One of the clearest demonstrations of how copyright is actively harmful is the lawsuit that four of the biggest publishers brought against the Internet Archive. As a result of the judge’s decision in favour of the publishers – currently being appealed – more than 500,000 books have been taken out of lending by the Internet Archive, including more than 1,300 banned and “challenged” books. In an open letter to the publishers in the lawsuit, the Internet Archive lists three core reasons why removing half a million ebooks is “having a devastating impact in the US and around the world, with far-reaching implications”.
Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17259314
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Fun times would be to prevent companies owning copyright.
Overhauling copyright is not the same as getting rid of copyright. How about those artists that make original art, graphic novels or movies, how are they supposed to sustain themselves? Are you saying that the copyright is held too long?
The purpose of copyright is to promote science and the useful arts. The purpose is to get art and inventions into the public domain. The purpose is not “to get artists paid”. Getting them paid for their works and discoveries is the method by which copyright achieves its purpose. It is not the purpose itself.
If they are only interested in keeping their works proprietary; if they are uninterested in pushing them into the public domain, they are not achieving the purpose for which copyright exists. They do not qualify for copyright protection. They can get bent.
Says someone that has never made anything. Do you think art, music, etc. comes magically out of nowhere? I don’t really care to fight about what the original intent of copyright is, artists and every person should own their own bodies, likeness, voices and creative outputs.
I don’t really care to fight about what the original intent of copyright is,
Then you can get bent.
Art and invention benefit the whole of humanity. A work whose sole beneficiary is its creator does not qualify as art or invention, and deserves no protection.
The current copyright system is absurd, but protecting an artist’s work in the short term is what copyright was meant for originally. 70 years post death is way beyond ridiculous, but something like 5 years from conception makes sense. That way a creator gets a short period to profit off their work while it’s protected, and then it would enter public domain and anyone could do as they wish with it.
Unfortunately it would still allow a situation where someone presents a screenplay to a studio, and gets turned down, and then 5 years later the studio makes a movie from that screenplay and makes a billion dollars without the creator getting anything from it. That’s what copyright is meant to prevent, but it has definitely gotten twisted and corrupted over the years, mostly thanks to Disney.
Exactly. I don’t have a problem with artists profiting from their work. I don’t have a problem with their temporary exclusivity. The problem I have is when they never intend for that work to belong to the people; when they think they can maintain control over an idea long after it has become “culture”.
For the problem you mention, I would suggest that any studio who has been offered the work during the five year period owes royalties for a 5-year period after the studio publishes the work, even if it has since entered the public domain. Something along those lines would likely become a standard clause between the screenwriter’s guild and the studios, and doesn’t necessarily need to be enacted in law.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a longer period for some major works. Start with a standard, 5-year period from the time of original publication, then allow an extended copyright registration with an exponentially increasing annual fee. A few additional years would likely be affordable. The fifth, possibly. The sixth, only for the most profitable franchises, and the seventh being a large fraction of the national GDP. If James Cameron wants to pay for the entire military establishment through the proceeds of Avatar III, he can get one more year of protection.
Generally speaking all the money is made in a very short time after release compared to the life of copyright
So? If you spent years making a movie, don’t you think you should keep the rights for the movie for awhile? I have many friends that have careers with their style of art.
I’m not against piracy in general, you should absolutely go after the evil corporations. I’m saying that for the small time artist, they need protections.
Yeah but it’s too long
I’m fairly sure that at this point pirating has been shown to lead to increased sales, even of small scale productions.
Also, no one said that people can’t keep the rights for a while, just that if you don’t let people access those things you don’t get to prosecute them for making the art available.
If the publishers win, I hope every book they publish as long as they exist gets torrented into oblivion leading authors to ditch them in favour of self publishing
Btw what are thoose 1300 “banned” ones?
How long do you think copyright should be? It was originally 14 years in the United States.
The length of copyright protection depends on several factors. Generally, for most works created after 1978, protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. For anonymous works, pseudonymous works, or works made for hire, the copyright term is 95 years from the year of first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first.
https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycle/
The max that I would ever be happy with is 25, but 20 or 17 preferred for me at least. I think it gives plenty of time for a Series completion.
Robert Jordan and George RR Martin disagree.
Do you have any exact statements from them? Because I would like to know more.
I rarely hear about authors/artists talk about copyright other than, when they talk about what license they use or them complaining because they felt that their work wasn’t infringing on other artists copyright since it was transformative.
Robert Jordan took a long time finishing his Wheel of Time series- he actually died and Brandon Sanderson had to write the last three books
GRRM is still writing his series.
My point is that they would say that time proposed is not enough because they take a long time to write.
Additional context:
Robert Jordan’s first book for the Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990. His last book, A Memory of Light, was published in 2013. He died in 2007 and a lot of fans, me included, thought the series was also dead but Jordan’s wife brought on Sanderson to finish it. And he did such a great job writing in Jordan’s style that some think he did Jordan better than Jordan did.
GRRM wrote A Game of Thrones which was published in 1996 which is the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire. His latest book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011 and only book five of seven proposed books for the series. Three series was originally going to be a trilogy so we’ll see if it ends at seven. The Wheel of Time series was also supposed to be a trilogy when Jordan started it.
GRRM is still writing his series.
That’s simple: have the earliest works released into the public domain, while he keeps squatting on the newer and promised ones.
How long do you think copyright should be?
No easy solutions but my general guideline would be that both copyright and patents should never last more than half the retirement age of a current generation, calculated via actuarial tables or some trustable scientific method.
The rationale is simple: the ultimate purpose of both is (or, well, should be) to promote creation so that society in general can be participant of the resulting effects. Half the retirement age not only is a good compromise between giving creator control and giving at least half of society the opportunity to enjoy the public good result of creation within their lifetime and within their fair opportunity to earn wages, in particular in such cases as eg.: big pharma and medications, but also promotes that big creators, such as corporations, act towards the public good of lengthening life and providing good living standards for the rest of society.
On the flipside, I think the Internet Archive should stick to archiving stuff. “Lending out” books without asking for permission and without owning the copyright, isn’t the best move. And I don’t think it’s aligned well to the core concept of the Internet Archive.
The Internet Archive reached too far with the lending aspect. While the goal of sharing is laudable, no one was really surprised by this decision. 🏴☠️🦜
The books they shared still had DRM on them. As we all know, if it has DRM you don’t own it. They never gave away any book, so I don’t see what they did wrong.
