What's wrong with current copyright laws?

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thewanderer said:
Yes, its fine to put in legislation that says that no one else can use it without your permission because you copyrighted it, and thats totally fine, but that doesn’t make it actually your property. 🤷
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My lawyers and USPTO disagree 😃

Sarah x 🙂
 
atheistgirl said:
My lawyers and USPTO disagree 😃

Sarah x 🙂
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My point is that whille they use the word property, the reality underneath the language used is fundamentally different than that of a house or clothing etc. It really doesn’t matter what language is used, or by whom, intellectual ‘property’ is not property in the same sense that private propperty is, and it never can be. Thats why copyright laws can be debated in a way that laws against stealing private property cannot, they are dealing with two fundamentally different realities. 🤷
 
coachdennis said:
Since many of them are planning to live longer than the 28 years mentioned, why would providing cultural continuity be more beneficial than depriving people of legitimate income?
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A change in the law would not deprive anyone of legitimate income. Rather it redefines what is legitimate (legal) income. Phamaceutical companies pour far more into drug development than any artist, yet their patents are only allowed to last for 20 years, of which much of that time is testing and approval.

Yes, I think when books and movies have such greater lengths than medicine, it is too much. What is a bigger issue, that we suppress cancer and AIDS research or that we suppress another StarWars movie?
 
PaulinVA said:
I am shocked.

I am shocked at the number of people who think they have a “right” to other people’s work. It’s amazing.
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I get around paying for others’ work in the most efficient way possible. I utilize the public library system!
 
pnewton said:
I get around paying for others’ work in the most efficient way possible. I utilize the public library system!
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It’s all good. 😃

The author will still get a royalty based on the libraries purchase (or multiple purchases) 😃

Sarah x 🙂
 
coachdennis said:
Please do not take this personally… I am using your example.

Is the problem most people have with the copyright laws is that they limit access to the creative works of others … or … is it sour grapes because they didn’t get a Harry Potter-like character copyrighted first??

I’m sorry if this sounds sarcastic, but I have seen for myself and heard comments by “also-rans” in the arts whose protestations about copyright injustices seems to masquerade professional jealousy?
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I don’t know that speculating about people’s motives necessarily furthers the discussion.

I can only speak for myself. I have no sour grapes. I majored in writing in college. As a kid, I dreamed of being a writer. I still like to write, but I never pursued it professionally. I do like the arts, though: literature, music, art, etc. I congratulate others on being successful. I’m not looking to cash in on Harry Potter: Year 8 or anything. 😛

I think that the availability of art and intellectual property does have ramifications for the public good. I won’t say I know the best way to go about it, but I don’t think the current system is it.
edwest2 said:
Joe,

I’m surprised at you. “…great artists steal.”? Just feel lucky that Michaelangelo is still not around because I think he’d have a few words to say to you, not just about his art but the inventions he created.

Who was George Lucas before Star Wars? Just some rich guy with nothing better to do?

Peace,
Ed
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Sorry, Ed, I thought people would catch the reference. It’s a quote attributed to Picasso, I think. It don’t mean the quote in the modern “let’s pirate stuff” sense of stealing. Many great artists “steal” from those who have gone before them by building on their work and making it their own (as a “thief” does). For an artist to simply “borrow” means making reference to the other work without making it their own.

Take Romeo and Juliet, for example. Shakespeare took the plot and characters from a dry, dull poem and turned it into a masterpiece of theater that people still know, love, and perform 400 years later. That’s the type of stuff we limit when we make the copyright term so long that no one even remembers the work by the time it reaches public domain.

And again, I’m not advocating some sort of free-for-all when it comes to intellectual property. I pay for my books, CDs, and DVDs. I’m not out to score free stuff or anything.
 
JIB said:
I don’t believe intellectual property is legitimate. Only real property is legitimate. While there are arguments for why it is socially beneficial for the government to enforce intellectual property rights, I don’t think it’s legitimate that I am not allowed to use my own typewriter and paper in the way I want because someone I’ve never met and won’t physically hurt in any way says he has ownership over a certain grouping of words.
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:ehh:

“Intellectual property” covers a lot of territory. Are you saying that if a pharmaceutical company spends $4 billion developing a new drug to treat hypertension, they shouldn’t be allowed to patent it? Should any other company be allowed to copy the molecular formula and sell copies of the medicine without suffering the cost of development?

I realize that that patents and trademarks and copyrights are all somewhat different. But they all revolve around the concept of intellectual property, so I am wondering how far you meant your statement to go.
 
coachdennis said:
It was not my intention to shut down discussion. My question was based on my personal experiences and comments** made by individuals who are not artists themselves, or artists who have not been overly successful towards myself, artists I have worked with, student/artists I teach, etc. Again, I am only thinking aloud on the motivation for someone’s opinion on an issue so I can be *open to learning *how and why certain positions are important to him or her.
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Including this information in your first post might have made your thinking clearer; instead it came off like an ad hominem attack.

I don’t think that people’s feeling, positive or negative, should be allowed to influence legislation, altho I know it does all the time.
 
edwest2 said:
I’m sure the lawyers at the Walt Disney Company would be glad to explain it to you.

Peace,
Ed
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I don’t care if Walt Disney CORP, which will never die, is able to renew its copyright on Mickey Mouse. I just disagree with their getting the whole country to make such a major change in so many areas.
 
edwest2 said:
Very wrong. Libraries retain copies as well as used book dealers. I have been in the book business for decades. I think you’ll need to back up your statement. Most major publishing companies earn a significant income on their backlist - that is, books the public wants to stay in print. “A lot of money?” Really? You’ll have to back that up too.

Mark Twain is still in print. And, well, he’s dead.

Peace,
Ed
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Your library system must be a lot different from ours, where they seem to cull books like crazy.

And there are books I have been searching for for years that I can’t find because as a kid, it didn’t occur to me to write their titles and authors down so I could get them for my children. Not to mention books that are just difficult to find.
 
edwest2 said:
Very wrong. Libraries retain copies as well as used book dealers. I have been in the book business for decades. I think you’ll need to back up your statement. Most major publishing companies earn a significant income on their backlist - that is, books the public wants to stay in print. “A lot of money?” Really? You’ll have to back that up too.

Mark Twain is still in print. And, well, he’s dead.

Peace,
Ed
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If a book stays in print, it is because a lot of people bought or are still buying it. The author has made money on the book that way, no? If an author does not make money on a book, it is because no one buys it, and if no one buys it, it goes out of print.

I don’t mind if an *author *can renew a copyright; I just object to the automatic extension of copyright *for so long. *
 
thewanderer said:
The question that many people have, including myself, is whether or not it is actually correct to talk about ‘intellectual property’. In other words, we question whether or not thoughts themselves are the kind of things that can be owned by a single person. I say they are not. Just because someone slaps the name ‘property’ on it doesn’t make it such. Now, that does not mean I am against having copyright rules as such, they serve a purpose, and an important purpose, but the question is still open as to what is the best way to acheive the end desired, that is, more creativity.
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Stealing other people’s ideas and work and generating you own versions? That helps who?

More creativity means hard work

fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/september/theft-of-creativity

Peace,
Ed
 
St_Francis said:
It’s a kind of crummy way to argue, to use a *possible *flaw in the person making the argument. It’s kinda designed to shut down all discussion, isn’t it?

I am not a writer; I have no problem with authors making money.

However, this is usually not the case. What often happens is that publishers will squash older books in favor of newer books which they can sell more of. This is a manipulation of our culure and of our ability to pass our culture along to our children.
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I work in publishing and that statement is a lie. If you want to pass culture on to your children, go to a library or get out of print books from a used book dealer. Don’t drag the kids into this.

Do you know the Library of Congress has a copy of every book ever published? We have to send them two copies along with our copyright information for each title.

Peace,
Ed
 
I guess it all depends on which side you stand on - If its your intellectual property then your going to say the law is right, if you a person who wants to use or take possession of another persons intellectual property without paying for it your going to say the law is wrong.
 
St_Francis said:
Words are like raw material and writers shape into a literary work. This is work, and the worker is worthy of his hire. He should be paid for his work.

One is permitted to do what one will with a book or cd, but one cannot have two copies, one of which is in circulation and one of which is not.

If I buy a cd, copy it to my hard drive, and give my copy away to someone, then there are two copies each with a separate owner, but the band who made the cd originally only got paid for one copy. This may not be a big problem on a small scale, but imagine if a group made a cd and the first person who bought it put it on the internet and everyone got it free, then the band and everyone else who worked on it would only have $16 to split among them. That hardly seems fair, does it?
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A few words from J.K. Rowling:

digitaljournal.com/article/329917

Peace,
Ed
 
adrift said:
This makes me upset. You pay to have pictures taken of you and they have a copyright on your image?

I wouldn’t be to opposed to that but then you have a picture handed down by relatives who you cannot get a copy of because it is copyrighted by an unknown photographer who whent out of buisness fifity years ago.
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That was not his point. There are professional photographers who:

a) Pay models money.
b) Have them sign a release form that spells out how the images will be used.
c) Anybody can have old pictures reprinted. I recently had a movie film of my friend’s parents’ wedding transferred to CD. No big deal there.

Here’s the big deal:

paidcontent.org/2012/05/31/breaking-judge-gives-ok-to-authors-photographers-to-sue-google-over-book-scanning/

Peace,
Ed

Peace,
Ed
 
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