Re: Pro-IP bill passed the house: User-created conte nt providers, beware!

Bob wrote:
>
> Have you ever seen those big collections of "classic" films on DVD for a few 
> dollars? Those are collections of movies that were distributed with the tiny 
> oversight of lacking a copyright notice -- without that protection, 
>   

Even without a copyright notice, you have implicit copyright. However, 
in most of the world, copyright expires 50 years after the author's 
death. Because corporations may never die, copyrights owned by 
corporations expire 50 years after publication. Thus, in most of the 
world, any movie made in 1958 or later is now free of copyright. 
However, in the U.S, the Disney corporation keeps lobbying Congress to 
extend the length of protection, so I don't know where we're currently 
at. Personally, I think 50 years should be sufficient for anyone. 
Infinite copyright (which is what Disney wants) certainly isn't right.


> Passing properties along to anyone but the original creator seems an abuse 
> of the original intent, and in the long run (as real human beings eventually 
>   

If you can't sell it, then you don't own it. And it's not property if 
you don't own it. In fact, if you couldn't at the very least license it, 
then you couldn't make money off of copyright ownership. Once you allow 
licenses, then you have to allow perpetual, exclusive licenses with 
right of sublicense, which is just a name difference from selling.

The fact that corporations can own original copyright is a convenience, 
because it allows corporations to not have to track the lifetime of all 
the creators of each individual work -- something which was next to 
impossible 50 years ago, and even today, what with databases and 
whatnot, might still be fraught with risk. The trade-off, for the 
corporation, is that the 50 years (or whatever the term is) starts 
ticking on the date of publication. I think that's a reasonable trade-off.

What I disagree with on a personal level is the disproportionate 
attention it's getting in Congress, because of the media lobbying 
groups, and the disproportionate enforcement provisions, which could be 
argued goes against the "unreasonable search and seizure" constitutional 
amendment. I also, personally, feel that "fair use" has long been pretty 
well defined, but lately a large campaign has been mounted by monied 
copyright holders to push that back, to the detriment of the common 
good. That's where we need to take a stand and say "enough is enough."

Arguing to abolish copyright, or corporations, or the justice system, 
will just mark you as someone who can't work within the system that the 
majority of humanity has created over the last thousand years, and thus 
will tend to invalidate your entire argument before it's even started. 
Whether that's right or wrong doesn't matter -- that's how it is.

Sincerely,

jw


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