Your first question begins with, “If copyright laws became harmful to society at large…” Note the word “if.” This question isn’t about “current copyright laws,” and a great deal of this thread’s discussion has been speculation about proposed changes to the laws. That’s not what the bolded section of your quote above says.
Your second question begins with, “And, if they are not morally necessary…” Again with the “if.” I don’t believe that the discussion in this thread has determined that copyright laws are not morally necessary. In fact, the exact opposite. It’s been pointed out by people on both sides that nobody in this thread is advocating getting rid of copyright laws.
The first question is intended as a Yes or No question. After it is answered, the second question asks for a depiction of a world where the poster feels that copyrights law are bad and should be reformed/repealed.
Some people have answered both questions and all of them said that they thought current copyright laws were already bad enough for them to want them reformed/repealed. They substantiated their claims with examples of what was unacceptable to them.
I am now waiting for people who thinks that current copyright laws are pretty good (IE: only requiring small reforms at the most.) and for them to describe what kind of world would make them change their minds.
Nobody was actually meant to say YES to the first question. If you truly believe that today’s copyright laws are so good that it would be immoral and unethical to REFORM them (emphasis on the REFORM), then you’re a very special and unique person and need not answer the second question at all.
I believe there are two different issues debated re copyrights.
The first one is the issue of a large segment of the population who feel entitled to have for free whatever piece of music, of art, game, etc… they want. Some people have defended this behavior on this board using various ethical and logical arguments and causing the ire of dopers living from their art (or trying to).
The second one is the quite undisputable issue of “megacorporations” influencing legislation in order to protect their profit source. In particular the fact that copyright has been extended to ludicrously long durations (and this isn’t only an american issue. French law is quite similar, and actually, I believe it’s the result of some sort of international agreement, so it must be true in many countries). This concept has way less support, including on this board. And I think it’s quite reasonnable to say that this do harm artists. Actually, the Disney/Grimm example is quite good. Dysney could produce something originally precisely because he was allowed to plunder the work of long-dead former authors. But nowadays, nobody can do the same and plunder disney’s work to create something new. Which artist is this law protecting exactly? I don’t count Disney’s stockholders as “artists”.
I too do believe copyright is useful to provide an incentive to authors, or actually simply to allow them to be able to actually produce art, but at some point, it must end lets it would become an inpediment to the free circulation of ideas and to creation. And this “some point” isn’t 400 years after the death of the last known descendant of the original author.
I would also mention that, though I said I was supporting the concept of copyright, as long as it doesn’t become insanely protective, it’s quite obvious to me it’s quickly becoming unenforceable, so, I doubt that the current model can be preserved for long, and a new one will have to be found. The current fight against filesharing and such things is IMO a rearguard battle that can only be lost.
That’s in all likehood the “agreement” I was refering to.
However, i’m still not convinced that it has nothing to do with Disney. That would be because I remember the articles I read in the press on this topic at the time it was introduced in France (actually, apparently, in all the EU). And these articles did mention both US lobbying in favor of these news copyright laws in Europe and specifically Disney lobbying (remember that Disney doesn’t limit itself to the american market).
So, though you apparently demonstrated that the change in copyright laws in the EU predated the same changes in the USA, it doesn’t mean that the USA merely reluctantly followed suit to protect its own interests. Though I cant prove it, the stance of the articles I read at this time was clearly that the USA actively wanted these changes to be implemented both in Europe and in the USA. It certainly doesn’t prove, either, that Disney didn’t engage in lobbying.
I would be interested in hearing the details of Disney’s lobbying. Lobbying by U.S. corporations, whether here or abroad, is regulated. For instance, corporations have not been allowed to contribute to federal election campaigns since the Tillman Act in 1907.
I was going to bring up a similar point, but couldn’t quite figure out how I wanted to phrase it. What exaggerates the issue with debating copyright is that I don’t think the issues are really separable; copyright law brings with it whole swaths of related stuff. The argument, IMO, shouldn’t be: how severe should the penalty be for infringement, but what is a desirable balance between various criteria (e.g., societal benefit vs. incentive to create, corporate vs. individual profit, etc.).
An aside: here’s a BBC article from yesterday that might be of interest.
The stockholders invest their money in the corporation that produces the creative works. If the creative works are not renumerative, investors pull out their money out and invest it elsewhere. The result is that fewer creative works are made, jobs are lost, and/or the corporation takes fewer risks in its creative output.
I must say I’m unconvinced by this argument. It takes also many years of work to most people to realize thier potential, reach their “full income stream”, rip the fruits of a lifetime of labor, etc… Also, the result of their work and its utility can survive them. The building the construction worker worked on might still stand 50 years after his death, and people living in it still pay rent. The heirs of the construction workers don’t get a %age of the rent, though.
It’s difficult to compare work resulting in an intellectual, immaterial product and in a material one, but I don’t think this should necessarily allow you to state that your work is so different from other people’s work that there’s no way the same rules shouldn’t apply to you. For instance though indeed construction workers are paid the moment they finish and once for all, there’s no objective, obvious reason why we couldn’t decide to pay them instead on the basis on the profit made on whatever they build for as long as the the building exists and is used, and that their heirs couldn’t get their share of the profits for 50 years after the worker’s death. the fact it’s not done doesn’t mean that it’s inherently more absurd than doing the same with your work. After all, the reverse exists, and you could be an “author for hire”, work for some corporation and get a fixed salary.
The difference is that a construction worker can start a job making a living wage right now. For most authors, the advance on your first book is insufficient to live on. You must put in a huge amount of work for a relatively tiny check. As an example, my last technical book took me over 6 months to write and my advance check was a whopping $2,500. A construction worker at scale would have made ten times that.
Now, imagine that the construction worker and I both died at the end of our six months of work. The construction worker’s wife would have his entire $25K from his last half-year of work. Without copyright laws extending past my death, my wife would lose the bulk of my income from the book: the royalties. In fact, since the $2,500 was an “advance on royalties,” the publisher could probably make the argument that no royalties were due, hence my wife would have to repay the advance.
It’s a completely different model, which requires writers to typically work another job until they have several books out generating royalties, or a base of work that can be anthologized. I don’t write for today’s paycheck. I write for tomorrow’s annuity.
I believe that for the most part, copyright laws are workable as-is. Given my line of work, I can’t imagine anything making me want them abolished altogether. Revision is a different matter. I could easily be persuaded to work for revision right now to make them favor the original creator and to shorten the life of the copyright beyond the author’s death–but only if the changes were world-wide.
That would apply for new creations of Disney. But the current stockholders don’t have much to do with the creation of Mickey Mouse. Still, these laws allow them to make money out of it.
And if I work free-lance for a company in a non-artistic, non-creative job, and die in the middle of a big project, having worked hard on it but not finished it, the situation for my hypothetical widow would be different how?
Anyway, I don’t oppose to copyright extending past the author’s death for a reasonnable duration () . Still, I don’t think it’s in any way logically obvious it should work this way.
() (though even so, I would rather have them last for some number of years or until the death of the author, whichever comes first. So, if you got money for a long time from your work, your heirs wouldn’t get anything more. I wouldn’t take the random date of death of the author as a starting point. If you’ve been derived income from an early written as a teenager for all of your long life, its not the same situation than if you die of a heart attack while writing the last chapter of a future best-seller)
It has stopped them since 1907. Federal election campaigns have to account for every dollar of campaign funds coming in and going ou. It is highly regulated, and the penalties for violating the law are heavy.
The copyrights are part of the corporation’s assets, part of the value of the corporation. Investors invest in a corporation after evaluating its assets and its potential for return on equity. The fewer assets a corporation has, the less attractive it is for investors.
So? They invest in Disney because there’s an already guaranteed source of income instead of investing in another company which is trying to actually create something new, and must do so because it can’t rely on 70 yo work?
How does your comment shows that everlasting copyright encourages creativity?
No they wouldn’t. Current U.S. copyright law protects a work for 70 years after the author’s death; in the case of joint authors, 70 years after the last death. The Brothers Grimm died in 1859 and 1863, meaning that even under current copyright law their copyrights would have expired in 1863 + 70 = 1933. Disney made Snow White in 1937.
Exactly. It always seems that copyright supporters want artists and authors to get guarantees and benefits that no one else gets.
If you’re worried that your $2500 advance on royalties won’t leave anything else for your wife after your death, or even that she might have to pay it back, why not negotiate a better deal with the publisher? Demand 6 months’ pay for your 6 months of work! This arrangement only stands because people are willing to take it.