The ownership of ideas is exactly the problem with intellectual property laws. Ideas were never to be owned and a specific expression of an idea was only to be controlled for a limited period of time. To the extent that patents and copyrights move beyond these boundaries, they become problematic. Life + 70 for a copyright term is well beyond the boundary in my opinion.
Furthermore, “natural rights” is precisely the area that one needs to proceed from in discussing intellectual property because Locke’s concepts of natural rights informed the creation and limitations of the copyright clause in the first place.
Finally, whomever used the term “ancient” above in reference to IP protection seriously needs to read some history. Using “ancient” to describe IP rights is similar to an American telling a European that their 100 year old house is very old.
Thank you. Copyright can only be discussed if we thoroughly understand why it was put in place and what the effects might be of change to the system.
The more recent changes to copyright law are not understood by most. Almost everybody focuses on the change to the length of copyright. That’s really a side issue for going forward. The change that makes everything harder is that for the first time everything is copyright as soon as it is fixed into tangible form.
Up through 1978 copyright only accrued if a copyright symbol was attached to the work. Formal registration of that copyright allowed for more serious penalties. In today’s law, the symbol is not required. These words I am posting are copyright in my name as soon as I post them to the Dope. So are yours and everybody else’s. So are all Twitter posts and blogs and comments and Facebook notes. So are all photographs. And on and on to every form of expression. The same process of formal registration is in place, however.
That’s a recognition of newer technology, and intended to provide protection without the clutter and bother of attaching the symbol. That made sense to do on a book; for every one of the several million posts here to be tagged would be madness. Even so, that commonsense reform has implications. I did 1500 long posts on a blog. Later I collected the best of them into a book. The book has a collective copyright; each post has an individual one. What happens in a system that wants to charge a fee for renewal? How do the individual posts written over years get treated?
The same problem accrues to schemes that want to put charges on creation. Photographers already run into the problem of handling copyrights on literally tens of thousands of photographs. They can bundle registrations for a single fee but, unlike books, photographs may suddenly prove to have value years after their creation. Don’t they all have to be treated equally, unlike Tweets?
A few years ago, a scheme was put forward to handle orphan books, works whose owners were said to have disappeared. The concept was applauded. The implementation was disastrous. The very first investigation showed that finding the actual owners was as easy as looking into phone books.
Dr. Strangelove wants to overthrow copyright. I don’t doubt that if we could start from scratch, our current system is not the one we would create for today’s world. Unfortunately, you can say the same for every single system we struggle with. Nobody seriously believes that patronage is an answer for musicians. Nor is performance a viable alternative to recording in an era of globally-connected electronically-deluged mass audiences. Here is another postulate: you can never go backward. No society can appropriate the solution from another world and time. It can’t happen and would be disastrous if tried.
How can copyright deal with a world of trillions of copyrighted works often produced pseudonymously? How can anyone know which will have value in the future? How much burden do we place on creators to handle not just the size and number of their outputs but the vast range of venues over which they generate them? Who is responsible for our posts here at the Dope if the site is shut down?
Wipe it all out and start clean is foolishness. Many in the tech world use that as a slogan when they are small. When they get large they quietly step back and realize that they must adapt to the world as much or more than the world needs to adapt to them. Hierarchies form. Bureaucracies make innovation more difficult. Human resources sets policies. Lawyers conform to the law. Business models stumble around and then go back to what is familiar. (Music industry, I’m looking at you.) Writers crow about self-publishing and then turn to established publishers when they make it big. The world increments. The systems in place may lag - OK, always lag - but incorporate within themselves thousands of adaptations because actual experience always contains thousands of cases no system designer ever dreamed of.
The world has not devolved into individualistic anarchy as some hysterically predicted about the Internet Revolution. The world has changed and not changed. The length of copyright is a very small issue. The concept and meaning of copyright is a much larger one. I suggest that thoroughly understanding why it exists and its history and implementation is critical to any change. That starts with acknowledging that IP rights are P rights, no more, no less. I admit I would have been much more impatient when I was younger, and far less amenable to listening to elders cautioning against revolution. Tough. I’m an elder today. Figure out a way to adapt. The revolution will not be copyrighted.
Copyright does not protect “ideas.” Copyright protects creations, and is the single strongest thing supporting widespread ‘publication’ of those creations.
No copyright or anything like it, and “ideas” would be closely held and shared under secretive conditions (see: medieval Church and other organizations). Copyright protections: ideas are openly published… but with a leash meaning the owner profits from their publication.
Only someone who’s never had a worthwhile idea in his life (and likely still spends time on campus) could support the… idea… that all intellectual creations are inherently public property.
Is the copyright system broken in spots? Sure. But name another system that isn’t. Throwing out copyright, in fact or in essence, is up there with throwing out other parts of the Constitution, or abolishing the Fed, or so forth.
Far too much of the argument stands on the airy theoretical pillar of “intellectual freedom for the good of humanity” and the grubby one of pure greed. As a creator of not insignificant standing, who relies heavily on access to the ideas of millions but has no need to “own” any of them, I reject the first pillar outside of freshman philosophy discussions. I don’t really need a justification to dismiss the second, having had enough of people who make arguments boiling down to “I want it and don’t want to have to pay for it.”
And the difference between an idea and a copyrightable work is…? The number of bits? The number of hours it took to flesh out? Where is that dividing line?
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
To CJ_F et al: The Harry Potter books/movies are about a boy who goes to a school where he learns to become a wizard.
There, I just shared an idea with you, and I didn’t break any copyright laws to do it.
[/QUOTE]
As mentioned previously, this post is copyrighted. You didn’t break any laws because that copyright is yours (or Chicago Reader’s, not sure – it’s somebody’s though). If I share this “idea” with someone without your permission, do you believe I’ve actually done something wrong?
I hadn’t thought of that change. It is a very good one, for esthetics as you mentioned, for preserving the rights of those who might not be up on the old law, and in identifying clueless writers who slap copyright symbols on everything for no reason.
Allowing mass renewals might be a good solution to the renewal problem, which I think is the real issue here. Copyrights are not registered in any way, but if you allowed creators to renew in bulk, for one small fee, it would be fairly simple for someone wishing to make use of a work past the expiration date to look up whether the copyright was renewed. (Anything before is under copyright and no change to the current system is required.)
Yes, keeping track of everything, especially photographs, would be a pain, but a lot simpler now than back when it would have to be on paper. Maybe really tough for blog posts and SDMB posts, but what is the chance anyone would ever want to renew a copyright on them unless they were already collected?
Copyrights expiring by default but making renewal cheap and simple seems to be a good compromise.
The expression of that idea into a work. Which, if you’ve ever done it, you’ll know is the hard part.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. The reason that studios don’t accept over the transom scripts is that the scripts probably share a few ideas which are hot at the moment, and they are worried that some guy who doesn’t even understand formatting will claim the idea for a made movie was stolen.
Tribbles are descended from Martian flat cats but Heinlein, who knew about this stuff, was fine with it.
If you don’t know - if you can even formulate this question - you have no business having an opinion about copyright. Certainly not to the degree of challenging its worth and validity.
Too many in this thread have blathered on about “ideas” and “intellectual freedom” and “ideas must be freeeeee” from a very naive and idealistic viewpoint… without showing the slightest understanding that copyrights and patents do not apply to ideas. You cannot patent an idea. You cannot copyright (or legally protect in much of any other way) an idea. You can only patent/copyright/trademark the manifestation and expression of an idea, and to a fairly specific degree.
Stephen King copyrighting The Stand does not mean he “owns” any of the ideas that led to it or form it. You’re free to go write your own novel, your own bigass novel, your own bigass novel about a post-apocalyptic-disease world, even such with a lot of mystical, devil-comes-to-Georgia nonsense woven in.
You just can’t write a novel about the further adventures of Randall Flagg. Or Lazarus Long. Or Jack Ryan. Or Kinsey Millhone. Nor is your little world in any way impinged because of those limitations - you are free to read, give away, discuss, and even write long learned dissertations with fair-use quotations from any of those.
Copyrights put ideas in the well of public access. Patents put ideas in the well of public use. Trademarks… well, let’s stay away from that one for now. But there is no force on earth, barring absolute secrecy, that protects “ideas” and prevents anyone who learns them from doing pretty much anything they like with them… except use it to contravene ownership of the intellectual property someone derived from them.
I invite any and all of the copywrongers to state a specific case where they, or any reasonably-drawn fictional person, is harmed because a creation by another is copyrighted. Not vague sweeping claims about intellectual freedom. Not much of anything related to Disney’s absurd overrreaches, which will be corrected in time. Just an example of how Joe Doakes’ life is poorer because Sally Broomstick maintains a copyright on her steampunk novel.
Copyright issues ARE all about ownership of ideas. Philosophically and legally one cannot own an idea. Copyright law is all about making an exception to this general rule that allows one to control copying of an expression of an idea which would otherwise be wholly unprotectable.
The thing that is rather interesting about your arguments (disturbing analogies aside) is that in one breath you state that ideas cannot be owned and in the next that they can. AB is particularly bad on this topic as one can, under copyright law, write novels about the characters Randall Flagg, Lazarus Long, Jack Ryan, Kinsey Millhone. For original works of authorship using these characters, the only problem that might arise is under trademark law. For example, Burroughs used trademarks to protect Tarzan when his copyrights lapsed. Taylor Swift is augmenting copyright protection on her songs by trademarking portions of her lyrics that would otherwise start appearing on t-shirts and which are not copyrightable.
As another example, David Drake has completely copied the Aubrey/Maturin characters created by Patrick O’Brien as well as some plot lines for his Lt. Leary/RCN Series. No copyright issues that I’m aware of because the characters and their personalities are ideas. Awesome series by the way.
The entire concept of ideas and expressions collapsing into one another was also recently addressed in the patent context in the Alice case. There the Supreme Court had to rewind patent law a bit to put a stop to vague patent claim language from subsuming pre-existing, non-internet business models.
In short, stop describing ejaculation and children in the same sentence and learn a bit more about the nuance of intellectual property law.
No, no, and no. Here’s the Trademark Electronic Search site Put in those names and show me where they apply to books or book characters. Or in Swift’s case for t-shirts. And for that matter show me where in any law in this country, getting a trademark for a t-shirt gives you any protection for anything except t-shirts.
Right. Ideas are NOT copyrighted. Just as Thudlow Boink and Amateur Barbarian said. But you did.
I’m guessing you’re referring to Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International That appears to say the Supreme Court ruled that patents on an idea were invalid. Which is what everybody has been saying.
Oh, please. Copyright issues are NOT all about ownership of ideas. NOT. NOT. NOT.
I may have written sloppily in the above - there are indeed technical loopholes that allow things like character names and stuff to be used outside of copyright protections, but I guarantee you that if you try and write an identifiable sequel to The Stand, Mr. King’s lawyers (or more likely Random House’s) will be all over your ass.
Many outright copyright violations are simply ignored or tolerated because the difficulty and expense of prosecuting them. That doesn’t change the basic notion of protecting works in the greater extent.
Your notions of nuance applying to this thread are about like a detailed interpretation of the infield fly rule among people who think baseball is played in a swimming pool.
Still waiting for a cogent response to my query. Not really interested in yet more philosophical “because!” wrangling.
Christ. You obviously have not even read my posts if that’s what you think, since I have said repeatedly that I do not want to overthrow copyright, and that in fact I only want it rolled back somewhat from the current levels.
I do not normally ask for apologies, but you owe me one. Or at least have the guts to admit that you have completely mischaracterized my position.
I don’t have the time to figure out how the search works. However, look at the small print in Star Trek marketing stuff, and you’ll see that all the major characters names are trademarked. It is far from automatic. I suspect that someone writing an unauthorized Star Trek novel could get stopped by trademark law.
Which has nothing to do with the absurd idea of copyrighting ideas.
Trademarks expire if they are not used in commerce, AND they are specific to a line of business.
“Spock” for example is trademarked by Paramount Pictures for use in toy action figures and the like, and that’s really Mr. Spock from Star Trek; meanwhile Spock Networks has trademarked the word “Spock” for use in a search engine about people. The Spock Networks trademark does not infringe upon the Paramount one, because toys and search engines are not the same thing.
To keep a trademark registration alive, you have to use it, and have to file an Affidavit of Use with the U.S. government at regular intervals. (The trademark CAN live indefinitely, but it won’t do so automatically.) If you abandon it, somebody else can register it. If Paramount stops making action figures based on Star Trek, somebody else can make action figures named Spock without violating the trademark (although they may violate copyright or other laws if they use a Star Trek Spock).
Copyright does NOT require evidence of use, however. For example, there are many many local and family histories published in the 1940s and 50s and 60s that are long out of print and no longer readily available on the used-book market. In many cases it’s not even possible to figure out who owns the copyright. (Think of The History of Our Town by the Our Town Centennial History Book Committee. The Committee dissolved immediately after the book was finished. Who do I ask for permission to reprint?) Note that in such cases a library cannot even make me a photocopy of the book, at least not legally, because the right to make and distribute a copy is owned by somebody.
These are not books that are ever going to be bestsellers, but as a resident of Our Town I’d like a copy of the book. It’s been abandoned by its creator(s), but it’s still off the market for many decades (120 years, in the case of a work of corporate authorship). Whose interests are served here?
The nuance is not mine. I’m simply relating the law as it stands and it is complicated, which you do not seem to have appreciated. The basic premise here is that you appear to believe that intellectual property is the same as real property, that copyrights cover a hell of a lot more than they actually do and further appear to hold the opinion that copyrights should cover ground than what you think they do.
We agree that copyrights don’t cover ideas, only expressions. You guys don’t appear to understand that expressions are thin or at least they have traditionally been viewed this way. AB appears to have taken a first step towards acknowledging this. For example, characters are not copyrightable. Only the expression of a character, as tangibly recording in print or film, is copyrightable.
You also don’t understand the concept of “original work of authorship”. For a work to be original it simply has to not have been copied from another source. Technically, my team of monkeys can write “The Stand” word for word so long as the monkeys haven’t copied it. Time is the only problem really. All one has to do is feed a writer/simian that has not had access to the original work unprotectable tropes that form the story and the output will be in the clear. Of course there will be arguments about access and copying, but reverse engineering, if done correctly, is perfectly legal.
You seem to have entirely missed the point on why trademarks were mentioned above. Because artists cannot copyright certain aspects of their work, they have to turn to other areas of the law like trademarks to protect their works. AS I said, Burroughs lost his copyrights and used trademarks to protect Tarzan. Ms. Swift has trademarked the living hell out of the phrases “Party Like It’s 1989” and “This Sick Beat”. She did this because copyrights don’t protect slogans either. The type face might be copyrightable, but that would be about it.
I also like the quick dismissal of the Alice case. It kind of ignores the fact that for the last 25 years, ideas were patentable so long as you claimed them as being implemented on a computer. I am happy to see the end (I hope) of Beauregard claims.
The problem with copyright maximalism is that with few registration or renewal requirements, extremely long terms, the reduction of the fair use defense, and no requirement to prove actual damages (another way in which copyrights differ from real property), the ease of enforcing copyright collapses expression with idea. All a plaintiff really has to do is get past a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss and they will be successful more often than not simply as a matter of risk management on the part of the defendant. The problem with copyright law today is that the way it is practiced, copyrights literally do cover ideas. They should not.
The evidence of this is the proliferation of trolls such as Prenda Law. Admittedly, those guys are out at the bitter edge of the bell curve, but I have had the good fortune to negotiate with digital rights organizations whose entire sales pitch sounds remarkably like a protection racket that has substituted copyright litigation for arson.
I meant merely that you wanted to overthrow copyright as it stands now. I think that is a fair representation of your position. I did not mean to suggest you didn’t want copyright at all. You have not said that, and I certainly never intended to suggest it.
“Overthrow” is an extremely strong word to apply to a suggestion that is basically a small tweak to the current state of affairs, especially from the perspective of individual creators.
Furthermore, in the very next sentence you suggest that I implied patronage was an alternative solution. I did no such thing. The precise opposite, in fact: the reference was part of a connected series of statements intended to establish the proposition that traditional forms of creative remuneration were insufficient, and that copyright was invented to ameliorate this problem. With an emphasis on the fact that it was an invention conditional on society’s support for it.
Your interpretation of your words appear to me to differ greatly from your words themselves. I don’t want to impute any statements to you that you didn’t make. But I’m getting the impression you’re simply not seeing how your words are coming across.
FWIW, your claim that “Dr Strangelove wants to overthrow copyright” struck me as an unfair mischaracterization, of someone who has explicitly said things like
To me, “Dr Strangelove wants to overthrow copyright” implies that Dr Strangelove doesn’t want there to be any such thing as copyright.