Argentina Plans To Increase Copyright In Photos From 20 Years To Life Plus 70 Years, Devastating Wikipedia
from the cultural-memory-loss dept
As Techdirt has pointed out, copyright extensions are bad enough, but retroactive ones are even worse, since the creation of the work has already occurred, so providing additional incentives makes no sense, even accepting the dubious idea that artists think about copyright terms before setting to work. Moreover, copyright extensions are a real kind of copyright theft -- specifically, stealing from the public domain. If you think that is just rhetoric, it's worth looking at what is happening in Argentina.
As a post on the Wikimedia Argentina blog explains (original in Spanish), a proposed law would extend the copyright in photos from 25 years after an image was taken (or 20 years from first publication) to life plus 70 years -- a vast extension that would mean that most photos taken in the 20th century would still be in copyright. That's a big problem for Wikipedia in Argentina, since it is using photographs that have passed into the public domain under existing legislation. If the new law is passed in its current form, large numbers of photos would have to be removed:
Wikipedia would have to erase nearly all the photos of twentieth century history: the mere exposure without consent of the new rightsholders would be a crime. Not only Wikipedia: even the General Archive of the [Argentinian] Nation would become illegal and 40 million Argentines would be left without access to their historical memory.
It's a great but sad example of how copyright can destroy culture on a massive scale. Let's hope that law doesn't pass.
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Filed Under: argentina, copyright, copyright term, public domain
Companies: wikipedia
Reader Comments
The First Word
“link to impacted photos on Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD-AR-Photo10,060 photos. Some could be old enough to not be impacted, but at a glance those are a small proportion.
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That sounds familiar
Well, either that or a few palms were greased, some not insignificant amounts of 'donations' changed hands, and a few politicians are pushing the law for the ones who bought them.
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companies will cherry-pick which countries gets to host their content
as systems detect that users are in the country, the data will magically shift to a different country where the laws are favorable
that way, they can protect our privacy AND provide a useful service.
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Why do you think they want a global trade agreement with EVERYONE? So they can stop it.
You must first gain a monopoly on a market in order to effectively control it! All of the secret agreements they are trying to put in place are to acquire this monopoly so they can control things.
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And it's not like pictures are important or effective ways to convey information, so hardly anything of import would be lost. /s
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Hmmmm - wouldn't extension only apply to "new" pictures?
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Re: Hmmmm - wouldn't extension only apply to "new" pictures?
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Re: Hmmmm - wouldn't extension only apply to "new" pictures?
What makes you think that?
In Golan v. Holder, the Supreme Court held that it is not unconstitutional for Congress to remove works from the public domain by granting their authors copyrights long after their creation and publication. It is, as one would expect, a dismal Ginsburg opinion which, like Eldred, is willfully blind to the practice of ever ratcheting term extensions or the nefarious use of treaties as an end run around Congress.
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Re: Re: Hmmmm - wouldn't extension only apply to "new" pictures?
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Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm - wouldn't extension only apply to "new" pictures?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm - wouldn't extension only apply to "new" pictures?
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Here's hoping this is something the US won't push too much on us for.
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For the record, I'd been for 28 year limits, but after seeing examples here of how good it is to lock up crap, I'm for eternity.
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For the record, I'd been for 28 year limits, but after seeing examples here of how good it is to lock up crap, I'm for eternity.
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Here's to locking this sack of crap up for eternity, i.e. you!
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The point being, just because it's not technically allowed under the law or constitution, don't expect them to care if they're determined enough to force the law into the books.
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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was amended to give *retroactive* legal immunity to telecommunications companies that broke the law when they illegally spied on the public, as well granting retroactive immunity to the government officials who ordered them to break the law.
And let's not forget that the Supreme Court basically creates its own laws that can over-ride everything else (even the Constitution).
In Golan v. Gonzales / Golan v. Holder (2012) the U.S. Supreme Court re-classified numerous foreign-country works that had been in the public-domain for decades and placed them under new copyright terms.
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20 year ago photo
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Wikipedia should replace all affected photos with a notice
These types of changes to laws slip in because people either don't know about it, or think that they won't be affected. Show them how they would be affected and an educated populace may push back on such changes.
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Since in theory laws prohibiting slavery would hurt profit margins. They could rule that slavery is allowed if such a thing were passed hypothetically
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A good way to help for those who have twitter is to send that gif with a simple tweet to @lilianamazure and @argra_ (the main proposers of the modification) and also to @SeminaraEduardo and @gastonharispe , which are the others who are signing the project. Or if you get inspired do your own gif, or feel free to say whatever you want to them!
Please help spread the word!
Thanks!
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link to impacted photos on Wikimedia Commons
10,060 photos. Some could be old enough to not be impacted, but at a glance those are a small proportion.
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Re: link to impacted photos on Wikimedia Commons
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IDS
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28 Years
Back when the first copyright law was passed in 1780, there was no real incentive to create new works. The creators just kept raking in money from the existing ones.
Copyright forced the works into the public domain. If you wanted a continuing income stream, you created new works. That's the way copyright works. The creator gets *SOME* protection before the work falls into the public domain.
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Extending copyright on existing works is one thing, restoring copyright to works whose copyright has expired is quite a bigger beast.
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No more pictures for you
Or just shut the whole thing down for 'em. "We're sorry, the Wikipedia service is no longer available in your region." & the rest of the world just moves on without 'em.
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citations
And how do you get a copy of the Will of the deceased person, and contact the heirs? Where did the person die?
How does this work?
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Re: citations
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Like children around a cookie jar when mom & dad aren't looking.
Pathetic. They're wandering around tossing economic hand grenades. It's depressing that they'll likely get away with it. Remember that line from the first "Rollerball" movie: "We just lost the 13th Century." QED.
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