UK Green Party proposed cutting copyright to 14 years

Xelebes · Apr 27, 2015

heza said:
I still don't think heirs have any way of competing with corporations.

What do you mean by that?

DancingMaenid · Apr 27, 2015

heza said:
I still don't think heirs have any way of competing with corporations.

No, but I think that becomes less of an issue the more that time goes by. Classic literature often has editions put out by several different publishers at any given time, and at that point the main value that the big publishers bring is in having good footnotes or good translations. I've picked up books before because the translator was a particularly good one, or the editor was a scholar I respected. At that point, you're paying for that person's work as much as you're paying for the original author's writing.

Albedo · Apr 27, 2015

Weirdmage said:
I think it should be as long as any other property rights.
And I ask all the time why it shouldn't be. So, please explain why intelectual property should be singled out as a right to something you create that expires. (As opposed to having a block of flats built for instance.)

Pharmaceutical patents for example. It should hopefully be clear why it would be a bad idea if the patent on (say) aspirin lasted forever.

aruna · Apr 27, 2015

heza said:
Maybe we should discuss the whys of this part. I mean, that's the only way to start bridging the gap.

That's what I want to know myself. WHY does society benefit from a work being in the public domain? What is the benefit?

In a link I posted earlier, it was stated that The Little Prince passed into the public domain this January, but is still under copyright in France. What is the huge difference for the public between last year, when it was under copyright, and this year, when it is in the public domain? What great damage is the French public suffering for it being NOT in the public domain there? Did anyone even notice some huge difference between it being in or out of the public domain?

Honestly, the only "benefit" I can see is the one given to corporations, who can now get their hot little hands on it for free.

This whole "benefit" to society to me is a croc. Nobody cares about my work right now except me and my family. When my books went out of print, nobody cared except me. Nobody struggled to bring them back into circulation, except me. Nobody rooted for them or worked hard to see them once more accessible -- except me.

Had they been in the public domain they would have died a quiet death.

Instead, I have made them (well, one of them, and the others will follow) again accessible to the public. Got them republished. Made them public.

It seems to me that them being under copyright was of more benefit to society than had they been in the public domain, and dead.

Society benefits from intellectual productivity passing into the public domain.

So I do not at all agree with this basic point. It all depends. In most cases, I would think, the copyright holders do far more to keep less well-known works alive than this elusive "public domain". And there must be some way to protect the copyright holders and their heirs from would-be profiteers.

aruna · Apr 27, 2015

Xelebes said:
What do you mean by that?

I can't speak for heza but if heza self-publishes his/her book at the same time as Penguin Random House, guess who will profit the most. I assume this is what is meant.
Or, if heza wanted to make a movie of his/her book. Probably doesn't have the resources a big studio would have.

TheNighSwan · Apr 28, 2015

I gave an example: if it wasn't for public domain, Baudelaire's poetry would have remained unknown from the public.

Weirdmage · Apr 28, 2015

DancingMaenid said:
Well, the primary difference is that with real estate and tangible property such as, for example, a car, only one person can own or use the property at any given time. That's an oversimplification since sometimes property is owned by multiple people, but still, it's not like you can create multiple copies of a house to distribute among the various owners.

Intellectual property can usually be copied indefinitely, and if something is in the public domain, pretty much anyone can profit from it. Including the author's heirs.

Again, why should it expire? Why should your great-grandchildren be able to collect leases on a block of flats you paid to have builtand not royalties on the book you wrote?

Weirdmage · Apr 28, 2015

Albedo said:
Pharmaceutical patents for example. It should hopefully be clear why it would be a bad idea if the patent on (say) aspirin lasted forever.

Pharmaceutical patents are completely different to works of fiction. I am talking about works of fiction. Not patents, not trademarks, not textbooks, not even popular works of non-fiction, but works of FICTION.

Weirdmage · Apr 28, 2015

TheNighSwan said:
I gave an example: if it wasn't for public domain, Baudelaire's poetry would have remained unknown from the public.

We can't know that. We do not have access to a paralell dimension that is the exact same as ours except there is no public domain.
Besides...Baudelaire died in 1867, the first copyright convention dates from 1886. It would be nice to have any examples of more recent writers/works.

Another thing we do not know of course is how many works were never written in earlier times because a lack of copyright made it a waste of time for the person who had the idea.
Nor do we know if some works "disappeared" for a time because publishers were waiting for copyright to expire before getting them printed.

What we do know however is that with easy access to electronic self-publishing no work will disappear unless the copyright holder wants it to. And if anything has been printed at some point the internet makes it pretty certain that you can get hold of a copy.
I find it telling that those who want to limit copyright/extend public domain usually use examples that pre-dates 1900. Times have moved on a lot since then, so perhaps we should focus on the present and not the past.

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

I don't think anyone has ever suggested here that there shouldn't be a public domain.
The question is who does more for a work at which stage in its lifetime. I'm convinced that as long as the originator and his/her direct descendents are alive, they are the ones who do the most for it, prevent it form slipping into oblivion. No doubt there are multiple brilliant works of literaturer that were lost throughout history simply because there was nobody rooting for them. Whether they were in the public domain or not: it's the personal investment in such works that keeps them alive. Owning the copyright helps that to happen.

And as in the example of that German Pirate Party member I quoted above: I suspect there's a lot of hypocrisy involved. If you want things to be in the public domain only so you can adapt and mix, that is hypocrisy.

On one of the recent discussions (I think Passive Voice) a woman was whingeing that she was a songwriter but didn't write her own songs, she just took poems and set them to music, and she couldn't get hold of the copyright holders sometimes or they didn't reply and how awful and really hard blablah. My suggestion to her would be to take a course in songwriting/poetry writing and write her own songs from scratch. It's just hypocrisy, as I'm sure she doesn't write for free. Again I ask: why should the desires of such people be put above those of original creators? The entitlement is mindboggling

Amadan · Apr 28, 2015

Weirdmage said:
We can't know that. We do not have access to a paralell dimension that is the exact same as ours except there is no public domain.
Besides...Baudelaire died in 1867, the first copyright convention dates from 1886. It would be nice to have any examples of more recent writers/works.

H.P. Lovecraft.

Amadan · Apr 28, 2015

aruna said:
I don't think anyone has ever suggested here that there shouldn't be a public domain.
The question is who does more for a work at which stage in its lifetime. I'm convinced that as long as the originator and his/her direct descendents are alive, they are the ones who do the most for it, prevent it form slipping into oblivion.

Sometimes. Sometimes they are just collecting royalty checks.

If we agree public domain should exist, then you agree there is value to works passing into the public domain. Therefore, we are simply disagreeing over when that should happen. You apparently think it should not happen until after the creator's grandchildren have passed away. I'd be more inclined to limit it to 50 years. I would not be distressed to limit it further. I would probably accept a compromise that puts the date further back. I do not at all agree with the current limit of death+70, especially since we know there will be pressure to continue extending that.

TheNighSwan · Apr 28, 2015

Weirdmage > saying "we can't know if" doesn't bring anything to the argument: it's true both ways. Whereas there is positive evidence of work becoming famous by being released into the public domain, and inversely of works being near impossible to find because the copyright holder is sitting on them (for instance, we know there is a huge quantity of unpublished documents written by Tolkien about Middle Earth and other things, that the Tolkien Estate is only releasing at snail pace, for no good reason).

As for the heirs being the best promoters of their ancestor's work… when the Marquis de Sade died, his son promptly burned all of his work, including at least one unreleased novel.

TheNighSwan · Apr 28, 2015

Also: perpetual copyright would mean that when the copyright owner is not known (which happens surprisingly often), a work would become effectively illegal to publish under any circumstances. That would pretty much make any book older than a couple centuries vanish from libraries.

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

Amadan said:
I would not be distressed to limit it further. I would probably accept a compromise that puts the date further back. I do not at all agree with the current limit of death+70, especially since we know there will be pressure to continue extending that.

But why do you care? Why should it matter to you? Why shouldn't authors themselves decide, seeing as wihtout them the work wóuld not even exist? Why does it all have to be so -- rigid? WHy do people who don't give a damn about my (again, with "my" I mean any random author) work, have never read it, have no intention of ever reading it, get to place it in public domain, against my own wishes?

You speak of "accepting" a compromise -- why should your "acceptance", or lack thereof, be in any way relevant? If you have kids and grandkids and don't want them to have your copyright why can't you make a will? If you don't have any, why should you obsess about any one else's copyright? How does it in any way affect you?

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

TheNighSwan said:
Also: perpetual copyright would mean that when the copyright owner is not known (which happens surprisingly often), a work would become effectively illegal to publish under any circumstances. That would pretty much make any book older than a couple centuries vanish from libraries.

Not a single person has mentioned perpetual copyright.
There are already laws dealing with "orphaned work". I mentioned this above.

Albedo · Apr 28, 2015

Weirdmage said:
Pharmaceutical patents are completely different to works of fiction. I am talking about works of fiction. Not patents, not trademarks, not textbooks, not even popular works of non-fiction, but works of FICTION.

You didn't mention fiction in the post I was replying to. You asked about intellectual property, and I gave you an example of where it would be a bad idea for intellectual property rights to last forever.

As for patents being 'completely different' to copyrights, when they're both forms of IP, I think that's for you to demonstrate. I remain unconvinced.

Amadan · Apr 28, 2015

aruna said:
But why do you care? Why should it matter to you? Why shouldn't authors themselves decide, seeing as wihtout them the work wóuld not even exist?

Because I believe society benefits from working passing into the public domain.

I believe this benefit is greater than the benefit of authors holding copyright for an excessively long time period.

"Excessive," and measuring the relative benefits, will of course be somewhat subjective judgments.

Why does it all have to be so -- rigid?

I am not being rigid. If we agree there should be a limit on the lifetime of copyrights, we are simply disputing how long it should be. If we don't agree, then you are indeed advocating perpetual copyright.

WHy do people who don't give a damn about my (again, with "my" I mean any random author) work, have never read it, have no intention of ever reading it, get to place it in public domain, against my own wishes?

This is not exclusively about you and your work. It is about the net effect of copyrights on all creative work, some of which will be notable, some of which will be forgotten.

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

Amadan said:
This is not exclusively about you and your work.

I know. That's why I wrote the following, in my last post: (again, with "my" I mean any random author). I speak for all authors. I want them all to have a choice.

As a matter if fact, I too have in the past been "disadvantaged" by copyright. When I published my version of the Mahabharata, I wanted a certain artwork on the cover, by an Indian artist. I knew his name; but all I had of him was a calendar which I had been given in the year 1973. In 2012 I had no idea if he were alive, where he lived; I had no idea about him at all! I just knew i wanted that image for my cover design. And this was in India -- a country of hundreds of millions, the vast majority of whom have no online presence. A chaotic, crazy country where it's a miracle that anything at all works. So, looking for a single artist in that mess was like the proverbial needle in a haystack.

But never once did I grumble about copyright. Never once did I think he (or his heirs) should not have it. I respected his right to his picture and to having a say whether or not I could use, and to an adequate remuneration.

But I was determined to find him. And in the end, via google and a university professor in the US who collected Indian calendar art, I discovered that he had died a long time ago but that he had a son who was a jeweler in South India. I even got the son's address! And my own son happened to be in India at the time so I sent him by taxi (several hours journey) to the copyright holder's village, and got the permission signed, and he didn't even want money for it.

The moral of this story that I respected the artist and his son and their copyright. And I actually enjoyed the research and the effort it took to find the son -- it makes a good story! And now that art -- I don't know if the original still exists -- is now back in circulation, on the cover of a book, even though it is not yet in the public domain.

So, I think the whole thing is just not worth stressing about. Most books written today might still be available 50 years from now. Perhaps my own will be earning enough for a coffee each month, or less.

Or perhaps, 30 years after my death, Hollywood (or its equivalent in those far off times!) will suddenly decide that one of my books is the Greatest! Thing! Ever! and want to make a movie. Huzzah! I would love it if that happened, and all the blood sweat and tears spent on it came to fruition! I would love it even more if my granddaughter, now five years old, were to reap the rewards of that blood sweat and tears! And everybody would profit: society, and my granddaughter! What's there to grumble about -- a win-win situation!

Amadan · Apr 28, 2015

On the other hand, if you had been unable to find that artist's heir, his art could never have been used again (or else it could only be used - technically - without authorization).

Extend the argument further - why should Charles Dickens's great-great-great grandchildren not be making money from all adaptations of his books? Why should Jane Austen's heirs not get money from "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies"?

With longer copyrights, HP Lovecraft's mythos would not be nearly the cultural phenomenon it is. All those movies, derivative novels, and games based on his work would be unavailable.

Either there should be a limit or there shouldn't. If there should be a limit, we disagree on when.

I don't think your grandchild is necessarily entitled to all the money a hypothetical movie based on your book makes 50 years after your death. Sorry that you don't agree.

Xelebes · Apr 28, 2015

Another example is the Great Canadian Songbook is soon to start opening up (works produced under the MAPL rules) for them to start becoming a tradition. Yes, we have Le Papillon already in the public domain but Canadian songs written after 1969 are the first among many songs to have been written by Canadians that have broad distribution. So in 2019, Born to Be Wild, Bird on the Wire and Mille Apres Mille become public domain and become available to be part of the singing tradition.

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

Amadan said:
On the other hand, if you had been unable to find that artist's heir, his art could never have been used again (or else it could only be used - technically - without authorization)..

I had a plan. If I had not found him I would have invoked the "orphaned works" law, which I understand is very important in India. I carefully collected date of all my searches, emails etc. And if I had met with defeat, I would have accepted it. I never once had the feeling that I had the right to the art.

Extend the argument further - why should Charles Dickens's great-great-great grandchildren not be making money from all adaptations of his books? Why should Jane Austen's heirs not get money from "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies"?

Several times I've spoken out here for a cut off after the third generation, ie after grandchildren, whom the author is likely to know and love.

I don't think your grandchild is necessarily entitled to all the money a hypothetical movie based on your book makes 50 years after your death. Sorry that you don't agree

You don't have to agree. But with the current copyright law it would happen, and I'm glad. I'd be very happy for my descendents to reap rewards I always hoped for, and worked towards, but never reaped in my lifetime. It's a kind of karmatic justice! A balancing out of efforts made in vain!

(And it wouldn't be "all the money". It would be a share; the real profit would of course go to the studio! So you support the hypothetical studio? Capitalist Schwein!

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

Xelebes said:
Another example is the Great Canadian Songbook is soon to start opening up (works produced under the MAPL rules) for them to start becoming a tradition. Yes, we have Le Papillon already in the public domain but Canadian songs written after 1969 are the first among many songs to have been written by Canadians that have broad distribution. So in 2019, Born to Be Wild, Bird on the Wire and Mille Apres Mille become public domain and become available to be part of the singing tradition.

I don't know about these songs but what makes you think that works under copyright are not available or accessible???
Most of them are both.

Xelebes · Apr 28, 2015

aruna said:
I don't know about these songs but what makes you think that works under copyright are not available or accessible???
Most of them are both.

On one hand, they are available to be purchased. That's the problem though. A lot of music is now in the public domain, mostly classical music, folk ballads and nursery rhymes and they continue to have a life as something that is practiced and not something that is bought and then limits placed on what you bought. There is licensing fees on music you bought you have to be mindful of if you intend to perform the music, especially when it comes to recording your own version of it and so forth.

aruna · Apr 28, 2015

Sorry, I know next to nothing about the music industry and can't offer any opinion on that.

UK Green Party proposed cutting copyright to 14 years

Delerium ex Ennui

New kid...seven years ago!

Alex

On a wing and a prayer

On a wing and a prayer

On a wing and a prayer

On a wing and a prayer

On a wing and a prayer

Alex

On a wing and a prayer

Delerium ex Ennui

On a wing and a prayer

On a wing and a prayer

Delerium ex Ennui

On a wing and a prayer