Posted on 10/13/2008 6:37:54 PM PDT by Santa Fe_Conservative
If a corporate entity is a legal "person", then why isn't the RIAA treated like a flesh-and-blood person who habitually files frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit?
The answer is quite simple - Check the money trail. If the judge is presiding over a case in which one party was a major contributor to the politician who appointed him/her, then I doubt the word frivolous will come up much.
No excerpting, just posting a link to a relevant copyright and fair use story that’s been going on for weeks.
Wal-Mart’s DRM Nightmare Just Won’t End
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/wal-mart-will-c.html
Long story short, Wal-Mart was switching to DRM-free mp3 (getting away from the DRM ownership ‘licensing’ of a purchased mp3). So you legally bought a song (mp3) and would still find yourself unable to play it (you would be in violation because Wal-Mart changed their business model).
But some here are happy with that. Buy it again. And again. And again. And somehow through all of this we are assured the artists and not the companies will become wealthy.
Now there's a novel argument to see on this site. Profit from copyrighted works is only "grudging (sic) allowed" by the Constitution?
In a society as advanced as ours, where a great deal of our output is intellectual property, why should intellectual property be any different than other property? Why encourage profit in one, and only grudgingly allow it in the other? Unless of course you think profit should only grudingly be allowed in every segment of the economy.
Look, the Constitution doesn't set the time frame for protection, clearly leaving it up to Congress. Extended copyrights are far from a clear violation of the Constitution. Scalia and Thomas agree, BTW, though I suppose Stevens and Breyer may support your position.
Yes. It is only a means to an end, the advancement of the arts and sciences. Jefferson argued against even allowing copyright due to the dangers of abuse, but Madison argued that, while allowing such a monopoly is a bad thing, it is necessary, and the will of the people would prevent any abuse. Boy was Madison wrong on the last point.
In a society as advanced as ours, where a great deal of our output is intellectual property, why should intellectual property be any different than other property?
First, stay away from the term "intellectual property" as it will get you confused.
Now as far as copyrights and patents are concerned, they are not property. Ideas and knowledge are free because expanded knowledge benefits everyone. Only an artificial government-granted monopoly gives them value, and it was done solely as an incentive to come up with these new ideas, so that they can eventually pass into the public domain and be built upon freely.
Look, the Constitution doesn't set the time frame for protection
We know what the intended time frame was. Besides, once an author is dead no amount of incentive can get him to write or invent anything else. If a copyright exists absent incentive to the creator to create more then that copyright has no constitutional justification to exist.
Why encourage profit in one, and only grudgingly allow it in the other? Unless of course you think profit should only grudingly be allowed in every segment of the economy.
I'll leave you with a rather lengthy quote by someone better able to explain it than I:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 August 1813
This is a Constitutional forum first, and a conservative forum second:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I'm pretty sure that for limited Times didn't mean forever to the Founders, just as "A well regulated Militia" didn't refer to the National Guard:
Please show me where in my post that I said otherwise.
Should published works which are not supported by their publishers be condemned to oblivion?
Suppose the current copyright statutes are still in effect in the year 2130, and someone finds an interesting book in someone's attic with the inscription "Copyright 1980 John Smith". The book does not appear in the known bibliography of anyone named John Smith. Should the person who finds the book be allowed to republish it, or should he simply keep the book until it disintegrates, at which point it would be forever lost?
If the author of the book was 18 in 1980 (born in 1962) and lived to 100 (died 2062), then the copyright would extend 70 years after his death, to 2032. Thus, even 150 years after its publication, the book would still be under copyright. On the other hand, if he died prior to 2030 the book would be in the public domain.
If there does not exist any record of any particular identifiable person having written the book, determining when the author died may be essentially impossible. By 2100, the book would probably be in the public domain, but there would be no way to know for sure.
Trademark protections are allowed to last for centuries, but trademark holders are required to affirmatively protect their rights. For something to be a valid trademark, there must be publicly-available evidence identifying it as such. Even if it is reasonable for copyrights to be extended for over a century in cases where the copyright owner maintains an interest and maintains evidence of copyright, I see no good coming out of a copyright statute that makes it impossible to determine which works are covered under copyright and which are not.
Because that length undermines the entire spirit in which the copyright was formed to promote in the first place: innovation.
I’m all for strong copyright protection but there has to be a balance and the way to balance it is to have a work enter the public domain after a reasonable amount of time. Not to mention the fact that copyright was meant to protect the creators and not the publishers.
Not to mention the fact that copyright was meant to protect the creators and not the publishers.
This should be irrelevant. Our laws allow the work's creator to own the copyright to anything he creates, and if he chooses to enter a contract transfering that copyright to a publisher that's his right and presumably offers benefits to both parties.
Another alternative to balancing the issue would be to re-establish and strengthen the Fair Use. That has been the traditional balance since Congress started lengthening the copyright time everytime Disney wags their finger.
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