One of the clearest demonstrations of how copyright is actively harmful is the lawsuit that four of the biggest publishers brought against the Internet Archive. As a result of the judge’s decision in favour of the publishers – currently being appealed – more than 500,000 books have been taken out of lending by the Internet Archive, including more than 1,300 banned and “challenged” books. In an open letter to the publishers in the lawsuit, the Internet Archive lists three core reasons why removing half a million ebooks is “having a devastating impact in the US and around the world, with far-reaching implications”.
Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17259314
You should be legally required to offer content you have on a copyright or else allow people to “pirate” it. The same way you must defend trademarks. If you don’t actually offer content you have the copyright for them you shouldn’t be allowed to prevent people from distributing it as abandonware.
I would add creation within an IP to this as well. There are so many good IP out there that some large company has devoured and actively chooses to just sit on when we could be getting good fan-made content. One example that comes to mind since it was brought up is EA sitting on American McGee’s Alice. So many fans are desperate for good content from their favourite IPs and are getting corporate by-the-numbers drivel at best or simply nothing.
I think a good trade off here is fans can make what they want then the owners are allowed to incorporate fan stories at their choosing so X fan game would be the official third game in a franchise then the IP owner could run with those ideas to make the fourth entry, for example. It’ll never happen but one can dream.
Canada either did, or still does, have a law like this. Years ago back when getting chipped cards for satellites was a pretty big thing, a lot of people near the US border could get ones from the US that weren’t available in Canada and get the chipped card or whatever it was. At one point the company made a request to the Canadian authorities to crack down on it, and the response was something to the effect of ‘your product isn’t available here, you don’t have standing to ask us to do that’.
It’s easier to define it as this:
If you commercially release something and region restrict it, people in any region where you don’t also provide a legal way to purchase/use it should be free to get it however they want.
I likebthat, but I think this misses the part where a company pulls it from all markets, which should be states specificly.
If you don’t offer it anymore, you are not allowed to keep the copyright or patent.
What if you create something that you later really hate and don’t want it to exist anymore?
Too fucking bad? The purpose of IP was to give the public access to novel ideas and art, not to increase the control creators had over it.
Seems weird for it to be called “intellectual property” if its purpose is not to be owned
This would just incentivize malicious compliance. “here’s a list of books we own. To purchase, send a letter to this address with a cheque and wait 30 to 60 days”.
So literally every doodle you make and anything you write must be available for purchase? Because you have a copyright on ALL that stuff. Copyrights are automatic.
Your diary? Copyrighted.
Your margin scribbles while you’re on the phone? Copyrighted.
That furry midget hentai that you draw for your own “entertainment”? Well, you get the point.
Granted, the copyright system is fucked, but some of the rules exist for good reason, and forcing everyone to release their copyrights if they won’t sell their art is ridiculous. I will certainly agree that the copyright/trademark systems badly need an overhaul.
You completly misunderstood what you are replying to. They are not saying you have to release anything, just that if you don’t, others should be able to.
If you don’t actually offer content you have the copyright for them you shouldn’t be allowed to prevent people from distributing it as abandonware.
That’s what I’m replying to. You have the copyright for everything you create. If you don’t put it up for sale, they’re saying everyone should be allowed to distribute it. That’s kind of fucked.
The comment I made on reply to another comment hits here as well
We can think of weird edge cases all day, the fact is companies shouldn’t be able to hoard IP.
For fuck’s sake though, talk about strawman arguments. “Literally every doodle you make” when we’re talking about abandonware. My eyes nearly rolled out of my fucking head reading that. Do I need to start putting disclaimers on every post I make? “I am aware there is more nuance required before a law gets suggested but I sure wish companies couldn’t hoard old media without making it available, please don’t ‘um, actually’ me by suggesting I’m implying everyone must give me copies of their personal shopping lists.”
All the examples you have brought forward apply to private individuals. This is about cooperations and companies. Those very different legal entities.
All the examples you have brought forward apply to private individuals. This is about cooperations and companies. Those very different legal entities.
That is not what some people here are saying, they want everything put out for copyright to be public domain. What’s hilarious is, that’s exactly what the AI hoovers want, they want everything anyone else makes. Especially the unique and creative artists. So these people in this thread want the same thing as these huge corporations everyone here hates.
Good we still have annas-archive.org the internet archive is sadly not enough for humanity.
Fun times would be to prevent companies owning copyright.
Overhauling copyright is not the same as getting rid of copyright. How about those artists that make original art, graphic novels or movies, how are they supposed to sustain themselves? Are you saying that the copyright is held too long?
The purpose of copyright is to promote science and the useful arts. The purpose is to get art and inventions into the public domain. The purpose is not “to get artists paid”. Getting them paid for their works and discoveries is the method by which copyright achieves its purpose. It is not the purpose itself.
If they are only interested in keeping their works proprietary; if they are uninterested in pushing them into the public domain, they are not achieving the purpose for which copyright exists. They do not qualify for copyright protection. They can get bent.
Says someone that has never made anything. Do you think art, music, etc. comes magically out of nowhere? I don’t really care to fight about what the original intent of copyright is, artists and every person should own their own bodies, likeness, voices and creative outputs.
I don’t really care to fight about what the original intent of copyright is,
Then you can get bent.
Art and invention benefit the whole of humanity. A work whose sole beneficiary is its creator does not qualify as art or invention, and deserves no protection.
Are you saying that the copyright is held too long?
I personally think so. 20-30 years for the authors would be enough, in my opinion. For company held copyright, it should be 8-12 years, counting from the date of creation - transferring the rights back to an individual would NOT give any extra time
That’d make basically every game and movie become public domain after a decade or so. If you applied 30 years of copyright to everything, nowadays we’d have public access to every game released up to 1994, which means the majority of the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis catalogs.
Too bad any change wouldn’t apply retroactively, so we’d still have to wait for the 2030s to come by before 1940s stuff becomes public domain.
I agree with 20-30. Stuff I’ve sold 20 years ago I’m not going to touch again ever. If someone gets creative with it , go for it. In my opinion.
It can be a tough call depending on what type of creation it is. I’m more undecided on how to limit ongoing properties. Life of creator? I don’t know. That’s tough.
I think for ongoing properties, it could create an interesting competition between different companies/artists, and I’d expect the original creators to fully cash in on “I’m the creator of [whatever], this is the real canon!” in order to keep loyal customers/fans
I fully expect game companies to not like this one bit, because live service games, like World of Warcraft or Fortnite, would, sooner or later, have to release source code in the public domain, allowing anyone to check it, create identical, better or worse clones or, worse, hacking tools that might still work on the more current version.
For stuff like the current offering of Adobe that relies so fucking much on “the cloud”, now that would be tricky and another significant battle, as they’d eventually have to give up the code for Illustrator, Photoshop, etc, as well as whatever server software their cloud uses, or point to said cloud’s owner. The same would apply for Autodesk, Corel, Microsoft, Apple and Google. Imagine finally having an open source Windows XP! 😆
EDIT: What is a lot more likely to become problematic is server-side bank software and some government software that is used for a country’s respective army or intelligence services. Boy, THOSE will definitely fight, or want a very specific clause for their cases, which makes sense.
Generally speaking all the money is made in a very short time after release compared to the life of copyright
So? If you spent years making a movie, don’t you think you should keep the rights for the movie for awhile? I have many friends that have careers with their style of art.
I’m not against piracy in general, you should absolutely go after the evil corporations. I’m saying that for the small time artist, they need protections.
If the publishers win, I hope every book they publish as long as they exist gets torrented into oblivion leading authors to ditch them in favour of self publishing
