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.
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.
Only if they ever offered it at all. Kind of ‘once you put it out there, it’s out there’
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.
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
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.
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.
Then they have the right to not continue publishing their stuff. That doesn’t affect the rights of the persons who already got their copy alongside the associated rights to consume it. Depending on the licensing terms, it might not even affect their granted right to redistribute, if any.
Then they have the right to not continue publishing their stuff.
I was arguing against the comment that said:
You should be legally required to offer content you have on a copyright or else allow people to “pirate” it.
We can think of weird edge cases all day, the fact is companies shouldn’t be able to hoard IP.
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.
If its personal or internal only copyright wont’t matter since no one will have it to release it.
Just don’t give it out.
Fun times would be to prevent companies owning copyright.
Good we still have annas-archive.org the internet archive is sadly not enough for humanity.
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
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.
Robert Jordan and George RR Martin disagree.
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.
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.
I feel like someone not releasing anything but squatting IP rights for 13 years is a poor argument for longer copyright terms.
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.
Btw what are thoose 1300 “banned” ones?
