Re: Re: Limiting the length of copyright would solve the problem
Unlike copyrights, trademarks aren't created automatically. They require an initial fee and a renewal at 5, 10 and every 10 years after. If the length of copyright were actually limited and someone wanted to trademark something to get around the limitation, the material would have to be lucrative enough to justify the renewal cost. This would force people to select the works they want to keep restricting, while letting orphan works fall to the public domain.
The whole War On Terror was never about protecting American lives. The casualties from letting drunken idiots drive around equates to a 9/11 every couple months since about 1960. That casualty rate has been acceptable for decades, so it's pretty hard to justify going full retard because of an occasional non-drunk-related 9/11. Homeland Security's whole purpose is to terrorize the public, to convince us that our only hope for survival is to keep a certain group of people in charge and give them a free hand politically. In that light the TSA doesn't have to actually protect anyone from anything; it just has to make enough people think that's what it's doing.
Limiting the length of copyright would solve the problem
The current longevity of copyright protection exists specifically for the purpose of allowing companies to control the long-term rights to an extremely tiny handful of works that produce significant commercial returns for decades -- call them Disney-class material.
Simply reducing the longevity of copyrights to a few years would reduce the content industry's incentive to gamble huge sums of money in the hope of owning Disney-class properties. This would result in fewer blockbuster movies and a smaller branding industry -- clothes, games, Happy Meal toys...
With those decades-long commercial opportunities destroyed, what would take their place? The answer is innovation -- whatever new business paradigms are now lying undiscovered because the copyright monster keeps gobbling up so much investment. People who want to make money don't simply dry up and blow away when a business or a whole way of doing business goes out of style. They come up with something new. That's what the free market is all about.
Giving one business model a monopoly on how things are done suppresses innovation. Take away that monopoly by removing the legal props that are artificially holding it up, and we'll see whole new ways of running the idea business. The world will evolve, like it's supposed to. That's not socialism or repression of anyone's liberty. It's called Progress.
It's funny to me how much crossover there is between completely trusting security experts and completely mistrusting climatology experts. I guess some experts are more expert than others.
The history of intellectual property is a history of misinformation. Even the basic terminology is misleading. Copyrights and patents don't confer rights, they impose restrictions. Throughout history people freely re-used anything they saw and heard, from engineering principles to music. Civilization somehow developed a vast array of technology and culture in spite of this freedom. Then patents and copyrights came along and defined this normal, customary, intuitive human behavior as Evil. Taking it a step further, the rights industry has redefined rights as property, which reduces the concept of infringement to a purse-snatching and lets them play the part of the little old lady. Predefining yourself as the injured party in a way that's highly intuitive to the average person is a lot simpler than debating a concept such as Fair Use. How can it be fair for someone to, for example, drive your car whenever they want?
Rights and property are two different animals, or at least they used to be. I'm not even sure myself anymore.
It depends on what you mean by "profitable." The ad-based website might not be a great business model, but you can definitely make a non-zero amount of cash with ads. On my personal website I have a lot photos of a big house remodel, which I haven't updated significantly in several years. With minimal Google ads it steadily pulls in about $50/month, which pays for my broadband access. Not exactly a business plan but I'd call it a win.
It's amazing how many Americans think of Europe as the "old world" and the rest as the "third world." In many forums the mere mention of another country being ahead of the USA in any way will be viciously attacked as misguided liberal propaganda, eliciting frothing rants about socialism and freedom.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Limiting the length of copyright would solve the problem
On the post: TSA's Failure Based On The Myth Of Perfect Security
What does "Acceptable Casualties" mean?
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Limiting the length of copyright would solve the problem
Simply reducing the longevity of copyrights to a few years would reduce the content industry's incentive to gamble huge sums of money in the hope of owning Disney-class properties. This would result in fewer blockbuster movies and a smaller branding industry -- clothes, games, Happy Meal toys...
With those decades-long commercial opportunities destroyed, what would take their place? The answer is innovation -- whatever new business paradigms are now lying undiscovered because the copyright monster keeps gobbling up so much investment. People who want to make money don't simply dry up and blow away when a business or a whole way of doing business goes out of style. They come up with something new. That's what the free market is all about.
Giving one business model a monopoly on how things are done suppresses innovation. Take away that monopoly by removing the legal props that are artificially holding it up, and we'll see whole new ways of running the idea business. The world will evolve, like it's supposed to. That's not socialism or repression of anyone's liberty. It's called Progress.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Only fair way, and only way possible, is to limit rewards.
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On the post: Copyright Expansion Through Misinformation Has Gone On A Long Time... And It Involved Pimps & Ferrets
Misinformation is the name of the game
Rights and property are two different animals, or at least they used to be. I'm not even sure myself anymore.
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