This post was a delicate and long dance that basically refuted the “male gaze” claim as being a copyright issue or solvable through copyright. Then to further throw off those who will might take offense, shift the discussion to the issue of musicians (specifically black musicians) who really should be able to address their beef as a copyright issue but can’t. It takes a lot of work to avoid being targeted by the social justice tribe these days. Bravo. I hope, in the future, you will spend as much thought and effort in your knee-jerk re-posting of sensationalistic stories about SE Asian countries.
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Oh, ffs. So ridiculous.
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Sure, just get a Constitutional amendment passed. No worries.
To deal with right of publicity and privacy claims under state law. None of which have any bearing on federal copyright law.
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That was sure a lot of words to restate “they that pay the piper call the tune”.
I understand that, and understand why you’d want that (it’s a Utopian ideal, after all).
The issue is that while ending copyright completely would make a lot of things better, and make a lot of works more viable/legal (specifically derivatives of existing works), it would also DESTROY a whole lot of viability of works, and make the vast majority completely unfeasible.
The simple fact is that with no copyright, it would be almost impossible for authors to make a living. While some musicians might be able to live off of live performances, that leaves non-performing musicians with no way to make a living. Writers do not typically perform their works live, so they’re left destitute as well.
Another form of art that would be almost completely destroyed without any copyright would be TV shows and films. The amount of money required for such endeavors are large, and without copyright there would be absolutely no reasonable way for them to make their money back - and without that, they’d never get made in the first place.
The (stated) purpose of copyright is to encourage authorship in science and the arts by providing a legal means by which authors can get paid for their works. It’s a necessary legal concept to ensure not just that the public pays (which some object to), but also to ensure that corporations don’t simply take whatever they want from authors without paying them.
The issue is that copyright was always intended as a balancing act between the encouragement of authorship and expanding public art and knowledge. The balancing factor on one side is that you want to give as much as you need to authors to make them create. The balancing factor on the other is that you want to make the timeframe and restrictions as little as possible to expand the public domain. The current system gives far too much power to authors (or, more specifically, to “owners” as these days they’re often not the authors) and far too little back to the public (currently, nothing). Your solution (end all copyright) swings the pendulum fully the other way - the public gets everything, but the author gets nothing. This “solution” is just as bad as the current situation, if not worse. Fixing copyright lies in finding the proper balance between the two.
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As someone who is a working computer scientist and an amateur photographer, I’ve been interested in copyright law for quite some time. While I am not a lawyer, and am certainly not your lawyer, I feel that I have a fairly good layman’s grasp on copyright law.
This article is complete and utter shite.
The sole purpose of Copyright law is to grant the author of a work a monopoly on that work for a given time period in order to exploit it for commercial gain. It is not meant to do anything more, like enable the downtrodden to rise up and overthrow their burgoise masters.
Imagine how horrible of a world we would live in if copyright law protected people from the tragedies she mentioned. There would be no new music, no new films, no new photographs. Every artistic work is in some way influenced by that which came before.
The influence that Elvis got from the Blues singers was the same that the Beatles got from Elvis, and the same that the Rap artists of today got from all of them. Outlaw that, and you outlaw music.
Actors, directors, and camera operators are all hired by the studio to complete their tasks, they agree ahead of time on their pay. They are all work for hire copyright people. If they don’t like it they can do something else for a living. (But even I have a work for hire clause in my employment contract.)
Revenge porn is a horrible thing. But secret filming is handled by laws regarding expectation of privacy, not copyright. It’s already illegal.
Oh, and that little girl is going to get killed by the bull. Some message for women: stand up to the market and get killed.
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“The simple fact is that with no copyright, it would be almost impossible for authors to make a living.”[citation needed]
@Avery_Thorn
“There would be no new music, no new films, no new photographs.”—Quote of someone who is neither a songwriter nor a photographer.
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Don’t you just love mansplaining?
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Under the US constitution, this is the sole purpose of copyright, not commercial gain:
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.
[emphasis added]
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But what does it matter if you hold the copyright to an image if you can’t publish it?
Edit: I guess sometimes you can anyway. (But I’m not sure in the case of actual “revenge porn”)
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There was a bit of paraphrasing, and I was phrasing it from the perspective of the copyright owner. But it is fairly equivalent.
I create a lot of copyrighted content, both for the company that I work for, and with my hobbies. I agree that there are problems with copyright, mostly that it is too long.
I even agree that some of the things they talk about are problems, but that they need to be dealt with by contract law or expectation of privacy law, not trying to scoop copyright into it too.
I think that there is also some disagreement about the level of art involved in photography, which I will fight on.
As far as I know, Elvis didn’t steal any songs or lyrics directly from the Bluesmen, he listened to them, loved what he heard, and started making his own music which was similar.
The Bluesmen were talented musicians, and they came up with sone great music and they forwarded the art greatly. You won’t find a bigger fan of their music than me. But… they were clearly influenced by the hill music of the Appalachian mountains which was what happened when African Amercan people and Irish people jammed together. This doesn’t make what they did any less special, nor them any less genuis. It just means that musicians get inspired by music, they copy it and they add their own ideas in.
And the hip/hop R&B Rap artists can do that too. And they do- you listen to modern Rap, you can hear influences from all over the place. The difference is that sampling involves taking a chunk of a song and using that directly in your song, and taking a chunk of a performance and using it in your song. The current view is that the person who made that chunk of the song deserves royalties, and the person who did that performance does too. Right now, that chunk length is 4 notes. I kind of feel that is too low, but the general idea is sound.
Well, that’s just because the commercial exploitation bit is implicitly assumed.
The progress of science is to be promoted by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to commercially exploit their respective writings and discoveries would be a more explicit way of stating it.
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I empathize, but at least there is sound economic rationale for arguing over durations: the first decade is exponentially more valuable than the second and third and so on, due to factors like discount rates, and possibly market saturation.
Many reasons.
- There needs to be a determination that there is a victim before any reassignment.
- There would need to be a much bigger change in the law for the government to be the owner. They weren’t a party to creation.
- Government stuff is subject to FOI, archiving, etc. Even if it can’t be copied, all sort of information about it could still be public. That law would need to be fixed too.
- The government isn’t going to know the wishes of the victim. What if the victim wants to publish? Weirder things happen.
- The government is unlikely to know about infringement before the victim. The victim is going to be able to react sooner.
- It assumes the government will pursue legal action.
- Criminal penalties for copyright are few and far between. Civil penalties are much more common.
- Automatically assigning to the government takes away an avenue for the victim to get restitution.
How’s this for a solution: it would be trivial for any victim to assign the right to a government agency. Just sign a piece of paper. It could even include a checklist of things, such as rights to sue, royalties from lawsuits, etc. I would suggest assignment to an independent agency that self funds through enforcement.
“The sole purpose of Copyright law is to grant the author of a work a monopoly on that work for a given time period in order to exploit it for commercial gain. It is not meant to do anything more…”
As soon as you said that, your comment ran the risk of becoming complete and utter shite, as this one grossly misleading and oversimplified thesis statement tainted the otherwise serviceable arguments you raised afterward.
As TheRizz and Skeptic have already pointed out, the purpose of copyright law is to balance the author’s reward with society’s need to access and use new ideas. Copyright law establishes this balance by recognizing, but also limiting, the author’s monopoly. That limited monopoly is a mechanism which copyright law employs to serve its purpose, the author’s limited monopoly is not an end purpose in itself, and certainly has never been “the sole purpose” of copyright.
I would agree with your own assessment of having “a fairly good layman’s grasp on copyright law”, as you do raise some supportable points. Your central misunderstanding is a common one, and one which the entertainment and publishing conglomerates have been eager to propagate for a long time. My sincerest advice to you is that with a bit more reading you could have a very strong grasp on copyright law. If you can shake that central misunderstanding the rest of copyright law and future court rulings will make a lot more sense to you. I seldom write replies this long on internet threads anymore, but in your case it seemed worthwhile.
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Thanks, Cory for sharing this, I doubt I would have considered a feminist critique of copyright.
I agree with Cory’s suggestion that our laws on Copyright need to be reformed as to exclude non-commercial activities, and to evaluate who gets to assert copyright on an activity.
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