Posted on 09/22/2003 12:40:54 AM PDT by Prince Charles
Not necessarily. You own the "copyright" on something the moment you create it (even the US government's copyright office will tell you this on their site). It is easier to enforce your copyright by filing with the gubmint.
What they don't tell you is that by filing your copyright with the US Copyright Office, you agree to a limited exclusive ownership of that work. They will enforce your copyright in exchange for your agreed future relinquishing of those rights.
Patents are for a limited time too. Patents are also publicly visible. There are plenty of products that are not patented (computer designs, the formula to Coca-Cola...) and will never "lapse" into the public domain.
There are ways of still prosecuting those who steal their ideas (enforcing such violations in court can be difficult but not impossible).
As with my earlier example (the Doors), you can get a foreign copyright established on your work and potentially own the work permanently.
It is recommended if you market your works around the world (literary, audio, films, or software) that you copyright them there so that the local authorities can prosecute violations of your copyright. That US Copyright can't be fully enforced in another country.
We are at an interesting juncture because recordings from the 1950s are now lapsing into the public domain in Europe and there are some who say that the DCMA holds no weight in extending their copyright agreements. There has been some talk of prohibiting the importation of such recordings since they are still protected in America.
The "retroactive" removal of works from the public domain (including "It's A Wonderful Life") is a separate disgusting act.
Do you feel any guilt reading the news articles on Free Republic rather than hopping to the source websites every few minutes (and viewing their popups/banners/etc)?
Do you subscribe to all of those publications so that you can view their archives without reading the full the text on FR?
The industry put pressure on music stores (telling them that they would withhold advertising dollars and discount pricing on wholesale stock to any stores that sold their merchandise used).
I think that one day we will see CDs routinely offered with just enough suplemental materials that they will call them "CD-ROMs" and that the "software" will have a seal on the case. Opening that seal is an agreement to the limited license of that tile (including the prohibition on backup copies, unlicensed resale, etc.).
The music industry hates used CDs. In the 1980s, there were attempts to prohibit libraries from loaning out CDs because customers could check out (for free) albums in much better condition than the lps that some customers used to tape.
Today, those customers can (illegally) copy the CDs from the library. If it is a part of their research, such copying may be within fair use. The industry faces more legal/illegal piracy than just mp3s; this is the "sexiest" scare campaign that they have.
It makes sense that the turtles in the Federal government would think that that we are all immortal. After all, life expectancy for a man is 72 and they keep trying to push the age of retirement (for social security benefits) past that.
Bingo. The libraries are not only profiting from wholesale copying, but also facilitating the copyright violation by providing the machines patrons need to break the law.
And in some regards he is right - there are certainly greedheads in the music industry. But that's true of any industry as well, and it certainly doesn't give downloaders the right to steal from them.
The value for writers is in their catalog of works; to deny them the ability to build their portfolio is to deny them the ability to make a large part of their living.
How about just your lifetime, and we'll call it even? ;)
Anyway, that still leaves the problem of corporate entities as authors. How long should their copyright term be?
The vast majority of the value an artist realizes from his work will almost always be within the first decade, and few artists will base their decisions on whether or not to produce a work on the possibility of future technologies or legislation that might enhance their value.
Indeed, trying to extend copyrights endlessly to "protect" artists whose works are made valuable by new technology are far more likely to stifle innovation because the original artists or their heirs can't be found than they are to encourage innovation by letting artists know that in the event some new technology appears 50 years off their heirs might benefit (if anyone can find them).
One thing which is particularly galling about today's copyright rules is that it is often impossible to identify the copyright status of a work; as a consequence of this, the public domain is actually shrinking and unless things change it will never grow again but instead shrink to a mere fraction of what it is today. For example, suppose I find some black and white film footage I like in the back of a closet, but the only thing I know about it is that it existed sometime prior to January 1, 2000. That footage may have been in the public domain for half a century or more, or it may still be protected under copyright 150 years from now (even without any more changes in the copyright rules). If the film's printed on gunpowder stock, it's almost certainly public domain (since nobody's used that for a long long time), but if it's printed on safety stock it could be anything.
Too bad there's probably no practical way to repeal the Berne Convention or its successors.
Actually, mechanical license fees came about very early on; as soon as the Supreme Court held that the existing copyright law did not require makers of piano rolls to pay royalties to composers, Congress passed a new copyright law to make them do so. Soon after that, there was a standard rate set for all recordings after the first one was published: two cents per copy (regardless of length, but as a practical matter piano rolls were limitted in duration). Today the rate is established at 8 cents per song per copy for works up to 5 minutes, or 1.55 per minute or portion thereof, per copy, for works longer than that.
Too bad there's probably no practical way to repeal the Berne Convention or its successors.
All treaties can be nullified by an act of Congress. Not that I suggest that this is necessarily a good idea, but it's actually quite easy to do - a simple legislative majority is all you need.
Where are you drawing the line and why? And why should you benefit for your entire life from work that you did once and why should your heirs also benefit after you are dead?
As I said, I'm all for you getting paid for your work but can you name me any other job where I can do the work once and then have myself and my heirs get paid for that work over and over again for years?
Do I have a right to licence my designs, my logos etc....do companies have a right to license their ideas and profit from it? Of course.
If I write a piece of music and it's used for different purposes- in a film, on a television commercial- ar adio jingle...., I should be paid.
If you buy a house, you can rent it out. I doubt you'd enjoy paying the architect and builder royalties every year, even years after they are dead, so long as you use the house or every time you take a picture of it.
Do I have a right to licence my designs, my logos etc....do companies have a right to license their ideas and profit from it? Of course.
If I write a piece of music and it's used for different purposes- in a film, on a television commercial- ar adio jingle...., I should be paid.
My argument is not about whether you should be able to collect money for and control your intellectual property but for how long you should be granted that exclusive control. Extending copyright protection for a century of more simply creates many problems, not the least of which is that as the pool of copyrighted works expands, it will become more and more difficult to determine if you are accidentally violating someone's copyrights. The chances of writing a piece of music that accidentally matching another piece of music increased as the pool of copyrighted music grows. I can also imagine a The Nine Billion Names of God scenario with respect to music and copyrights, since there are certainly a finite number of combinations of musical notes out there.
I simply think that the pool of protected intellectual property needs a "drain" that allows works to enter the public domain. This is important because ideas, music, stories, and art become part of the common culture and would naturally be built upon by others if not restricted. If you, yourself, agree that works should eventually enter the public domain, then all we are really haggling about is over when that transfer should take place, the issue you keep avoiding. Why do you think you deserve to keep collecting royalties for such a long time for effort that you expended once? And since you think that music, say, should be protected for up to a century or more, would you support lengthening patent protections to a similar length? What impact do you think that would have pharmaceuticals and other fields of science?
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