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Yet more examples of how copyright destroys culture rather than driving it (walledculture.org)

submitted 4 months ago by Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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

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[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 104 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 25 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] crossmr@kbin.run 19 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] tuhriel@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] crossmr@kbin.run 2 points 4 months ago

Only if they ever offered it at all. Kind of 'once you put it out there, it's out there'

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago

What if you create something that you later really hate and don't want it to exist anymore?

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 18 points 4 months ago

We can think of weird edge cases all day, the fact is companies shouldn't be able to hoard IP.

[-] cogitase@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 4 months ago

What if Tommy Wiseau became self-aware before the premiere of The Room? The world would be deprived of his glorious travesty of cinema forever.

[-] Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 months ago

Seems weird for it to be called "intellectual property" if its purpose is not to be owned

[-] Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

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.

Not 'to grant them greater control' or even ownership. To secure exclusive right for a limited time. And this only because it was meant to promote science and art.

Using copyright to prevent a work from spreading is a direct perversion of the intent, it is using it in a manner diametrically opposed to what it is supposed to do.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

By having a Right to do something, a person also has the implicit Right to abstain from doing something.

Having the Right to Free Speech doesn't mean that a person is obligated to make publicly available every thought and opinion that they have.

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[-] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 months ago

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".

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago

Or just have that book available in libraries.

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[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 13 points 4 months ago

Fun times would be to prevent companies owning copyright.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 months ago

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?

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.

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[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 13 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 months ago

These changes could be applied retroactively; this isn't like creating an ex post facto law and then jailing people for breaking a law that didn't exist at the time of the event.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 points 4 months ago

Technically unlimited, but with an exponentially increasing annual registration fee.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 11 points 4 months ago

Generally speaking all the money is made in a very short time after release compared to the life of copyright

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 7 points 4 months ago

Yeah but it's too long

[-] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 4 months ago

I'm fairly sure that at this point pirating has been shown to lead to increased sales, even of small scale productions.

Also, no one said that people can't keep the rights for a while, just that if you don't let people access those things you don't get to prosecute them for making the art available.

[-] brax@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 months ago

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

[-] mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 4 months ago

Btw what are thoose 1300 "banned" ones?

[-] Comexs@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 months ago

How long do you think copyright should be? It was originally 14 years in the United States.

The length of copyright protection depends on several factors. Generally, for most works created after 1978, protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. For anonymous works, pseudonymous works, or works made for hire, the copyright term is 95 years from the year of first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first.

https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycle/

The max that I would ever be happy with is 25, but 20 or 17 preferred for me at least. I think it gives plenty of time for a Series completion.

[-] DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

Robert Jordan and George RR Martin disagree.

[-] Comexs@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Do you have any exact statements from them? Because I would like to know more.

I rarely hear about authors/artists talk about copyright other than, when they talk about what license they use or them complaining because they felt that their work wasn't infringing on other artists copyright since it was transformative.

[-] DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Robert Jordan took a long time finishing his Wheel of Time series- he actually died and Brandon Sanderson had to write the last three books

GRRM is still writing his series.

My point is that they would say that time proposed is not enough because they take a long time to write.

Additional context:

Robert Jordan's first book for the Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990. His last book, A Memory of Light, was published in 2013. He died in 2007 and a lot of fans, me included, thought the series was also dead but Jordan's wife brought on Sanderson to finish it. And he did such a great job writing in Jordan's style that some think he did Jordan better than Jordan did.

GRRM wrote A Game of Thrones which was published in 1996 which is the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire. His latest book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011 and only book five of seven proposed books for the series. Three series was originally going to be a trilogy so we'll see if it ends at seven. The Wheel of Time series was also supposed to be a trilogy when Jordan started it.

[-] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 4 points 4 months ago

I feel like someone not releasing anything but squatting IP rights for 13 years is a poor argument for longer copyright terms.

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago

GRRM is still writing his series.

That's simple: have the earliest works released into the public domain, while he keeps squatting on the newer and promised ones.

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

How long do you think copyright should be?

No easy solutions but my general guideline would be that both copyright and patents should never last more than half the retirement age of a current generation, calculated via actuarial tables or some trustable scientific method.

The rationale is simple: the ultimate purpose of both is (or, well, should be) to promote creation so that society in general can be participant of the resulting effects. Half the retirement age not only is a good compromise between giving creator control and giving at least half of society the opportunity to enjoy the public good result of creation within their lifetime and within their fair opportunity to earn wages, in particular in such cases as eg.: big pharma and medications, but also promotes that big creators, such as corporations, act towards the public good of lengthening life and providing good living standards for the rest of society.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 6 points 4 months ago

On the flipside, I think the Internet Archive should stick to archiving stuff. "Lending out" books without asking for permission and without owning the copyright, isn't the best move. And I don't think it's aligned well to the core concept of the Internet Archive.

[-] DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

The Internet Archive reached too far with the lending aspect. While the goal of sharing is laudable, no one was really surprised by this decision. 🏴‍☠️🦜

[-] black0ut@pawb.social 5 points 4 months ago

The books they shared still had DRM on them. As we all know, if it has DRM you don't own it. They never gave away any book, so I don't see what they did wrong.

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