube can make it work, you can too." We really need to put an end to this mollycoddling of publishing corporations' entitlement to have their profitability protected. They are the only industry that I know of that has special government protections over the way they prefer to transact with the public. It's like giving heroin to a junkie. They won't learn to do without it until you take it away.
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What does the marketable lifetime of the work have to do with how long copyright should last? If those two things should be connected, they maybe a book or movie really should have infinite copyright.
Give it a 50 year copyright. Then its public domain. Still marketable? Great. But it's still public domain.
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A pirate named Lars
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First, make a law saying:
1. While current treaties are valid, the US still respects them (that is, still life plus fifty years).
2. If no treaty applies, the copyright term is 56 years.
3. Forbid signing any new treaty which requires a specific term of copyright.
The second step then is to work towards new treaties superseding the ones currently requiring a specific term of copyright.
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Maybe, just once, this unilaterial G. W. Bush-esque mindset can do some good in the world?
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We can *absolutely* do this. In fact, 56 is too long, it should be 50!
(Individual works is life of the author plus 50.)
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You also have to anticipate the fact that the content industry will fight back. So we have to try for something we might can get. Sure it is not as far back as we would like but it is a heck of a lot better than what we have now.
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Sign it as support for a lower copyright term, rather than for the specific number of years it stipulates. This isn't going to become law just because you sign it and you're not signing away your ability to support an even lower term later.
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This comment (c) Daniel Mittleman, 2012 for way longer than is reasonable.
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who are you trying to kid? since when has any government realised anything, especially what they dont WANT to realise, that doesn't suit?
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The proof of this is in the fashion industry where there are no copyrights. Designers must constantly create new lines to maintain their income.
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Today creative ideas/works can be on the other side of the globe in seconds. I'd argue 7 years, with the ability to renew for a second 7 years, should be more than sufficient for someone to monetize their ideas/works.
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7 years renewable for 7 more
The argument I frequently make when discussing this with friends and family is that the culture of your childhood should be in the public domain for you to use to create new culture when you're in your 20's and most likely to be creating new culture.
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56 years might be at least in the right direction, but that's like telling an attacker that you would appreciate it if he'd just strangle you half as much as he is now.
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though, again, the freakout from the legacy players about how "the government is stealing from artists!!!!!@#!@#" would be deafening"
A big reason they have managed to extend copy protections for so long is because they have managed to abuse their government established monopoly power over cableco and broadcasting spectra to keep the public ignorant about these extensions and about copy protection lengths. For them to come out onto television and say copy protection lengths are being reduced from 95+ years to 56 + years would be putting their foot in their mouth like Chris Dodd and it would only make more people aware of how ridiculous our current laws are and would get more people to learn more about how bad our current laws are and how much harm they cause (ie: how they make it too legally risky and expensive for restaurants and other venues to host independent performers and how they also make it too legally risky and expensive for bakeries to allow children to draw their own drawings on cakes because kids like to draw cartoon characters which infringe and bakeries have been threatened with lawsuits).
How would they possibly position this to the public on mainstream television without putting their foot in their mouth and looking even worse? Bringing this issue to the forefront would be a good thing and it would be difficult for the media cartels to defend their indefensible position without making themselves look even worse than they already do.
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Anyways when you try to change this opinion it's incredibly difficult. Your opponents get to call you a thief and anything you do to explain how that's not the case is a lot harder and doesn't go over as well to people who are partially apathetic to the issue.
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i'm curious to know how much they would pay in 'campaign contributions' to keep the monopoly and who the stupid prick would be they used as the 'front man' to object to the reversal.
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Of course what the AC above said about a 7+7 copyright is even better.
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I'd like to see a stepped copyright term...
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Re: I'd like to see a stepped copyright term...
BOOOOOO!!!!!! Terrible idea. The rest is OK, but nothing should be allowed infinite copyright.
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A Step in the Right Direction
I'm sure the copyright corporations weren't thinking that 95 years was the ideal term when they pushed through the Copyright Term Extension Act back in 1998, but they figured in was a step in the direction they wanted (infinite terms).
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Re: A Step in the Right Direction
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Abandoned Copyrights
If I can't find the copyright owner of an old work, through diligent effort, then should the work be public domain?
Maybe copyright owners should be required to be registered at the US Copyright Office? If your copyright is not worth maintaining registration information and contact information for the copyright owner, then your copyrighted work must not be worth much.
On the flip side maybe the Copyright Office should track requests for searches for the copyright owner of a work. If we're going to somehow allow someone to make use of an old work with an abandoned copyright, then they need to be able to raise an affirmative defense that they did a diligent search for the copyright owner. A record at the copyright office that they tried to identify the owner of a particular copyright work would be evidence to support that affirmative defense if one is later sued for using a work that has an abandoned copyright.
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Re: Abandoned Copyrights
Not to mention nowadays, I'm thinking all of that business could be administred with a minimal amount of fuss through an online database:
Submit a form to register.
Get email/text/mail alerts as the term nears it's end.
Check online through a variety of keywords to find the copyright for a specific work and its lifespan.
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Re: Abandoned Copyrights
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No one pirates work that old because there is so little demand for it. If pirates cant even give it away is anyone actually still selling it? If you are not selling your work then why cling to your copyrights? Give it to the public so that those who do want it can enjoy it freely.
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Or improve/expand it.
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Or, any .wav file....for that matter....
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Of the infringing content on 56+-year-old Copyrighted material, how much of it is motivated by the lack of commercial availability of that content?
I think the answer to that question would be far more telling.
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Fear the back catalog.
Last time I was on Amazon is saw that they were advertizing a 70th anniversary edition of some movie.
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Re: Fear the back catalog.
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Suggestion
So instead of spinning wheels by asking for the moon, let's start with something a bit more pragmatic: Why not ask for legislation that allows a secondary, much shorter, opt-in version of copyright. In the same line of thinking that there are now dozens of Open Source licenses, let's try to create a 14 year copyright that you have to register for. Let the legacy folks keep their eternity-long copyright, and the new media folks can start opting into this new copyright.
As creators move away from the gatekeeper economy, they can start utilizing more sane copyright. Eventually, I would think that, like Open Source, the new copyright works would start surpassing the old in usage and reference, eventually supplanting them in mainstream culture.
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Re: Suggestion
We should ask for a Constitutional Amendment which requires all new laws be under 5000 words and written in a manner which any average literate person can comprehend.
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Laws written with a very specific set of requirements are less likely to be mis-interpreted by a Court.
On the other hand, Courts have shown a willingness to linguistically contort however necessary to arrive at a foregone conclusion.
Perhaps they should simply be rewritten in Loglan and that Loglan be a mandatory part of educational curriculum.
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This would not extend it though. If their is a year left of the copyright when the creator dies then their family gets the copyright for last year.
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That only makes sense if part of the reason people create works is to pass the copyright to their heirs. I don't have any facts, but that doesn't strike me as a very common motivation.
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Bad Petition
Let me explain when the best people can achieve now is to repeal the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act" which would drop the copyright term from the current life plus 70 years down to life plus 50 years.
All of the copyright term beyond that is set through INTERNATIONAL TREATIES and do you really think that the United States is going to break a major international treaty? The same treaty they bash the rest of the World with to keep the money flowing into Hollywood? How could they then enforce other countries to comply with copyright laws?
I am sorry to say this but anyone who believes they can cut the copyright term down to 56-years must be smoking something really bizarre they found in their garden.
I would also say that Mike Masnick should know better than this when if you really want to fight the copyright term then the place to start is certainly to repeal Sonny Bono CTEA.
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Re: Bad Petition
Unfortunately, repealing the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will not overthrow Justice Ginsburg's opinions in Eldred v Ashcroft and Golan v Holder. But, otoh, neither will those decisions retain all their present malevolence�should repeal be successful.
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They did make one logic fault there when they agreed that people live longer now making the extension valid. What they have overlooked is that communication has also got much faster to a much higher degree. This means that media can be consumed by society much faster over a wider area resulting in a much higher reward under copyright. So this highlights that the term of copyright could be reduced to match the same "reward level" as their forefathers. This is why we say 5 to 10 years is not unreasonable when this is where 99% of their sales happen.
Now "Golan v Holder" is more complex when this confirms Congress's right to drag public domains works back under copyright.
This is a matter we have to resolve directly in Congress through no longer letting them treat the Publish Domain like a "rubbish bin" to be tossed about or raided for items of value. Instead this media should be treated like a Public Library of free ideas with its own rules and protections.
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Re: Re: Re: Bad Petition
Eldred v Ashcroft and Golan v Holder rest on the premise that �Congress has not altered the traditional contours of copyright protection�. I hate to call Justice Ginsburg a liar, but her mistake is unsupportable.
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Re: Bad Petition
It wouldn't be the first time.
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Tax it
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Maybe not
Actually... since he made illegal appointments when the Senate was still in session, apparently, he thinks EVERYTHING is a Presidential power. Much like a short guy with a funny moustache thought about...oh...65-70 or so years ago.
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Revoking the Sonny Bono Act would be a great start.
From a political standpoint, the petition is only asking that a single piece of legislation, made more than three decades ago, be reconsidered. This is an entirely reasonable request for any congressional enactment, and especially so for one that has had such a dramatic and detrimental impact upon technology which was at the time all but unimaginable.
Even though a rollback will "only" liberate works from the current 1923 through the resultant 1952, this will provide modern artists with much needed raw material upon which to base new creations. Perhaps even more importantly, the tech sector will be provided with a wide variety of legally modifiable and distributable content and can start to demonstrate the vast untapped potential that digital media, the Internet, and electronic computing offers.
Imagine the opportunities: restoration and language translations of historic movies, or new compositions to replace the accompaniment (often low quality) of silent movies, or new animations based on the dialog/soundtracks of classic films, or new music videos being made for our favorite songs, or distribution using new and innovative approaches, or things we have not yet even imagined. Not to mention the full indexing and search capabilities that will be afforded once we are permitted to do so.
Shorter terms would be more ideal (in my opinion), but the desire to reach that end should not preclude supporting this much more politically feasible goal. After some time under these new shortened terms, we will have built a body of evidence on exactly how detrimental it is to withhold a century's worth of knowledge and culture from full and unhindered access by society. Being able to demonstrate in comprehensible terms the great benefits that are made available from modern technology will afford the best chance, as Mr Masnick suggests, "to figure out what might be the optimal time frame".
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One way to protest about the copyright term is to destroy the media saying "reasonable copyright laws or society will refuse to accept media under copyright".
You first need someone who has some wide open space far away from freeways and airports. Then everyone who hates the current copyright laws can send them their unwanted books.
Turn this into a major public campaign involving some big companies, and local collection points, then they can soon amass many millions of books.
Then on a well published day just add some gas light it up and run like hell as an inferno like never before seen rages away creating a smoke cloud that drifts across the United States.
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Steamboat Willie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The year 2023 is not that far away. I know you kids think a decade is an eternity, but when you get older, the years begin to fly by like the butterfly months of summer vacation.
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Re: Steamboat Willie
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Re: Steamboat Willie
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It's a start
Then again I'm inclined to agree with Jefferson's original assessment and think it better for society as a whole if we eliminate copyright and patent altogether.
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Re: It's a start
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That's the Way to Reduce Piracy!
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Re: That's the Way to Reduce Piracy!
When even Charlie Chaplin movies are still under copyright, there aren't any reasonable substitutes to works under copyright. 14 years would make 1998 the year of record. That would open up the entire Atari, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo libraries as a source of cheap, readily available entertainment in the game area, and stuff like Star Wars and Star Trek from the TV/movie area.
PS: From what I've personally seen, the Super Nintendo is actually still in rather widespread use among poorer children, perhaps because both the console and games are pretty darned cheap secondhand.
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Studies have already been done about the effects of Copyright
See Against Intellectual Monopoly for discussion and detail with copious references.
I propose a 5 year limit on Copyrights and Patents, with no opportunity to renew. That way we get that touchy-feely "Artists get compensation" feeling without adversely impacting the economy or the creation of future content.
After all, what reason is there to create content if you can just spend the next 100 years living off what you've already done?
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Young People Track Web Protests Over Online Piracy Bills
(Emphasis added.)
(Via New York Times, H/T Reddit)
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Re: Young People Track Web Protests Over Online Piracy Bills
Was meant for MPAA Exec Admits: 'We're Not Comfortable With The Internet'
That's what I get for keeping two windows open at once. Sorry.
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Monopoly
Considering the massive market abuse we see and the natural creation of monopolies per zone, which is directly against the public interest through harming natural market competition and freedom of choice, then I don't believe that is true at all.
I have long subscribed to the idea of "abuse it, lose it"
Now I would not go as far to say they should lose their rights to their media but what is certainly true is that they should lose their rights to shape and control the market.
I say this when I see a very sad situation emerging in the UK now that NetFlix is here. They have directly stated that their main rival is BSkyB operating the "Sky Digital" service.
Unfortunately these poor Americans in trying to force on Europe the same system they use in the US do not realise what a total butcher job they have done here.
To begin with then despite the fact that anyone with a satellite dish can receive every service within Europe... but forced to subscribe to their closest... in very anti-competitive zoning, which helps global Internet services none, then the very method by which rights agreements are traded will certainly lead to a bloodbath.
NetFlix believe it is in their business interests to compete with Sky over media based on who can bid the most. What they do not realise is that Sky is the monopoly of the UK zone who can certainly exert massive resources to win.
The only way to survive in a monopoly zone is to NOT COMPETE and to instead COOPERATE. If they want to fight Sky over media then this only pushes up the costs of said media for both sides making Hollywood richer.
If they end up paying more for media then this only harms their service and Sky can withstand losses for much longer than NetFlix can. The battle then continues until death which will most likely allow Sky to merge with NetFlix for BSkyB to seize control.
The second major copyright problem is "exclusive agreements" which is a key component to fuel this bidding War and to maintain the monopoly. Non-exclusive agreements would be ideal but under Hollywood's bastardship of Europe the best they could possible aim for is to "share media between each other"
That would certainly be good for the users and to keep prices low but of course Hollywood would fight such a scheme and would much prefer Sky and NetFlix to butcher each other for their own personal enjoyment and profit margin.
NetFlix only need to research BSB and ITV Digital to see where competition (the ideal of a free market) would land them.
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�Optimum time must include how a family passes its culture down to its children also nothing gets in the way of that (wanna say download here but concept is wider) transfer. twenty five (25) years is generally considered the time span of one generation so if anyone is asking for more than that... could be taking from culture instead of adding to the base of knowledge that defines culture as your family sees it.�
new comment and apologeticness for having some fun with culture a concept that covers the breadth of humanity. Culture is a vague concept so wide no way to explain ever. Just hoping to have entertaining way to explain what is commonly ignored but is multi-civilizational important. Nobody reads down this far anyway. Ok now... Best explanation of culture transfer to your kids;
As you grow up your parents explained life to you as you watched TV or played games together in real life or game box fun. Now this is important: While you played together you learned the facts of life (fill in the blank) from them and you might need the same material to help you show your kids how cool the world is in your way when the time is right.
This media could be as simple as a song you sung together. Some genius artist has phrased some view of life to a catchy tune (all things have been said before) and it would be helpful to use it to express your view to your kids combined with the artists view making sure to explain which parts were knowledge and which parts where crap. Trouble is now where is this media to come from and remember the timing must not be post or premature. (sic)
In reality the facts of life can be all your business lessons you wanted to pass on to your kid while watching science shows on free TV over the airwaves or a purchased item that has time limits on it possibly a use once thing. (sic DRM ~ use once) This culture might also be a AI program you devised using several other commercial programs with use one DRM clauses to keep your kid in the know about all your life inspiring viewpoints obviously to be trashed when time limits of DRM is up or as soon as legal age comes about which in only that case it might be alright. Is common to splay our dreams onto a spreadsheet or wordprocessor in graphical ways that are better on screen than in print. Thats right your power point presentation to your kid about the important facts on trilobites and dinosaurs or the birds and the bees. Input your favorite media for other example.
Enough. Culture moment over.
Lets get real about this copying thing. The stated storage live for a typical recordable DVD is less than 5 years but realistically longer and unless you use redundant storage and frequent backups for hard drives your precious hord of cultural junk (tv shows...) is toast in five years also. Even if the storage life were over a hundred years it wold not be long enough for a funny concept called civilization.
This is nothing less than a civilizational pivot. How many books/tv-shows/files/rap were metaphorically burned (Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury) when a hosting service dies and the unmeasurable cultural loss. I may not believe in the wholesomeness or permissions of any particular file but the ability to post any file is important. In fact its probably the files deemed sensitive or the ones some agency is overly possessive about that are worth seeing. typically open government accounting and corruption or worse.
The petition to reduce copyright length is a good distraction for now in the right way as long as at the same time elect responsible officials to carry out that goal and possibly more culturally meaningful legislation. Right now we are asking for the privileged to teach the facts of life to our kids but with all the sensitive material all locked up there is no way to even get them interested in reality at all.
As stated in earlier works (Gerard Diamond?) Civilization is a choice.
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My version of copyright
+ All copyrights must be registered.
+ A copyright term will be for 7 years.
+ To continue following the Berne Convention, copyrights can be renewed to a maximum of life of the artist plus 50 years rounded to the nearest 7.
+ To compensate the public for the continued monopoly on a copyrighted item and to encourage copyright holders to voluntarily give up their copyrights early, it will cost more each time the copyright is renewed.
An exponential increase in price is actually too slow to be a good encouragement, instead the increase will be logarithmic. Formula for purchasing a copyright should be as follows: [Total Years of Copyright] * [Number of Years in a Term] ^ [Number of Terms]
So it would cost $49 to register for the initial 7-year term (7*7^1) but approx. $7k to register for 21 years worth of copyright (21*7^3). At the end of the 21 years, if the copyright holder wanted to register for another 7 years it would cost them an additional $60k (for a total of $67k).
To make it easier for businesses to transition over to this process and to avoid shooting our economy in the foot�
+ There will be a grace period of one term (7 years) for copyright holders to register copyrights on pre-existing stuff.
+ When calculating registration fees, all previously copyrighted items will be treated as is if they were created at the time these changes go into effect. (Max copyright lifetime still applies from original creation date.)
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Re: My version of copyright
Everything except being politically realistic, but among all these beautiful fantasies we're reading about, I really like this one. :-)
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It's more likely that they'll say that the threshold is too low and raise it...
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CR
CORP...5 years
SOFTWARE 5 years..
NO multi CR..you cant CR the Songs, and the drumming and the Lyrics..
A movie cant have CR for lighting, music, the movie, the PLOT, the STORY, the director, the script writer...its 1 CR.
LET things change..Corps dont like CHANGE..every time you turn around, something better is hitting the market(ask sony abut that) They would have to PROVE a product before it HITS market, that it will LAST more then 30 seconds. That it is a VIABLE product. Insted of shoving CRAP out the door.
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Good Luck...
But it would be interesting to see how the Whitehouse responds...
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Rolling back the Sonny Bono Act and the effectiveness of online petitions
In comparison to the petition at hand, a smaller (but by no means worthless) step would be to consider rolling back the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) which extended existing copyrights by 20 years. In 2008 Gigi Sohn wrote about the 10th anniversary of the CTEA and its effect on efforts to reform copyright with regard to public interest. Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today (who is no enemy of copyright) wrote about how copyright term extensions could harm artists and authors by causing other aspects of copyright to be changed. For example, artists have expressed worry over orphan works exceptions being added to copyright, but longer copyright terms could increase the chance of such exceptions being enacted. (Another note from Mr. Bailey was that most modern copyright infringement would be illegal even if copyright terms were limited to say, 7 years.)
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Length of copyright
And the proposed reduced copyright term of 56 years is a joke. It would be a move in the right direction, but totally inadequate to the goal--innovation.
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Re: Length of copyright
You're using the wrong formula. The present value of a future sum never goes to zero no matter how far out you go. I assume as the period increases the present value asymptotically approaches zero, but it will not even get close with such a small period as ten years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money
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Length of copyright
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Re: Length of copyright
I completely agree.
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Decade
even if it expires peope will still make profit off of successor works, etc.
Since lets face it, Fanfiction and other "not for profits" need to be legally protected, so we know Fanfiction.net, isnt going to disappear one night in some display of MPAA Ego.
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Copyright, etc.
Second, I have written both Feinstein and Boxer on this. Feinstein has responded, has slowly but surely changed her stance toward serving the public, but Boxer has not answered, and supposedly got HUGE payoffs from big entertainment!
If you care about internet freedom, help Boxer find a new occupation; out of politics. I will.
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Term of copyright
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