7 ms·

Free content removed by previously benevolent publisher. It's too bad they weren't able to make their free content into a profit stream. The sad part here is

Free content removed by previously benevolent publisher. It's too bad they weren't able to make their free content into a profit stream. The sad part here is that they were / are a steward to something beloved by many but through copyright they take it as hostage to the grave. If they no longer find value in distributing it shouldn't they be obligated to waive their ownership? Maybe copyright itself needs some reform if it grants control over the archaelogical / historical record of our civilization

jpk 2y ago
I'm reminded of how trademarks work: If you don't bother to defend them, then you lose them. Maybe copyright should be the same way: If you're not distributing copies any longer, you lose the copyright protection.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  The copyright cartel would fight that with their lives. They would rather destroy content forever than let it out for free, even if neither option costs them a cent. “The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.“
  - ninjin 2y ago
    For those of us not reading widely enough and/or not being raised in the American literary tradition, the quote is from John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" [1]. I have long been aware of the work, but reading this quote makes me regret not having read it yet. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath
    - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
      There was a (massive) excess of food during the depression, so that is likely made up.
      - isomorphic 2y ago
        That particular passage, perhaps; however one can certainly believe growers destroying an abundance to control prices. It certainly doesn't sound like the purported overabundance of food was evenly distributed: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/johnsteinbeck.socialsciences https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/johnsteinbeck....
        Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        That piece was written literally by the same person. Farmers were going bankrupt because there was so much food that they couldn't sell. It was the time when people developed the habit of eating meat daily, as people were buying out the food, and fed it to animals. There wasn't at any point a famine. It's a tall tale.
        ivanbakel 2y ago
        >Farmers were going bankrupt because there was so much food that they couldn't sell. And the originally-quoted passage is about farmers destroying crops as part of price controls due to overproduction. Could you provide any kind of evidence that the supply of food was evenly shared? Steinbeck spent a lot of time with impoverished farm workers before writing the Grapes of Wrath, so I'm inclined to believe his description of them.
        Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        So, farmers destroyed their crops and starved. Is that how you understand it? I'm not obligated to find a proof against fiction, when all real accounts show food prices almost halving in a decade, in fact I would be willing to speculate that the dust storms that came were in fact caused by the abandonment and large areas being left unsown, with no cover to hold the soil together.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
    Oh boy, this book was very popular in the USSR, depicting a complete failure of a capitalist society. The irony is that the soviet socialist society failed way, way harder and that average soviet family was far more impoverished than the evicted farmers from the book: those gringos had a car!
- ncallaway 2y ago
  I'm pretty open to doing something like this broadly, but I think this is especially important for software. Things like video games are much harder to archive than text. Keeping them running 70 years after the death of the author is already a herculean task. Doing that, when no copies are being distributed could make that entirely impossible. The current copyright system is going to rob the public domain of many of the cultural treasures that we are entitled to.
  - theturtletalks 2y ago
    Why can't the videos be downloaded and uploaded to the Internet Archive? There's a lot of copyrighted videos there already.
    - beej71 2y ago
      While this is a great idea, it's generally illegal for IA to share that content. And it's looking increasingly unlikely IA will be in existence 90 years from now, so it's unclear there'd be a point in them simply archiving it. If copyright were 14 years, if give IA a lot more of a chance of still being around then. And apparently the videos are no longer available to download, so it's not an option, anyway. Barring some change of heart by the copyright holder, these episodes are gone forever.
      - theturtletalks 2y ago
        I think down below, they are saying the episodes aren't gone, just paywalled behind Paramount+ now.
        dgoldstein0 2y ago
        Iiuc only some of them are now on Paramount Plus.
        rsanek 2y ago
        third paragraph of the linked article > Unfortunately for those in search of older episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, neither can be found on Paramount+.
- kube-system 2y ago
  But copyright isn't just for publicly distributed mass media made by corporations -- it is for all works made by anyone. Copyright also protects work that people wish to keep private, or work that people want to share at some times, with some people, but not all people. (Also depending on how that idea might be implemented, it could cause some strange situations for copyleft software)
  - morsch 2y ago
    So limit the changes to works the copyright owner intentionally distributed to more than $threshold people. Have it only apply to situations where the number is tracked already, e.g. due to commercial obligations. Or something. This does not seem like an insurmountable problem.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Then you're bringing into the question why the rights that someone gets is different depending on how people exercise them. What's the right threshold? What does it mean to intentionally distribute? Are we going to have protracted court battles over what tracking numbers are accurate or valid? Could those who want to abuse this (big business) simply work around it by making it infeasible to directly measure? And also, the copyleft complication too: If Bob writes a FOSS app with a GPL license, and it becomes popular, but then Bob retires and stops distributing it, does the copyright expire? I don't think the problem being discussed here is insurmountable to solve, I just think the proposed solution opens a whole new can of worms. I think a good start at a solution is to first shorten the duration of copyright.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- cornholio 2y ago
  It all boils down to excessive copyright durations. For something like software, even 10 years is excessive. The copyright terms are set by lobbyist and corporations in a political process where the public interest has no representation.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    StarCraft 2 is still competitive 14 years later. I’m not sure I’d personally have an issue with it becoming public domain but the game is still well-stewarded today. Even Brood War is still satisfactorily supported 26 years after its release. Though I think that’s definitely long enough to consider the option of public domain.
    - leni536 2y ago
      Is it the same StarCraft2 as 10 years ago, or regularly updated?
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        If we allow the copyright for the whole work to be extended indefinitely through subsequent updates, that kind of defeats the original idea.
        leni536 2y ago
        Does it? For single player games you can just still use and distribute the original, unpatched version. I agree that there is lock-in with online multiplayer games, but it's more on the game servers than the distributed content. So it's only marginally a copyright issue.
        reaperman 2y ago
        I think the person above you meant “If the copyright clock for the original release keeps getting reset every time an update drops…” and you’re talking about “If each updated version gets its own copyright clock upon release”. Copyright (and patent) law generally follows the latter in western nations, but there’s nuance because third-party derivative works can easily contain elements which the original IP owners might feel are “derivatives” of newer innovations from subsequent updates, even if the third-party feels they only based their work on the original release. There’s often a lot of room for reasonable minds to disagree, and it can be difficult to create quality third-party derivatives which avoid any similarities to newer versions of the IP. Think of creating a modern representation of Mickey Mouse. If you create a new version of Mickey Mouse based on the 1928 version in Steamboat Willy, it is difficult to make something that looks relatively contemporary without creating something that looks arguably derivative of the 1953 work “The Simple Things” or the 1940 work “Fantasia”. You could play it safe by using something that looks like a carbon copy of Steamboat Willy, but if your personal artistic vision involves a more contemporary art style, it is understandably difficult to make it unambiguously not a derivative of more recent depictions that are still under copyright. For the Starcraft 2 example - in a thought experiment where the 14 year old “Wings of Liberty” version is now public domain but the 11-year old “Heart of the Swarm” expansion pack and current 9-year old “Legacy of the Void” version of StarCraft 2 are both still under copyright. You want to make a new single-player campaign which takes place after LotV and doesn’t retcon any canon events (many of which are still copyrighted). A careful creator would probably understand they couldn’t make any references to Amon being reborn and defeated by Artanis, because that plot is from the still-copyrighted Legacy of the Void. But would you be able to write a storyline that contains any acknowledgements that Zeratul died? (Zeratul died at the hand of his friend, Artanis, due to some of Amon’s mind-control machinations during that same LotV campaign) I think a creator would have to be careful precisely how their storyline acknowledges Zeratuls death. If its just a few characters generically lamenting the loss of a great/controversial man…probably fine? What if the loss of their friend Zeratul was specified to have occurred “in battle” with no other specifics about the battle? I have no clue. If your storyline includes a tiny quip about Artanis dealing with unspecified guilt/shame over Zeratul’s unspecified death … then that might be technically infringing until LotV falls out of copyright, because some people may feel that it’s specific enough to be definitely derived from the LotV campaign. Note that all three of these similar examples are where a creator does in fact intend to create a derivation of copyrighted materials to create a sequel campaign to the uncopyrighted work which is still “in-canon” with respect to still-copyrighted works. Its just exploring where is the line of “how much derivation can you morally and/or ethically and/or legally get away with before at least one reasonable person genuinely feels you have elements that are unambiguously derived from still-copyrighted content?” For “legally” getting away with something you have to consider the costs of successfully defending yourself against lawsuits from notoriously overly-litigious corporations like Disney/Nintendo/Blizzard. Are you so safe that you could get a summary dismissal or is there any reason it could qualify for awards of punitive damages under Anti-SLAPP laws?
- modeless 2y ago
  A better fix would be to make copyright last 5 years from the date of publication. I'm betting that for the vast majority of copyrighted content the vast majority of the money is made in the first five years. Copyright is a tax on society. It's not an inalienable right. We keep it for the noble purpose of encouraging authors to create. We don't want them to rest on their laurels. So why are we locking up all of our content for life plus 70? It sounds like a prison sentence.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    The model where copyright has a short automatic duration plus increasing costs to renew every n years is better.
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    The US Founders' Copyright was 7 years if you filed paperwork with a chance to file paperwork for an additional 7 years. I realize that removing the paperwork saved the Government paying for a bunch of jobs and removed a source of accidental "got ya" style mistakes of subtly misfiled paperwork. But the paperwork was also meant to help archival purposes. There was even a time that everything filed needed to send a full copy to the Library of Congress, guaranteeing at least one archival copy. (But then publishing far outpaced the Library's physical space and ability to actually archive everything.) We have the technology to automate the jobs out of the paperwork and maybe at least the possibility to build an endowment for digital archives that don't need to worry as much about physical space, so maybe it's also time to think about bringing the paperwork back.
- nutrie 2y ago
  Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again. Do I lose the copyright then and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away? That’s just one example of possible implications. My point being, trademark is directly tied to the dynamics of the free market, while copyright only indirectly. And copyright is not forever.
  - arrosenberg 2y ago
    No, because thats theft. Its more like if someone took a picture of it and reproduced it for sale. In that case you would likely lose a copyright claim in practice, even if you may have a valid claim in theory.
    - themoonisachees 2y ago
      IIRC a part of copyright "activating" is publishing the content in the first place, so I don't think GP would have a good case to begin with, not that it matters.
      - gnicholas 2y ago
        Copyright does not require public publishing of the content — just "fixed in a tangible medium of expression". This would have been accomplished when the painting was created on paper.
        nutrie 2y ago
        This is exactly what I meant. That’s why I said it just one of the implications, out of many.
        gnicholas 2y ago
        Ah sorry, I didn't realize your comment was in response to some hypothetical new copyright system proposed upthread.
        2y ago
- gnicholas 2y ago
  So if someone makes a painting, or a sculpture, she would have to create and distribute copies or risk losing protection? I could see how this might make sense for things that can be perfectly copied, but not so much for anything that is even slightly 3D.
  - majewsky 2y ago
    So then make the rule just for cheaply copiable media. Copyright already has lots of specific rights that only appear to certain forms of media, e.g. the right to broadcast exists for movies, but not for statues.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Lookalike sculptures and paintings are not copyright able.
- TMWNN 2y ago
  Reposting my proposals regarding copyright: Any content, once published/distributed/broadcast in the US, that is not made readily available to the public going forward loses copyright protection. This includes revisions. * A film, TV show, sound recording, book, or any other copyrighted content must, once made available for public purchase, always remain available. If the only streaming service willing to pay to stream your movie has the smallest market share, too bad; the market has spoken on the value of your content. An ebook can fulfill this purpose for a print book; streaming can fulfill this purpose for a theatrical or physical-media film. But it must be available to maintain copyright. * Compulsory licensing should apply; if Netflix wants to pay the same amount of money as the above-mentioned small market-share streaming service for the film, Netflix must be allowed to do so. The film's rights owner can demand more, raising the price for all, but if every outlet refuses, the film immediately goes into public domain. This process is reversible, but it would set a ceiling to prevent the owner from setting a ridiculously high price to prevent its availability. * If a Blu-ray of a film or TV show has excised or modified scenes for whatever reason, and the original isn't also made available (whether on a different "theatrical cut" release, or as a different cut on the same disc), the entire original version immediately goes into public domain. * If NBC posts Saturday Night Live skits on YouTube that have removed "problematic" scenes[1] without explaining the differences—a diff file, basically—the entire original skit loses copyright protection. Separate issue, but also very worthwhile: * Streaming services must make all data regarding their content available in some standardized format. Consumers should be able to use one application to access all content they have access to. The creator of SmartTube (a very nice YouTube-compatible player) should be able to add the appropriate API support to search for and play Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+/Paramount+ content. The above applies to software, too. Legalize abandonware! [1] Something I understand already happens
prvc 2y ago
>Free content removed by previously benevolent publisher. I don't know about that. Regarding "free", it was always under copyright and distributed restrictively (DRM, ads, and geo-blocking). And no comment necessary for "benevolent".
- ncallaway 2y ago
  Free as in beer, not free as in speech
SI_Rob 2y ago
perhaps they want to get their material out of the training set feed trough of all the Sora-style models consuming anything and everything not nailed down with an as-yet non-existant source watermarking scheme that can pass through the most tormented AI digestive tract.
csdreamer7 2y ago
Or we just reduce the length of copyright. Back when Walt Disney started, copyright was 28 years. That was good enough for him to get started producing a media empire. The Berne Convention requires 50 years-why not just go back to that standard instead of the 95 years today? 95 years for works for hire; 70 years + life of the author if they make it themselves. There are very few pieces of work that their authors are still getting benefit from, but could be lost to history. Documentaries have to be censored to remove elements now that require licensing of materials. Walt Disney got his start remaking old works (public domain) into new ones. How many Walt Disney's are we preventing from letting them make better use of Mickey Mouse? We will find that out soon when the trademark Disney has been trying to impose gets challenged. This has the nice benefit of encouraging companies to make good use of their works as much as possible in the limited time instead of holding out to get a better deal.
danielheath 2y ago
The amount of shared cultural history which has been preserved thanks to piracy is frankly astonishing.
xtracto 2y ago
We need a new TVTorrents and EZTV equivalent site. We need some sort of distributed library with TOR like properties so that nobody can know who is ultimately storing the data. The amount of information that is being lost is outrageous.

jpk 2y ago

I'm reminded of how trademarks work: If you don't bother to defend them, then you lose them. Maybe copyright should be the same way: If you're not distributing copies any longer, you lose the copyright protection.

ryandrake 2y ago
The copyright cartel would fight that with their lives. They would rather destroy content forever than let it out for free, even if neither option costs them a cent. “The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.“
- ninjin 2y ago
  For those of us not reading widely enough and/or not being raised in the American literary tradition, the quote is from John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" [1]. I have long been aware of the work, but reading this quote makes me regret not having read it yet. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath
  - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
    There was a (massive) excess of food during the depression, so that is likely made up.
    - isomorphic 2y ago
      That particular passage, perhaps; however one can certainly believe growers destroying an abundance to control prices. It certainly doesn't sound like the purported overabundance of food was evenly distributed: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/johnsteinbeck.socialsciences https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/02/johnsteinbeck....
      - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        That piece was written literally by the same person. Farmers were going bankrupt because there was so much food that they couldn't sell. It was the time when people developed the habit of eating meat daily, as people were buying out the food, and fed it to animals. There wasn't at any point a famine. It's a tall tale.
        ivanbakel 2y ago
        >Farmers were going bankrupt because there was so much food that they couldn't sell. And the originally-quoted passage is about farmers destroying crops as part of price controls due to overproduction. Could you provide any kind of evidence that the supply of food was evenly shared? Steinbeck spent a lot of time with impoverished farm workers before writing the Grapes of Wrath, so I'm inclined to believe his description of them.
        Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        So, farmers destroyed their crops and starved. Is that how you understand it? I'm not obligated to find a proof against fiction, when all real accounts show food prices almost halving in a decade, in fact I would be willing to speculate that the dust storms that came were in fact caused by the abandonment and large areas being left unsown, with no cover to hold the soil together.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
  Oh boy, this book was very popular in the USSR, depicting a complete failure of a capitalist society. The irony is that the soviet socialist society failed way, way harder and that average soviet family was far more impoverished than the evicted farmers from the book: those gringos had a car!
ncallaway 2y ago
I'm pretty open to doing something like this broadly, but I think this is especially important for software. Things like video games are much harder to archive than text. Keeping them running 70 years after the death of the author is already a herculean task. Doing that, when no copies are being distributed could make that entirely impossible. The current copyright system is going to rob the public domain of many of the cultural treasures that we are entitled to.
- theturtletalks 2y ago
  Why can't the videos be downloaded and uploaded to the Internet Archive? There's a lot of copyrighted videos there already.
  - beej71 2y ago
    While this is a great idea, it's generally illegal for IA to share that content. And it's looking increasingly unlikely IA will be in existence 90 years from now, so it's unclear there'd be a point in them simply archiving it. If copyright were 14 years, if give IA a lot more of a chance of still being around then. And apparently the videos are no longer available to download, so it's not an option, anyway. Barring some change of heart by the copyright holder, these episodes are gone forever.
    - theturtletalks 2y ago
      I think down below, they are saying the episodes aren't gone, just paywalled behind Paramount+ now.
      - dgoldstein0 2y ago
        Iiuc only some of them are now on Paramount Plus.
      - rsanek 2y ago
        third paragraph of the linked article > Unfortunately for those in search of older episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, neither can be found on Paramount+.
kube-system 2y ago
But copyright isn't just for publicly distributed mass media made by corporations -- it is for all works made by anyone. Copyright also protects work that people wish to keep private, or work that people want to share at some times, with some people, but not all people. (Also depending on how that idea might be implemented, it could cause some strange situations for copyleft software)
- morsch 2y ago
  So limit the changes to works the copyright owner intentionally distributed to more than $threshold people. Have it only apply to situations where the number is tracked already, e.g. due to commercial obligations. Or something. This does not seem like an insurmountable problem.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Then you're bringing into the question why the rights that someone gets is different depending on how people exercise them. What's the right threshold? What does it mean to intentionally distribute? Are we going to have protracted court battles over what tracking numbers are accurate or valid? Could those who want to abuse this (big business) simply work around it by making it infeasible to directly measure? And also, the copyleft complication too: If Bob writes a FOSS app with a GPL license, and it becomes popular, but then Bob retires and stops distributing it, does the copyright expire? I don't think the problem being discussed here is insurmountable to solve, I just think the proposed solution opens a whole new can of worms. I think a good start at a solution is to first shorten the duration of copyright.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
cornholio 2y ago
It all boils down to excessive copyright durations. For something like software, even 10 years is excessive. The copyright terms are set by lobbyist and corporations in a political process where the public interest has no representation.
- reaperman 2y ago
  StarCraft 2 is still competitive 14 years later. I’m not sure I’d personally have an issue with it becoming public domain but the game is still well-stewarded today. Even Brood War is still satisfactorily supported 26 years after its release. Though I think that’s definitely long enough to consider the option of public domain.
  - leni536 2y ago
    Is it the same StarCraft2 as 10 years ago, or regularly updated?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      If we allow the copyright for the whole work to be extended indefinitely through subsequent updates, that kind of defeats the original idea.
      - leni536 2y ago
        Does it? For single player games you can just still use and distribute the original, unpatched version. I agree that there is lock-in with online multiplayer games, but it's more on the game servers than the distributed content. So it's only marginally a copyright issue.
        reaperman 2y ago
        I think the person above you meant “If the copyright clock for the original release keeps getting reset every time an update drops…” and you’re talking about “If each updated version gets its own copyright clock upon release”. Copyright (and patent) law generally follows the latter in western nations, but there’s nuance because third-party derivative works can easily contain elements which the original IP owners might feel are “derivatives” of newer innovations from subsequent updates, even if the third-party feels they only based their work on the original release. There’s often a lot of room for reasonable minds to disagree, and it can be difficult to create quality third-party derivatives which avoid any similarities to newer versions of the IP. Think of creating a modern representation of Mickey Mouse. If you create a new version of Mickey Mouse based on the 1928 version in Steamboat Willy, it is difficult to make something that looks relatively contemporary without creating something that looks arguably derivative of the 1953 work “The Simple Things” or the 1940 work “Fantasia”. You could play it safe by using something that looks like a carbon copy of Steamboat Willy, but if your personal artistic vision involves a more contemporary art style, it is understandably difficult to make it unambiguously not a derivative of more recent depictions that are still under copyright. For the Starcraft 2 example - in a thought experiment where the 14 year old “Wings of Liberty” version is now public domain but the 11-year old “Heart of the Swarm” expansion pack and current 9-year old “Legacy of the Void” version of StarCraft 2 are both still under copyright. You want to make a new single-player campaign which takes place after LotV and doesn’t retcon any canon events (many of which are still copyrighted). A careful creator would probably understand they couldn’t make any references to Amon being reborn and defeated by Artanis, because that plot is from the still-copyrighted Legacy of the Void. But would you be able to write a storyline that contains any acknowledgements that Zeratul died? (Zeratul died at the hand of his friend, Artanis, due to some of Amon’s mind-control machinations during that same LotV campaign) I think a creator would have to be careful precisely how their storyline acknowledges Zeratuls death. If its just a few characters generically lamenting the loss of a great/controversial man…probably fine? What if the loss of their friend Zeratul was specified to have occurred “in battle” with no other specifics about the battle? I have no clue. If your storyline includes a tiny quip about Artanis dealing with unspecified guilt/shame over Zeratul’s unspecified death … then that might be technically infringing until LotV falls out of copyright, because some people may feel that it’s specific enough to be definitely derived from the LotV campaign. Note that all three of these similar examples are where a creator does in fact intend to create a derivation of copyrighted materials to create a sequel campaign to the uncopyrighted work which is still “in-canon” with respect to still-copyrighted works. Its just exploring where is the line of “how much derivation can you morally and/or ethically and/or legally get away with before at least one reasonable person genuinely feels you have elements that are unambiguously derived from still-copyrighted content?” For “legally” getting away with something you have to consider the costs of successfully defending yourself against lawsuits from notoriously overly-litigious corporations like Disney/Nintendo/Blizzard. Are you so safe that you could get a summary dismissal or is there any reason it could qualify for awards of punitive damages under Anti-SLAPP laws?
modeless 2y ago
A better fix would be to make copyright last 5 years from the date of publication. I'm betting that for the vast majority of copyrighted content the vast majority of the money is made in the first five years. Copyright is a tax on society. It's not an inalienable right. We keep it for the noble purpose of encouraging authors to create. We don't want them to rest on their laurels. So why are we locking up all of our content for life plus 70? It sounds like a prison sentence.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  The model where copyright has a short automatic duration plus increasing costs to renew every n years is better.
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  The US Founders' Copyright was 7 years if you filed paperwork with a chance to file paperwork for an additional 7 years. I realize that removing the paperwork saved the Government paying for a bunch of jobs and removed a source of accidental "got ya" style mistakes of subtly misfiled paperwork. But the paperwork was also meant to help archival purposes. There was even a time that everything filed needed to send a full copy to the Library of Congress, guaranteeing at least one archival copy. (But then publishing far outpaced the Library's physical space and ability to actually archive everything.) We have the technology to automate the jobs out of the paperwork and maybe at least the possibility to build an endowment for digital archives that don't need to worry as much about physical space, so maybe it's also time to think about bringing the paperwork back.
nutrie 2y ago
Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again. Do I lose the copyright then and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away? That’s just one example of possible implications. My point being, trademark is directly tied to the dynamics of the free market, while copyright only indirectly. And copyright is not forever.
- arrosenberg 2y ago
  No, because thats theft. Its more like if someone took a picture of it and reproduced it for sale. In that case you would likely lose a copyright claim in practice, even if you may have a valid claim in theory.
  - themoonisachees 2y ago
    IIRC a part of copyright "activating" is publishing the content in the first place, so I don't think GP would have a good case to begin with, not that it matters.
    - gnicholas 2y ago
      Copyright does not require public publishing of the content — just "fixed in a tangible medium of expression". This would have been accomplished when the painting was created on paper.
      - nutrie 2y ago
        This is exactly what I meant. That’s why I said it just one of the implications, out of many.
        gnicholas 2y ago
        Ah sorry, I didn't realize your comment was in response to some hypothetical new copyright system proposed upthread.
      - 2y ago
gnicholas 2y ago
So if someone makes a painting, or a sculpture, she would have to create and distribute copies or risk losing protection? I could see how this might make sense for things that can be perfectly copied, but not so much for anything that is even slightly 3D.
- majewsky 2y ago
  So then make the rule just for cheaply copiable media. Copyright already has lots of specific rights that only appear to certain forms of media, e.g. the right to broadcast exists for movies, but not for statues.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Lookalike sculptures and paintings are not copyright able.
TMWNN 2y ago
Reposting my proposals regarding copyright: Any content, once published/distributed/broadcast in the US, that is not made readily available to the public going forward loses copyright protection. This includes revisions. * A film, TV show, sound recording, book, or any other copyrighted content must, once made available for public purchase, always remain available. If the only streaming service willing to pay to stream your movie has the smallest market share, too bad; the market has spoken on the value of your content. An ebook can fulfill this purpose for a print book; streaming can fulfill this purpose for a theatrical or physical-media film. But it must be available to maintain copyright. * Compulsory licensing should apply; if Netflix wants to pay the same amount of money as the above-mentioned small market-share streaming service for the film, Netflix must be allowed to do so. The film's rights owner can demand more, raising the price for all, but if every outlet refuses, the film immediately goes into public domain. This process is reversible, but it would set a ceiling to prevent the owner from setting a ridiculously high price to prevent its availability. * If a Blu-ray of a film or TV show has excised or modified scenes for whatever reason, and the original isn't also made available (whether on a different "theatrical cut" release, or as a different cut on the same disc), the entire original version immediately goes into public domain. * If NBC posts Saturday Night Live skits on YouTube that have removed "problematic" scenes[1] without explaining the differences—a diff file, basically—the entire original skit loses copyright protection. Separate issue, but also very worthwhile: * Streaming services must make all data regarding their content available in some standardized format. Consumers should be able to use one application to access all content they have access to. The creator of SmartTube (a very nice YouTube-compatible player) should be able to add the appropriate API support to search for and play Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+/Paramount+ content. The above applies to software, too. Legalize abandonware! [1] Something I understand already happens

prvc 2y ago

>Free content removed by previously benevolent publisher. I don't know about that. Regarding "free", it was always under copyright and distributed restrictively (DRM, ads, and geo-blocking). And no comment necessary for "benevolent".

ncallaway 2y ago
Free as in beer, not free as in speech

SI_Rob 2y ago

perhaps they want to get their material out of the training set feed trough of all the Sora-style models consuming anything and everything not nailed down with an as-yet non-existant source watermarking scheme that can pass through the most tormented AI digestive tract.

csdreamer7 2y ago

Or we just reduce the length of copyright. Back when Walt Disney started, copyright was 28 years. That was good enough for him to get started producing a media empire. The Berne Convention requires 50 years-why not just go back to that standard instead of the 95 years today? 95 years for works for hire; 70 years + life of the author if they make it themselves. There are very few pieces of work that their authors are still getting benefit from, but could be lost to history. Documentaries have to be censored to remove elements now that require licensing of materials. Walt Disney got his start remaking old works (public domain) into new ones. How many Walt Disney's are we preventing from letting them make better use of Mickey Mouse? We will find that out soon when the trademark Disney has been trying to impose gets challenged. This has the nice benefit of encouraging companies to make good use of their works as much as possible in the limited time instead of holding out to get a better deal.

danielheath 2y ago

The amount of shared cultural history which has been preserved thanks to piracy is frankly astonishing.

xtracto 2y ago

We need a new TVTorrents and EZTV equivalent site. We need some sort of distributed library with TOR like properties so that nobody can know who is ultimately storing the data. The amount of information that is being lost is outrageous.