Tom The Dancing Bug Takes On Insanity Of Copyright Extension And Disproportionate Punishment
from the awesome dept
One of the more interesting things over the past few months is just how mainstream copyright issues have suddenly become. This point has been driven home with the news that Ruben Bolling's famous Tom the Dancing Bug comic has taken on the excessiveness of both copyright extension and enforcement with his God-man character doing tremendous damage just to enforce the copyright on a work that should be in the public domain:
Either way, very cool to see Bolling take on this issue, and see the issue getting more and more mainstream attention.
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Filed Under: copyright, mainstream, ruben bolling, tom the dancing bug
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Berne Convention
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Infringement against big corporations = criminal offense.
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Pirates
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Stealing
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People feel strongly about things they know nothing about
What is funny is that this self-righteous IP maximalist doesn't realize that under US IP laws if he creates something all on his own somebody else might all ready own it. That is the way the patent system works. It doesn't matter if you think of something own your own, not even if you put your life's work into it--if somebody thought of it first and patented it, or if they patented some thing vague enough that can later be be claimed to cover it--then DroptmaStyx *doesn't* own his ideas.
People don't think things through before getting very full of themselves about it. And the MPAA, RIAA and right wingers in general, are very good at getting ordinary folks to lobby against and vote against their actual interests.
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There is no left or right here...there's just HOLLYWOOD and that is all that counts. Well, that and their billions.
They do seem to have a lot of money to throw around for companies that are in such trouble, don't you think?
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@drklassen – spoken like someone who isn’t trying to make a living as a creative person. If I create something, I own it, and I alone have the right to decide who gets to use it for money,"
They so want everything every which way.
If I create a vacuum cleaner, other people can buy it and use it in their cleaning business to make money.
If I make some cakes, other people can buy them and sell them on by the slice for a profit.
Only with imaginary property am I able to control what they do with it once they've paid for it.
Surely at some point they will realise how ludicrous their stance is and of course it is all pointless, this would not be an issue right now if copyright was enforceable in the digital era, it simply isn't and instead of coming to terms with it they stand in denial making up imaginary rules for imaginary property and declaring those imagined and useless rules to be their god given rights.
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Instead of addressing any of the balls of stupid, I'll instead generalize all of them to the big ball of stupid that they each keep trying to roll out.
This is one of the most misleading, baseless, ignorant arguments I have ever heard for copyright. You can't "own" an idea, you can "own" the information behind an idea, but for it to be of any use to anyone or anything you have to share that information with someone for it to be of any value to anyone, even yourself. If I make a cartoon and then don't share that cartoon with anyone, then it's not much of a creative work as it is a lump of frames and drawings that only I and the people I staffed know about.
So now we get into Copyright, the idea that, while I can't own the idea and I can't own the information, I can at least own the enforcement of my will and intentions over that information.
Which just makes the ignorant fools going "WAAH WAAH I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DICTATE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO IT UNTIL YEARS AND YEARS AFTER I HAVE DIED WHEN MY WILL AND INTENTIONS ARE MEANINGLESS" look even more like crying, spoiled brats. Leading to the same diatribe "Copyright enforcement is important because Intellectual property rights are important because Copyright enforcement is important-..." argument that we see here on Techdirt almost every single day from Anonymous keyboard ninjas who likely only think this way because of the misinformation society has ingrained into people that someone can "own" an idea.
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But I do love the idea of Paint Manufacturers, Wallpaper Manufacturers, painters, plasterers, electricians and garden centres all deciding that IP rules should apply to property as well and popping along to people like the RIAA and MPAA, to force them to pay for licences to have paint/wallpaper on the walls and potted plants in their offices.
After all, they clearly use them to enhance their businesses and studies have shown that they all help to increase efficiency and many other spurious and ridiculous reasons for thinking that you can charge people multiple times for the same "property"
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Which is odd since monopolies harms workers more than anything else.
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Sounds like a musician who does not like certain politicians using his/her song(s) in their campaigns.
Heh, deja vous
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Do you feel strongly about things you know nothing about?
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Lets ask people how long should anybody be given a monopoly and exclusionary powers and see after people understand what copyright means they still would think life + 95 years of a monopoly is a good thing.
The sense of entitlement of people who love monopolies knows no bounds.
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Copyright man is here to help you, and get you a contract.
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and the only reason they have any sort of power is because enough people pander/pandered to their apeshit tantrum tactics
if more people where like "FUCK YOU" when these people cry about permission this permission that ownership blabla they'd get the message real quick
what these people need is someone to put them in their place, they've gotten way out of whack
everyday i find myself being less and less rare of this opinion, and that alone gives me the strength to push on
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They can form an alliance!
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Republicans got spanked in the elections by the Tea Party they are sensitive to public opinion, Democrats receive most of their support from the entertainment industry and unions so they side on the side of stronger monopolies where is the error in that logic?
Republicans would go against the entertainment industry since their biggest support is elsewhere in the Telecom, Oil, Drugs and other stuff.
So what do you know that I don't please enlighten me.
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You are obviously supposed to go purchase it on your own, but it still seems quite ridiculous.
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HA! Not a chance... and don't call me Shirley!
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Democrats rely on the entertainment industry, Republicans depend on Pharma companies that donate "big money"(paraphrasing bobroll).
I could be wrong though but I do believe the republican support was there mostly because of the patents issues, try to do a bill that separate both and bipartisan support would be more difficult to achieve.
As proved recently republicans have no problems throwing the entertainment industry under the bus if they need to, that is not what happens with democrats.
Not that I like a duopoly in politics, I am just acknowledging the fact that they have separated into two distinct camps that share most of their values but disagree in some key points, they most of the time work in unison but can and will squabble over little things.
So if the intent is to change copyrights the best bet today is the republicans that don't feel that strongly about it and have shown that they have no problems leaving the entertainment industry to hang dry, democrats on the other hand just proved that they will exert tremendous pressure to expand monopolistic controls for whatever reason and that can't be good.
Now show me your thinking.
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Was hilarious.
Please don't take the "crap" as an insult is meant as a good thing.
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Following up on what the other commenter says, I'd look for any public options, and just use those.
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But what happens when that time is extended into oblivion? We have seen it stifle innovation before, the best and simple example would be the eighties 'The holiday rap', where an old tune was the base of a new work (and the creator of the new work has never seen one cent of it).
The derived work was new, brave and 'super cool' for its time, but the rightsholder was not interested in new music, only his own pocket, and he rather let someone else work than work himself..
When time passes perception, techniques and idea's change so that old 1951 version of 'The day the earth stood still' could be redone in a much better way. No one complains about that.. Some stories are old and get retold in different forms many times, like Ever after: A Cinderella story. It would be a shame if we were told not to redo that movie or that song in Techno-style (Blackbox's Right on time).
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