# Creative works should be \*available\*, even if not \*free\* **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 29, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312 "2014-04-29T20:46:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/21 "2014-04-30T10:37:53Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > That’s what Lawrence Lessig said – quoting the US Constitution – but the Supreme Court didn’t agree. Copyrights don’t expire anymore, ever since Disney got their way, and the Supreme Court has ruled that they can keep this shit up forever. That “Disney did it” stuff is largely myth making. And the Supreme Court said specifically that copyrights must expire, but it’s within Congress’s discretion to say when. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/22 "2014-04-30T10:50:38Z")
So what if the artist possesses the only copy of the work, is unhappy with it and doesn’t want it viewed? ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/23 "2014-04-30T11:05:58Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > One example is _Ready Steady Go_, a British rock TV show from 1963-66. I heard about it from the recent PBS special on the Dave Clark Five. Apparently, the studios were going to erase all the tapes that held the episodes, so Dave Clark bought all the tapes. He said he wasn’t doing it to make money, but he was going to save them until the interest came back, and people would want to see them again. Well, Dave, it’s been 50 years. Ya gonna release them any time soon? My understanding was that he mined them for clips for all sorts of documentaries, etc. about the groups or the times. So the complete shows aren’t available, but the classic performances have appeared in various places. Going by memory from a good ten years ago I’d guess, so I could be wrong… ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/24 "2014-04-30T11:46:32Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > That “Disney did it” stuff is largely myth making. And the Supreme Court said specifically that copyrights must expire, but it’s within Congress’s discretion to say when. And it was Lessig that pointed out that if Congress kept extending them, they would never expire. That’s what’s happened so far, and the inside info is that it will happen again soon. > [@Smapti](#): > > …cite for “copyrights don’t expire anymore”? [http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/story\_lessig\_marapr04.msp](http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/story_lessig_marapr04.msp) > [@](#): > > …the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, or CTEA, enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician. According to his widow, Mary Bono, Sonny Bono believed that “copyrights should be forever.” Not Disney, eh? > [@](#): > > In my view, our constitutional system placed such a limit on copyright as a way to ensure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet… copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again. And while it is the valuable copyrights—Mickey Mouse and “Rhapsody in Blue”—that are responsible for terms being extended, the real harm done to society is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney’s. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that still have commercial value. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/25 "2014-04-30T12:01:42Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > And it was Lessig that pointed out that if Congress kept extending them, they would never expire. That’s what’s happened so far, and the inside info is that it will happen again soon. I don’t think so. There are no significant efforts to extend copyright terms beyond the CTEA that I know of. But I suppose we shall see. I believe Lessig is wrong about this. The Supreme Court acknowledged that _if_ Congress kept extending copyright terms, then it might be argued that they were effectively unlimited, but it said that the CTEA did not rise to that level. As for Lessig’s commentary—He’s a smart man, but just because he says something doesn’t mean it’s true. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/26 "2014-04-30T12:06:49Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > That’s what Lawrence Lessig said – quoting the US Constitution – but the Supreme Court didn’t agree. Copyrights don’t expire anymore, ever since Disney got their way, and the Supreme Court has ruled that they can keep this shit up forever. \ It had nothing to do with Disney. It was due to Adolph Hitler, the Government of Bavaria, and the Berne Convention. If you want to blame anyone in the US, blame the George Gershwin heirs. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/27 "2014-04-30T14:57:24Z")
It’s absolutely fascinating that as Internet libertarianism - my rights are sacrosanct - grows it seems to increasingly overlap a mindset that states that the creator of a work should have no control over _anything we want to see, dammit_. From the outside, this is the classic case of selfishness overcoming principle, and then being redefined \*as \*the principle to justify itself. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/28 "2014-04-30T15:15:13Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > My understanding was that he mined them for clips for all sorts of documentaries, etc. about the groups or the times. So the complete shows aren’t available, but the classic performances have appeared in various places. > Going by memory from a good ten years ago I’d guess, so I could be wrong… Could be. There were clips from _RSG_ in the PBS program. I understood him differently, but, if what you think is actually what he meant, it’s not so bad. I’m not arguing that all media MUST be available. I’m definitely not arguing that creators aren’t entitled to compensation for their works. Not at all. I’m just saying, in this modern era of digital recording, storage and distribution, that there should be some way of us random people being able to see old programs. I want to watch old football games. I want to see _Daria_ and _WKRP_ with their original music. I want my MTV (videos)! I wan to watch _Strangeluck_ again. And I’m willing to pay! These shouldn’t be that impossible of requests. There must be some way to handle rights that everyone can be happy. I was very happy to find that the very limited run show\* Raines\* is available on iTunes, though not DVD. I hope the owners of shows bring back other shows that don’t have the market for a DVD release, such as _Strangeluck_ or\* John Doe\*, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/29 "2014-04-30T15:15:46Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I don’t think so. There are no significant efforts to extend copyright terms beyond the CTEA that I know of. But I suppose we shall see. In a private communication with a copyright lawyer in May, 2013, at a media conference, she said that in her professional opinion, there was indeed a movement to repeat the extensions begun by Sonny Bono, and she predicted that this would continue indefinitely unless stopped by SCOTUS. That’s only an opinion, but an informed one. > [@](#): > > I believe Lessig is wrong about this. The Supreme Court acknowledged that _if_ Congress kept extending copyright terms, then it might be argued that they were effectively unlimited, but it said that the CTEA did not rise to that level. I see a problem, and I think SCOTUS did, too, but wanted to tread lightly for 20-40 years or so (it took 50 years to overrule _Plessy;_ they aren’t known for rushing into things). If copyright is extended infinitely, there is no expiration. Does a 10,20,30 or 100 year extension constitute, effectively, an infinitae one? Where can the line be drawn? It looks a lot like tomayto, tomahto, depending on who you ask. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/30 "2014-04-30T15:20:07Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > I didn’t realize a server cost the same as a factory and massive warehouse space. [Well, that’s your ignorance.](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/17/article-0-158CAE40000005DC-837_964x641.jpg) Where do you think they keep all the servers? In the cloud? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/31 "2014-04-30T15:20:49Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > So what if the artist possesses the only copy of the work, is unhappy with it and doesn’t want it viewed? Under current US law, for music recording, the copyright holder has the right to make the first work. After that, anyone can, but there is a compulsory license (fee) provision. So the composer might not like someone else’s recording, but they will be compensated for it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/32 "2014-04-30T15:24:36Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I’ve felt for a long time that there should be a “use it or lose it” provision to copyright. What I’d like to see is for copyrights to be infinitely extendable FOR A FEE. Shorten the term of free copyright to ten years after the point of public release. Every five years after that you have to pay a fee to keep the copyright, and the fee gets larger every time you renew. You want to hold the copyright on a Mickey Mouse cartoon for 100 years? Okay, it will cost you a million dollars every time you renew. It creates a strong incentive for copyright holders to keep the works they own in circulation so they can earn money to pay the fee. And it provides a clear route for less-valuable works to drop into the public domain. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/33 "2014-04-30T17:59:47Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I agree there ought the be someway to make stuff available legally. There are shows and movies I would watch, IF I could get a legal copy. Note to rights holders: I don’t mind paying! > > One example is _Ready Steady Go_, a British rock TV show from 1963-66. I heard about it from the recent PBS special on the Dave Clark Five. Apparently, the studios were going to erase all the tapes that held the episodes, so Dave Clark bought all the tapes. He said he wasn’t doing it to make money, but he was going to save them until the interest came back, and people would want to see them again. Well, Dave, it’s been 50 years. Ya gonna release them any time soon? I believe he’s been intending to release them for many years but rights issues have made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to do so. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312/34 "2014-04-30T21:29:54Z")
Whoops, my notifications didn’t work right and I therefore thought, quite wrongly, that no one had found this thread worth responding to! Sorry to seem to have abandoned my own thread. > [@TriPolar](#): > > I agree to a certain extent, but how do you define something becoming unavailable. Disney likes to release it’s classic films on a schedule that increases demand. Should they be required to have them always available? As long as it comes around every few years, that seems tolerable to me (although the whole notion that you sell more of something by artificially limiting release schedules this way is a sad commentary on the gullibility of the average consumer). > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I agree there ought the be someway to make stuff available legally. There are shows and movies I would watch, IF I could get a legal copy. Note to rights holders: I don’t mind paying! Right. If you don’t make it available at a charge, either people are going to share bootleg copies through illegal means, or no one is going to watch at all. Either way you make no money, so just take my money please! > [@Mangetout](#): > > I understand the frustration, but if someone owns something, how can they be compelled to share it? I don’t believe people should be allowed to “own” art to that degree. Own rights to be compensated, sure–but not to just lock it up in a vault if you capriciously decide to. This would be similar to the way it works, as I understand it, with covering someone’s song on your album: they can’t stop you, but you have to pay them part of the proceeds you make. (As I read down further, I see \*\*Measure for Measure \*\*mentions an idea of “compulsory licensing” which fits perfectly.) (Similarly, I don’t believe art collectors should be allowed to buy up Van Goghs or Monets and let no one but their rich friends ever see them; if they let a museum borrow the works for a couple weeks every year, I’m minimally satisfied.) > [@Vercingetorix](#): > > I don’t mean to speak for the OP, but this is a different case IMO. You may not be able to buy a new copy of Disney whatever at the moment, but you can go on Amazon or Ebay and get a used copy on DVD or VHS. They’ve been “released into the wild” so to speak. I think the OP is talking about things that were never released in a buy-able way (e.g. TV shows _never_ put on tape/DVD). That’s exactly right. And presumably Netflix would have it as well (not to stream, but I also have a disc queue). > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > This is very much both a “first world problem” and a “twenty-first century problem.” Younger Me would have been so astounded at how many creative works _are_ readily available that it would seem ridiculous to complain about the few that aren’t. There’s already way, way more content at my fingertips than I could absorb in a lifetime. Try time-traveling back to the 70s or 80s and complaining to the people then that you don’t have any way of watching an obscure show that aired over a decade earlier. Well, sure. And in the earlier part of that time frame, we had four channels and no way to record anything. And we didn’t have the kind of premium quality TV that has exploded over the past fifteen years, as described in Alan Sepinwall’s book [The Revolution Was Televised](http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Was-Televised-Alan-Sepinwall-ebook/dp/B00B26PWFE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398889993&sr=1-1&keywords=sepinwall). But we \*do \*live in 2014, and if we suddenly had all that taken away from us, plus our smart phones, the Internet, etc., we’d be pretty bummed. I mean, I remember one good college friend and I would often chew the fat late at night and get into debates which we could not easily settle. We’d vow to make a mental note of the bones of contention and go to the library when it was open and research the issues in question. But of course we never did. Now we can Google it or, happily, for some trickier issues, come here to the SDMB and put it out for the wisdom of the crowd to solve. If we could do that for most things but certain topics were owned by someone who wouldn’t let us Google them or post about them here, that would be pretty frustrating, right? 🙂 > [@dracoi](#): > > Intellectual property (IP) is available by default, with mandatory royalties due for the use/sale of such material. The default availability can be limited in an opt-out manner: If you (the IP owner) are producing a work for current consumption, then you can prevent others from using the IP. If you (the IP owner) have “good cause” (insert lots of legalese that will satisfy Disney) for not making material available, then you can prevent others from using the IP. But any restriction on use requires some affirmative action by the IP holder. If they do not take that action, then use is allowed by default, and a default royalty will be paid to the IP holder to compensate them. I really like this! > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I’ve felt for a long time that there should be a “use it or lose it” provision to copyright. The whole point of copyright was _supposed_ to be that it encouraged the distribution of works; not to enable people to buy the rights and sit on them. If copyright is hampering the distribution of artistic works then it isn’t performing its designed function. Yes, this. Exactly. > [@kayaker](#): > > So what if the artist possesses the only copy of the work, is unhappy with it and doesn’t want it viewed? And it has never been viewed, you mean? Their prerogative. But I don’t like the idea that they put it out there and then can later take it back (I think I’ve complained before about a blogger named “wegglywoo” or “wegg” for short, who wrote a lot of really interesting prose and then took it all down and requested that [archive.org](http://archive.org) take it down from their servers as well; now only the NSA can read it, I guess, along maybe with anyone who actually copied the text and saved it when it was still up, as I wish I had done). From **Musicat’s** cite: > [@](#): > > Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that still have commercial value. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result. This is spot on. And because they are not famous and not desperately sought after, too few people will care, and nothing will be done to change it. Kind of depressing. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > It’s absolutely fascinating that as Internet libertarianism - my rights are sacrosanct - grows it seems to increasingly overlap a mindset that states that the creator of a work should have no control over _anything we want to see, dammit_. > > From the outside, this is the classic case of selfishness overcoming principle, and then being redefined \*as \*the principle to justify itself. I am certainly no libertarian–perish the thought. But how is it “selfish” for me to simply want to pay a fair price to view, and promote to others who may also then pay for, a work of art that was already created years ago and has been mostly forgotten and will be completely forgotten if I and people like me do not do so? That’s a strange definition of “selfish” if you ask me. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I wan to watch _Strangeluck_ again. I had never heard of this, but after looking it up on Wikipedia I want to see it too! These shows that had only one or two seasons and are mostly forgotten: how could it hurt the rights holders for there to be a mandatory licence and for them to get a few bucks from people digging them up a la Spotify (which also includes [Forgotify](http://forgotify.com/)) and checking them out now and then? > [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > What I’d like to see is for copyrights to be infinitely extendable FOR A FEE. Shorten the term of free copyright to ten years after the point of public release. Every five years after that you have to pay a fee to keep the copyright, and the fee gets larger every time you renew. You want to hold the copyright on a Mickey Mouse cartoon for 100 years? Okay, it will cost you a million dollars every time you renew. It creates a strong incentive for copyright holders to keep the works they own in circulation so they can earn money to pay the fee. And it provides a clear route for less-valuable works to drop into the public domain. Oooh, this is really good too. (Love this board and all the smart people with great ideas on it!) Even if the fee didn’t escalate, it would still allow most of the stuff we are talking about to drop into the public domain. Let’s take the long view for a moment: in a hundred years, or five hundred, will pop culture historians even be able to get access to some of these works for study? I mean, take that show _Get Real_ that I mentioned. Two of the main stars went on to have pretty big careers (so far). And the pilot features the acting debut of January Jones. It would be weird, and sad, if something that was broadcast to millions of homes ended up being like all the lost silent films that are described on IMDB now only by surviving newspaper listings and such. As things stand now, I’m sure there are nice quality masters of those episodes in a vault somewhere. And there must be some number of people who have episodes on VHS (though increasingly fewer, surely). But if it never makes the leap to the cloud, how long will it survive? I did just find that a nice, crisp 240p (ugh) [copy of the pilot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEtPXXWUfwY) is on YouTube (though it could get taken down at any time). Speaking of pop culture history: did any show before that (or, really, many since) get as “meta” as Anne Hathaway’s character does from 3:20-3:53? (I’m trying to think of any fictional-drama type show that acknowledged the existence of another show of its genre that was currently airing on a rival network, and drawing a blank.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-should-be-available-even-if-not-free/687312.md?page=1)