So would creativity really dry up without copyright & artists not making money?

most artist who write great sons are not rich or even close to it...money has nothing to do with it...creativity doesn't have a price tag.

 

No.

Next?

 

Making money. Profit. Property. These are just other words for FREEDOM.

Why is someone else's ownership always called into question? Don't we see that if other people's property is not secure, nobody's property is secure.

Property is Freedom.

 

What you're referring to here are moral rights (the right to the integrity of a work) which are not the same as copyright and are EXTREMELY weak under US law. Generally, to run afoul of an artists's moral rights, you would need to do something like buy a unique work, like a painting or sculpture, and deface or destroy it. Writers hate parodies, but ironically copyright does less to protect works from hostile treatments such as parody, than faithful treatments such as sequels.

 

Moral rights have always been troubling for Americans. They are an issue because they stay with the author and waivers of moral rights are not enforceable. So, let's say you license the right to make a U.S. version of some Japanese cartoon film (in Japan, moral rights exist). You deal with the film company, which owns the copyright, but you also need to worry about the "moral rights" of the original author, if he's still around. It's always a concern because the term is so vague, and the last thing a studio wants is an injunction stopping opening weekend. As a result you end up consulting with the guy who first drew the character but sold all the copyrights even if he's in his 90's before you, say, add a semi-nude scene. Maybe that's a good thing.

 

Then pay up. Send royalties to the heirs of Shakespeare, Sophocles, Grimm, Da Vinci and every other public domain work you ever read, heard or saw over your lifetime.

 

I went back and read the Breyer documentation. What makes his position sketchy is the absence of real proof that the public is not served in either case. The only potential disservice is that the duration before the works in question become freely available, is merely extended. That, by definition does not extinguish those materials ability to serve the knowledge dissemination requirement of the law. The nature of copyright is right to copy. If public demand exists, the works in question typically remain available for purchase – for research and academia as well as public consumption. As time passes the commerical demand decreases, and work falls into public domain. In either case the work promotes the progress of the art or science.

 

Often, we do pay. If you go into Barnes & Noble to buy books, you pay for the fancy copy of Shakespeare's works. The nice gilded edition is $30. The matter of royalty is with the publisher of the volume.

 

That's not an argument for your..."right" to take ownership of property you didn't create.

It's a diversion. A cute statement that blurs the conversation. Please.

Profit is freedom. Without the inherent right to profit from our own efforts, we have no real freedom.

 

I don't disagree with you. I think Breyer overstates his case. I only quote the Breyer dissent a) as a good explanation of the underlying social intent of why we have copyright law; and b) a decent summation of the problems people -- even it seemed like some on the majority in that case -- have with the willingness to so easily extend copyright for so long (remember, a U.S. patent only lasts 20 years, and congress was tagging another 20 years on a copyright length that was already 75 years or more long). I think the potential for danger is real from a slippery slope of continual extension; and I think the question of what public service the extension served is a good one -- was just a private benefit or is the public intent of the copyright clause being advance or served in some way by it. On the latter score I think Breyer is spot on in describing it as purely a private benefit.

 

No, these words are not synonyms. And in fact as social forces they have not infrequently been diametrical opposites -- for example one doubts that a slave things of his master's property rights as another way of describing freedom.

FWIW, under the Constitution -- and extending copyright protection in the US is a power given to Congress explicitly in the Constitution -- copyrighted works are not treated the same way that real property is treated. The Framers set it up so that copyright can only be granted for a limited time. You don't get to keep that property forever or hand it down to your heirs forever; in the American tradition going back to the founders, copyrighted property is not that kind of property. Also the explicit reason the Constitution gives for allowing Congress to grant copyright protection is not so that creators can make money -- that would be a private purpose. The language of the copyright clause makes clear that copyright protection exists for a public purpose: to advance public knowledge. The private mechanism for that -- giving creators exclusive right to use their work for a limited time -- is an attempt to create a financial incentive for them to share their ideas. But the intent of copyright as per the Constitution is to advance public knowledge by giving people a reason to share their work and for the work to become public property after a limited time.

 

And the common ground between the 2 perspectives is that a sufficient time to satisfy the initial public demand and exclusive rights to copy probably should not extend over the lifetimes of decedents past a certain number of generations, if that is a measurable metric. IOWs, can Ted Shakespeare who is the Great, Great, Great Nephew of Wm, rightly claim ownership? I think direct descendents have a claim especially in the case of Beatles and Disney, whose works continue to maintain a high market value. Extension serves the public in these ways from a perspective of quality control. In the case of Beatles music the original intent and sound quality remains intact to the greatest extend that technology can provide, which certainly helps their history. For Disney, the enterprise offers a concise level of presentation and quality in one single destination. It would be hard imagine anyone else doing it better than those parties. Conversely, we’ve seen first-hand how music catalogs can end up when a third party starts releasing cobbled together cash grabs like the grocery store “Greatest Hits”. Not to mention the cheap nature in which old classic movies and cartoon collections show up in the budget bins. Quality and accuracy could well be the lowest priority.

 

Slavery deprives men of their most basic ownership; Ownership of their own labor. Why would a slave respect those stealing from them?

We all have the right to our own talent. Artistic, intellectual and labor. We own our talent and no one has the right to take it.

Profit is freedom.

 

I remember a news story where someone in the US senate or congress wanted to propose a bill to extend copyright to "eternity minus one day", since THAT is still technically a limited term.

You mention spirit of the law. My understanding of the "original spirit" of copyright law was to provide something akin to "a living wage" income to support the artists/creators. It was meant to incentivize creators to CONTINUE to create.

Efforts such as those to extend copyrights into "eternity minus one day" or some other such nonsense might be favorable to huge multinational corporations (they seem to spend a lot of effort and money lobbying the government for it anyway), but they can be destructive to creativity, because:

#1 - immense sums of money can be a great demotivating factor. Think of the superstar acts who put out at least an album a year early in their career when money was tight and they were hungry (figuratively for sure, and in some cases also quite literally). Think of those same bands later in their career for a comparison. Young struggling band creates brilliance on a yearly basis and comfortable superstar band creates mediocrity on a twice a decade basis (if even THAT frequently).

#2 - copyright was never meant to be a lottery system, where all you need to do is to get lucky with one big creation or patent or whatever and theoretically retire at 21 years old with your multimillion dollar winnings, never needing or desiring or bothering to ever create anything again.

The "spirit" of Copyright law was never to generate millionaires/billionaires, it was to generate creativity. The world would be a far different place if modern patent/copyright law existed in Edison's day. Instead of being a lifelong inventor and holder of over 1,000 patents, in the modern day he may have sold his lightbulb patent for 10 million bucks or more and retired luxuriously and likely VERY young and the world would have lost (although I'm sure someone else would have invented them all eventually) things such as:

1 - the phonograph (a bit of a big deal around here)
2 - motion pictures
3 - microphone
4 - car battery
5 - two way telegraph
6 - electrical power distribution
7 - fluoroscope (x-ray)

etc...etc....etc

 

This perspective is the #1 reason why what our founding father invisioned may be somewhat out-dated. Intellectual property has been proven to be actual property in the eyes of corporate America. Almost every product on the store shelves is derived from a effort or exercise in intelligent thinking and reasoning. It's no longer a world governed by goods and service that are homespun and built by raw materials we pull out of the ground. The talents of man have delivered the most amazing consumables the world has ever seen - and almost every new popular invention has a huge social impact arguably for the greater good of the people . The investment by the creators can take a lifetime in earnings to break even. If our founding fathers could have foreseen our world today, they likely would have mapped things differently.

 

It's a perspective. It's just not, when it comes to copyright protectable intellectual property, the American one; not really the way things were ever designed to be done in this country. I don't really know about the law elsewhere.

 

It is the artist's creativity that lands the record label contract. So at least initially, there is no obvious connection between creativity, copyright and money. Several major artists seem to have been through quite a few dog years, when the money only has gone to the record label. And they nevertheless was expected to write new music and tour extensively, without any real money coming in.

 

The language of the copyright clause is, "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."

The intent of giving Congress the power to extend copyright protection to intellectual property is to advance public knowledge -- to promote the progress of science, meaning knowledge in this context, and useful arts, meaning craftsmanship. The laws written to enact copyright did have the reasoning of providing income to creators to of a certain sort for a certain period of time. But the purpose of the power is to yeah, give people an incentive to create and an incentive to share their creations for the purpose of advancing public knowledge. Equally important to that advancing of public knowledge (and for the incentive to share) is the limited nature of the grant.

 

I wouldn't agree in this sense;

The founder's idea's created the environment for this progress.

I wouldn't greatly mess with that. I don't see leaders today that rival Jefferson.

 

This is utter nonsense. When someone owns a thing, it means that everybody else is NOT FREE to use it, so how is that freedom? Why not to say instead that freedom is when things are collectively owned, so EVERYBODY has the freedom to use what he needs? Think about public roads or libraries, is it better to privately own just a couple of books or meters of road in front of your house, or have virtually unlimited access to all the roads in the country or any book that you want? The fact that nobody even considers the alternative of having intellectual property in the public domain (with a system of public support of the artists) shows you the power of ideology.

 

I'm not suggesting that the law is wrong. But updating legislation with an eye on the current state of the world can prove beneficial. Building IP is no different today than building a business. Or building a log cabin.

 

Pretty sure politics is not allowed at SHTV, even at a fairly abstract ideological level.

 

I am a songwriter. This is a recent song (I'm going to redo the drums and make a couple changes, but you get the idea...)

https://soundcloud.com/rockinrob86/ghost


I know that the music I'm into making isn't inherently commercial, I do not enjoy playing other music/cover songs I do not like, and I don't particular care about entertaining people. For these reasons, I decided not to pursue music further after my experiences gigging around before and during college.

I am 28 now, and have found out it is harder to make music than I imagined it would be when I was younger and decided to not pursue music professionally. I work in consulting (mostly with stats and economic data), and I am lucky to be skilled in this area as well as music and to have another option. Most of my musician friends have no other options. I have found it is hard to find pro level musicians that are in a similar situation as myself, and it is even more aggravating trying to find the time to record. Recording takes a real focus (at least for me) and it can take me weeks to find the time to record things.

As for money, this is a concern in both directions for different reasons. With my career, I can afford equipment. I also build and repair tube amps and other gear, and have built my own microphones. The above recording is done almost exclusively with mics I built, and features all types of other gear I built and repaired, including the guitar, guitar amps, bass amp, bass fuzz pedal, drum set, and wurlitzer electric piano.

BUT, I know friends who are professional musicians that make a fraction of my yearly income that manage to record in real studios because they save their touring money, etc and make it happen.

As music becomes a less profitable/sustainable venture than it already has been, I think there will be more weekend warriors and less full time people. This will definitely result in some people who would have been major, important artists in a different time only putting out a few tracks here and there, or nothing at all, while having a great catalog of songs they play on their back porch at night...

We also have no way of knowing whether or not this is how it has always been, and it is easy to argue that we are in the best time for music, as it has made it much cheaper to record at great quality and distribute music. Also, it may just be that the type of music born under the old system is dying off, and the new music will be made by individuals on their computers during ( ) and after work, put on youtube and enjoyed by the masses.

 

I didn't think there was any problem with the pre-Bono law terms of 75 years for works of corporate authorship and the lifetime of the author plus 50 years for private authorship. I mean, patents only extend 20 years. The original copyright term in the U.S. was 14 years renewable for one more 14 year term. At 75 years or lifetime plus 50 we were already at a term which was more than 3 times the length of patent protection and nearly 3X the length of the original length of copyright, and in some ways may have had the unintentional (or maybe intentional) consequence of turning intellectual property into something we treated more like real property in the first place, which was a transformation with pretty much exclusively a private benefit, not so much a public one.

 

Collective ownership?

Hope you don't want my house or my record collection.

I would respond further but out of respect for forum rules...it's best to leave it here.