The Copyright Crusade a Lost Cause? 253
A. Smith writes "Ars Technica is exploring the relationship between property rights and copyright, arguing that copyright holders are making a mistake by stressing similarities between property rights and copyright. They compare P2P users to 18th-century squatters in North America: 'Like squatters of old, many ordinary users find copyright law bewildering and are frustrated by the arbitrary restrictions it imposes. Customers wanting to rip their DVD collections to their computers, download music they can play on any device, or incorporate copyrighted works into original creative works find that there is no straightforward, legal way to do these things.' They conclude by offering that more reasonable, understandable copyright restrictions would result in a user base friendlier to publisher interests."
if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
just an idea i read about in the last week or so.
Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too Late (Score:2, Interesting)
If the pirate bay is any indication, we will use technology to ensure that the creators are shafted directly, as opposed to shafting the middle-man (who in turn provides fewer opportunities for content producers.)
Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
How would you determine the tax to be paid on an open source project? Or on this post?
Mind you I'm just carrying forward a point someone else brought up, not necessarily vouching for it.
Re:What a shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because in RIAA Amerika, DVD rips YOU!
What amazes me is the absolute whining about the "need to extend copyright beyond 50 years because people are living longer, and a writer con't be able to make (even more) money in their old age off something they created when they were young." Extended copyright discourages innovation by encouraging people to "rest on their laurels". 50 years is too much. 20 years should be more than enough.
Re:You guys can tryy and twist the issue but... (Score:5, Interesting)
If for some reason the book had a lock on it, then I could break that lock to read it. If the company uses a special kind of binding that's supposed to allow me to read the book, but not take the pages out of it, I could circumvent that binding all I want. I could sell the book to somebody else for whatever price I wanted to. If a page of the book started fading or was scratched, I could photocopy the page so I'd have a backup.
Just because it's in a digital format doesn't nullify my rights to my copy of the work.
Possible model (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, to claim a copyright over an essay you write on slashdot, may cost you $0.01, based on how much ad-based revenue can be expected from reading a web-page containing it. If you then proceed to publish this essay in a personal blog, you'd need to pay $0.10 to claim copyright. If it gets published in NY Times, you'd need to pay $100/year to keep it. (all the prices, of course, are purely arbitrary)
Guidelines can be made that would allow people who generate content, to pay for blanket copyright of similar kinds of content... while especially valuable objects would need to be individually appraised. This would work the same way that property insurance works - your insurance will cover anything in your house up to a certain value... but any objects that are over that, have to be declared individually.
Maybe if Disney had to pay a few million $ per year to maintain copyright of Mickey... and BMG had to lay out a hundred thousand for every album they'd like to keep out of the public domain, we'd have a much more balanced system.
Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
- Each copyright must be re-registered on a yearly basis. The fee for re-registration depends solely on the length of the copyright term. By this formula:
$0.01 * (2 ^ number_of_yearly_renewals)
Thus, it is $0.01 for the first registration, $0.02 for the second year, $0.04 for the third year
So, after 10 years, it's only $10.24
But, after 16 years, it's $655.36
And after 32 years, it's $42,949,672.96
And after 50 years, it's $11,258,999,068,426.24
This means that any small guy or girl (no matter how poor) can easily keep his or her copyright for 10 years. However, no individual or company will be able to copyright out of the public domain for 50 years!
I consider it the perfect balancing factor between "publisher's rights" (limited rights, granted to PROMOTE THE USEFUL ARTS AND SCIENCES) vs. the public interest (that'd be ME, YOU, and EVERYONE else).
Update: If you want to avoid the hassle of re-registration, you can pay in advance. $10.24 as a pre-payment means you're good for ten years without the need to re-register. You can extend by paying the difference ($645.12 after 10 years will give you another 6 without need to re-register) as many times as you can afford.
The rate $0.01, doubling every year thereafter, is to be enshrined as Amendment 0 in the Constitution and unable to be changed except by 80% vote of Congress, approval by minimum 7 out of 9 supreme court justices, the signature of the President and Vice-President, and an 80% popular majority of the voting population.
Can anybody see any reason why this isn't the perfect plan?
low cost rights for amateur music video makers (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now it is impossible for the average joe to license a Bon Jovi song for his home-made video. The industry is missing out on some cash flow and great publicity by not looking at this market.
--M
Re:Possible model (Score:5, Interesting)
Just take the amount the RIAA wants as damages for one copyright infringement, since that is what they TELL us their copyright is worth, and multiply that with the amount of copies they can theoretical make of that work, and compute the tax based on that amount.
After all, when they calculate their damages on the theoretical copies sold without pirating, why shouldn't the taxes also be calculated on the theoretical amount of possible copies.
For works that are never involved in lawsuits there would be no tax, so that would take care of those frivolous lawsuits once and for all.
Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
These various artificial scarcity conditions are meant to deal with the fact that a few rich people control everything you need to live. If there wasn't the illusion that you might get leverage through these artifical scarcity rules, people would see how powerless they really are, and then they'd revolt and kill the rich bastards and take what they need. That's how WWII started, with enforced systematic economic hopelessness.
As the fictions start coming down and more and more people realize that their leverage was never real leverage at all, just a fiction, the disparity will become increasingly obvious, and there will be a revolt. It's just a matter of time.
Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Possible model (Score:4, Interesting)
More importantly, why would you want to tax ideas out of existence?
You can imagine owning a beach house all you want and not get taxed for it.
"BMG had to lay out a hundred thousand for every album "
That's insane and stupid.
So I have to pay a 100,000 dollar tax to make my own album?
Not to mention taxes are generated whenever BMG makes an album, but lets not have reality stand in our way shall we?
"o pay for blanket copyright of similar kinds of content."
and what the hell is similar content? use letters? has a certain theme?
How about we tax the revenue generated by the items and keep the barrier to entry as close to zero as possible. What you propose would destroy almost all beginning creators.
"Maybe if Disney had to pay a few million $ per year to maintain copyright of Mickey"
ah, I see you are letting your haters towards some companies blind you to the fact that they are exceptions, as well as lett it dampen you thinking abilities.
How about an increasing copyright fee over time?
I purpose:
all material is copyrighted upon creation for 10 years. A fee to register it the creator wants to.
After 10 years it goes into public domains. Unless 10,000 dollar renewal fee is paid.
after five more years 100,000, five more 500,000, five more a million dollars - no more exceptions.
I would even compromise and allow existing copyrights start over. That grates me, but something like that will need to happen unless they abolish copyright; which they shouldn't do.
A property is something you posses. There are many definition to the word 'property' and you seem to be getting hung up on the land definition as being the only one.