Canada, Japan Cave On Copyright Term Extension In TPP 227
An anonymous reader writes Last month, there were several Canadian
media reports on how the work of Ian Fleming, the creator of
James Bond, had entered the public domain. While this was oddly
described as a "copyright quirk", it was no quirk. The term of
copyright in Canada (alongside TPP countries such as Japan and New
Zealand) is presently life of the author plus an additional 50
years, a term that meets the international standard set by the Berne
Convention. Those countries now appear to have caved
to U.S. pressure as there are reports that they have agreed to
extend to life plus 70 years as part of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite protestations to the contrary, and US Supreme Court legalism, copyright is now perpetual.
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite protestations to the contrary, and US Supreme Court legalism, copyright is now perpetual.
And laws retroactively changing public contract, and that long after the official benificiary excuse is dead.
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And you can bet that within a couple years, Disney (and other corporations) will push for another extension. Lord knows, we can't have Mickey Mouse enter the public domain "on schedule" in 2023.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:4, Insightful)
So much for "Original intent". One of the clearest things about copyright in the constitution was it was there for a limited period so the work can make it to commons for others to build on. The same frauds that push the "Original Intent" dogma when if comes to reeling in corporate malfeasance are the same people that push Micky Mouse Copyright.
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:5, Insightful)
These days copyright and patents mean whatever the fuck corporations tell the American government it means ... who then dutifully work to force it on the rest of the world.
Because sadly the American government are more or less just the enforcement arm for multinational entities.
O.O <--- shoot Mickey Mouse
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The same frauds that push the "Original Intent" dogma when if comes to reeling in corporate malfeasance are the same people that push Micky Mouse Copyright.
No, they are different frauds. Republicans support corporate malfeasance. Democrats pander to the media companies.
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Yep, it's really that simple. Life is a binary equation.
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Yep, it's really that simple. Life is a binary equation.
Exactly. It's all either-or, diametric opposites. One eats their own babies, the other eats other people's babies.
Shocker (Score:2)
People push for laws that benefit them
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
That's natural and fine. A good democratic society is a majority rules as its impossible for everyone to have everything they want all at the same time.
The problem comes in when a small minority has the ability to push for laws that are against the benefit of the majority and the majority isn't given the opportunity to fight back in any meaningful sense.
Copyright is exactly a prime example of this -- a small number of major copyright holders keep pushing for extensions and they usually get them because while a lack of public domain is terribly for society as a whole, it has very little impact on any individual person and the majority ends up not even realizing what they're losing until its too late, never mind being able to put up a meaningful fight against these perpetual extensions.
We do have groups like the EFF and OpenMedia nowadays who are fighting back a little bit, and even having some success in certain areas, but Disney's politician buying power dwarfs the combined resources of all those groups put together, likely many times over. Add in Sony and Universal and whoever else and the playing field is still pretty unbalanced even with public interest groups taken into account.
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Just to clarify before Slashdot goes all Slashdotty -- Yes I'm aware that "majority rules" is an oversimplification.
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The problem comes in when a small minority has the ability to push for laws that are against the benefit of the majority and the majority isn't given the opportunity to fight back in any meaningful sense.
The part that you're missing is that "minority" and "majority" refer to dollars, not human beings.
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Now but wait, according to constitutions all people within a society are meant to be equal. So according to US law if money equals speech than all people by law are required to have equal access, hence you should only be able to spend what the poorest can spend, otherwise you are publicly stating under law that all people are not equal and that some people are by law entitled to much, MUCH, greater speech than other people. So if money equals speech, then by constitutional law and people required to be equ
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Oh come on. It wouldn't be the first time in history that some people only counted as fractions of a person.
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You're right. People don't have nearly as much power...
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infinity minus one?
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:5, Insightful)
and they wonder why there is a 'war on content owners/providers' by torrent/usenet fans.
they wont' play by the rules, they keep changing them and they do everything they can to swindle cheat and lie to us.
and so, we have 100% lost all respect for them.
horse has already left the barn. I stopped paying for content years ago after I decided that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. they wont' honor rules and so neithe will I.
look, content guys, this is a war you'll never win. you really want to 'bring it'? the young generation knows about vpns, torrents and how to get around DRM. most of the young friends I have cut the cord and no longer pay for cable or satellite, no longer rent movies and no longer buy them.
so, you still want to have a war with us?
as morgan freeman said in the batman/dark knight movie, "well, good luck with that".
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and they wonder why there is a 'war on content owners/providers' by torrent/usenet fans.
You are not being intellectually honest. People do not download stuff to protest copyright extensions.
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Most people alive today in the US have not only had the public domain not grow in their lifetimes, it's actually shrank due to retroactive copyright.
... and the vast majority of downloaders are unaware of that. Even if they were aware, they wouldn't care, because they are downloading new stuff, not Disney cartoons from the 1920s.
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I was about to comment that they play by the rules, but keep open the option to change the rules at any point if it suits them. Then, I remembered that the big content companies have repeatedly been found to ignore copyright law when they feel like it. So it isn't even a matter of "everyone follow these laws we've written" but one of "everyone else follow these laws we've written but we're
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and they wonder why there is a 'war on content owners/providers' by torrent/usenet fans.
Widespread piracy of copyrighted material has very little to do with copyright terms being continuously extended. The vast majority of material available on bittorrent and usenet are recent works, not things that would have fallen out of copyright even under 14-year term of original US copyright law.
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Yes. All land should be rented, never bought, for basically the annual property taxes. If land becomes more valuable, property taxes should go up, and if you no longer want to rent that piece of land because it's too expensive, somebody else can.
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:4, Insightful)
All land should be rented, never bought, for basically the annual property taxes.
That's just silly. If something can't be bought then it isn't worth anything, because things are only worth what they can be traded for.
Just how can you own land anyway? You can certainly go back quite a long time in terms of trades and sales but sooner or later you get to a point where the land was seized by the man with the bigger gun/spear/stick/rock.
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Just how can you own land anyway? You can certainly go back quite a long time in terms of trades and sales but sooner or later you get to a point where the land was seized by the man with the bigger gun/spear/stick/rock.
You answered your own question.
~Loyal
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:4, Insightful)
And why would that be wrong? Drawing parallels between copyrighted materials and real estate (since there are many similarities)
There are also significant differences. If I build a house on your property, you can't. If I make a new book based on ideas from "your" book, It doesn't stop anyone else from doing the same. You don't care, you've been dead for 50 years.
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Territorial ownership is a natural right. It is recognized by even primitive human societies. Many mammals, birds, fish, and even many invertebrates, own and defend territory. It is a right that exists even in the absence of government. Ownership of ideas or expressions is not a natural right. It does not exist anywhere in nature, and does not exist in the absence of government enforcement.
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You mean land, that is not inherently bound to a person, is somehow naturally theirs. Yet something like a book that comes from within a person, does not belong to its creator after a certain, artificially set, period of time. That's pure bullshit.
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A story does not come from a person, it comes from a long line of people, the whole standing on the shoulders of others thing.
Think of how many stories have been based on Shakespeare, and how no-one has to pay his heirs because of lack of copyright. Most of what made Disney a success were also public domain stories.
I did read a book once where a child was totally isolated from birth with a synthesizer so he could write original music, I guess the same could apply but I doubt without any literary background
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Territorial ownership in the absence of government goes to whoever can hire the most effective guard to maintain control of their territory. When someone else comes along with a bigger or better-equipped army, the territory changes 'ownership.'
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Territorial ownership in the absence of government goes to whoever can hire the most effective guard to maintain control of their territory.
Exactly. That is how it has worked for millions of years. Now, try to do that with an idea.
Re:Copyright is Now Perpetual (Score:4, Informative)
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You pay real estate taxes annually
Until you have to annually pay for copyright it's not comparable.
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Do you know how people get to own real estate? They bought it from the govt at the very early stages. And before the govt, the kings conquered other kings, tribes etc to gain control of that land. So I guess, your owned real estate is actually rental property, rented long term from the govt and kings. The govt also spends a lot of money on upkeep of services that help real estate property such as water supply,
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Government, kings and so on are just proxies for your ability to keep land or property. Without it, you would protect your land bu ypurself using whatever means you can.
As for copyright, its the same thing. Without government protection, you would have to do it yourself. It doesn't matter what kind of life experience or whatever was put into it.
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And why would that be wrong?
Because the Constitution explicitly states "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right ." In other words, it is unconstitutional. Various studies of the legal interpretation of the time tell us that "limited times" means 99 years or less (which is why, for example, the British lease of Hong Kong only lasted for 99 years).
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Well said!
maybe the next movie title (Score:2)
US Pressure? (Score:4, Informative)
The American people don't want this.
The music corporations are entirely non-US companies.
Copyrights are not beneficial to Search or Share Internet industries.
The only remaining beneficiary is the movie industry, a relatively small group of people.
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So Copyright only applies to music and movies? Um, no. Just a few examples you've missed, but maybe you've never run across them: art, photography, literature, heck even software is covered by Copyright.
So, while I am totally against extending Copyright indefinitely, don't be so dramatic in your claims.
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I haven't heard of anyone in the software industry pushing/lobbying for longer copyright terms.
Perhaps maybe literature, like the estate of J R R Tolkien, who died 41 years ago. Can't have Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit become public domain.
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That's because software is long, long obsolete before the term would expire. The US term for a work-for-hire is 95 years - there wasn't even a concept of software that long ago.
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There was a panel of authors a few years ago arguing for shorter copyright because it would strengthen their bargaining position with their publishers. Most books make 90% (or more) of their profits within the first 7 years of publication, so there's little incentive to extend it and publishers survive by constantly producing a stream of new material. One of the reasons that they like eBooks is that it gives them a way of monetising their back catalogue, but for a lot of authors being able to give away th
Re:US Pressure? (Score:4, Informative)
The music corporations are entirely non-US companies.
That doesn't mean these corporations don't have their hand up my government's ass, working its mouth like a puppet.
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The American people don't want this.
Have you talked to these people. Unfortunately, the the number of individually that have to bought teh whole, you would download a car movie industry line hook line and sinker are a tiny tiny minority. America, and the rest of the world are completely hooked on the idea on owning your inventions intellectual and otherwise, forever.
It's all about the incentive (Score:5, Insightful)
In the abstract, the situation seems obvious. First, it's ridiculous to think that there are any marginal artistic works which are only created because the extra 20 years of protection in US law make them profitable, whereas they would not be made otherwise. Moreover, any such works can't be any good, so why worry about them? Second, it clearly makes no sense to extend the term of protection of already-existing works: they have already been created, so we don't need to provide the artists any extra motivation to create them.
What matters here, however, is not the setting of incentives for authors, but the incentives of trade negotiators. Here, the US is behaving rationally: if the US negotiators convince Canada and Japan to keep Mickey Mouse under protection for 20 more years, then more royalties will flow from Canada to the US. This may be bad for Canadians, but not so much for US citizens. More generally, since the US is a large source of popular entertainment but a (relative to its size) a small importer, it wants other goverments to fleece their own citizens in favour of US interests.
While I'm sad that Canada caved on this, Canada is a (relatively) small country next to a big one, and (for example) trade restrictions on lumber are far more significant to Canada than the copyright extension. I stil think they should have stood firm, but it's not such an obvious call as it seems.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Negotiations are negotiations, if the US press one issue above all else, those other issues that might have benefited the US might not get through, plus the other side gets to get some of their stuff through.
No, this is not rational, this is just narrowminded thinking by people who haven't realized even fucking mobile games is a bigger industry than Hollywood now.
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That's a wonderful idea, let's sell our grandchildren's rights to use expressions that have been milked dry (by and large). The price is the right to clear cut the forests and destroy their environment.
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First, it's ridiculous to think that there are any marginal artistic works which are only created because the extra 20 years of protection in US law make them profitable, whereas they would not be made otherwise. Moreover, any such works can't be any good, so why worry about them?
Counter-example: Mark Twain had his auto-biography released a portion every 25 years, exactly to be sure that it would still be under copyright a hundred years later (thus providing income for his kids/grandkids). Maybe you think Mark Twain wasn't any good, but sometimes it's better to find out an answer, instead of just thinking it's ridiculous.
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That depends.. are you suggesting that he wouldn't have written his auto-biography at all if he wasn't able to do that?
Not to mention the issue of whether or not its right or good for society to be providing for Twain's grand kids -- the only thing they "did" to deserve it was having the right paternal lineage. Why should Twain's grand kid get to benefit from his grandfather's writing while I don't get any benefit from my grandfather's days in the coal mines? How does that scenario benefit society as a wh
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Not to mention the issue of whether or not its right or good for society to be providing for Twain's grand kids -- the only thing they "did" to deserve it was having the right paternal lineage.
It's as much as you ever did to 'deserve' to read his writing.
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Its worse than that. Just try to find any work from prior to about 5-10 years ago that didn't hit its respective top 100 list. Not only is the benefits after 15-20 years marginal, the products often aren't even for sale by that point making the marginal profits exactly zero.
Disney in particular is really odd, and I suspect the popular lore isn't complete. "Mickey Mouse" isn't a copyright -- its a trademark. If Steamboat Willy enters the public domain umm.. so what? Does Disney really make that much off of a 100 year old fairly terrible film? Its not like SBW going into the public domain would have any effect at all on their more recent (and presumably still profitable) works, including any more recent Mickey Mouse films.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gee, it's almost like unfettered or barely regulated capitalism never delivers what people want, but instead tries to take whatever it possibly can by whatever means available. Just the Invisible Hand of the marketplace slapping you in the face again.
Of course, admitting that for your average idiot in the US would mean admitting that they were lied to and that they bought into the lie despite its very premise being bad for their own individual economic situation just about all the time. The cognitive diss
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Gee, it's almost like unfettered or barely regulated capitalism never delivers what people want, but instead tries to take whatever it possibly can by whatever means available.
Capitalism is essentially an interconnected system of optimizers, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to optimize for values you consider most important. Yes, it sucks, but everything else we've tried has sucked more.
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Actually what has worked the best is to take the best parts of different systems and combine them. Capitalism with some government oversight and some socialism. Of course the trick is to balance the systems but in the best places to live the system has been a mixture.
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At this point in history, free market economics has delivered more goods and better lives, by a wide margin, to a greater number of people than any other economic system tried by mankind. In the last century we have seen why it has worked this way. So, please lay out your alternative economic system in a way which does not contain the flaws so clearly demonstrated in every other attempt to organize economic activity.
Here is the flaw in a nutshell: People are greedy and almost always use any power
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The institutional precedent for profiteering not withstanding, you'd think more multinational conglomerates would take a step back to avoid losing a large swath of their monopolies but no.
Your examples were healthcare and broadband internet.
With healthcare the reform did not really change anybody's market share, and subsidies ensured that there would be more market participants. That is, companies that were making money before probably will make more money. That will sure teach them!
With the internet we've yet to see what will happen, but so far the US government isn't really creating any new competitors in that space. If they allow municipal broadband and new companies to come in and it
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Internet access in america became so godforsaken slow
Oh yeah, back in the 1990's my Internet speed was 24kbps, now it is much slower! NOT!
Co-Prosperity Sphere (Score:2)
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US not the only one (Score:4, Informative)
Further, the European Union initially demanded that Canada extend the term of copyright in the Canada – EU Trade Agreement, but that too was effectively rebuffed.
The EU wanted the extension too. Maybe the EU alone could not apply enough pressure but it looks like the EU and the US can. The US is such a good target but they are not the only bad actors.
PS. I am Canadian
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Think of the Children! (Score:4, Funny)
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Is that you, Mark Twain?
Bend Over Canada! (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, we started taking in the ass the second the Conservatives got a majority government. It wasn't if this was going to happen, just a matter of when and how big would the objects be.
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I agree Harper is bad but we've been taking it in the ass from the States for a lot longer than Harper's Cronies have been in power.
Remember, it was Mulroney that brought us NAFTA while lining his own pockets!
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Both right wing governments.
No surprise (Score:3)
It's not a surprise with our cuntservative "leadership" kissing American and Israeli asses all the time. :(
Not just copying (Score:2, Informative)
This isn't just about a few early 007 tales going public domain. James Bond as a character in books and movies is only fully protected if the entire series is in copyright, as the Conan Doyle estate found out about Sherlock Holmes.
In the end, this kind of scheming and legal pressure is disgusting. There's no sane nor sensible reason for copyrighted material to fund a life of ease for anyone past the lifetime of the author and often elderly spouse. Let the kids, grandkids and so-forth go out and work for a l
Not a problem (Score:2)
Whiney copyright holders (Score:2)
Just remember this next you attempt to complain about your works being pirated.
It isn't OUR doing, you have only the government to blame.
If you refuse to pay for copyright protection for 70 years after your death, then don't bitch when I say my check for your work won't clear for 70 years after your death either.
Edit calendar event (Score:3)
(changed from 2014)
Who Cares (Score:5, Funny)
thepiratebay.se is back, so none of this matters.
This makes me want to pirate more. (Score:2)
Not for the free films.
Not for the free books.
No. This makes me want to pirate something out of pure spite. Call it a protest.
Re:how stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright terms should be max(author, spouse). When you're dead, it's time to pay society back for what you have built on top of a civilization that was here long before you were born.
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Copyright terms should be max(author, spouse).
What about for polygamist authors, you insensitive clod?
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I have a better idea... let them have Mickey forever, but make them work for it.
1) All copyrights last for 5 year terms.
2) Works cannot change from copyright to public domain except at the hand-off from one term to the next.
3) Works cannot change from public domain to copyrighted. Ever. Not even for retroactive legislation.
4) First term is automatic and requires no registration. Authors can pre-empt the first term by releasing to the public domain immediately. This essentially causes a change-of-status at t
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No. Copyright should be a fixed term from time of publication, period. Having a potential cash cow is a (theoretically) good reason for an author or artist to produce a work. Having that cash cow dry up is a better reason for them to produce a second work than just "more money on top of what I've got."
Of course very few works are still profitable after 15-20 years anyway so the "dry up" phase is mostly implicit regardless and the perpetual copyright terms effectively accomplish nothing except screwing th
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No, the US founding fathers got it right. 14 years from creation of the work, irrespective of the life of the author. Nobody produces content based on expected income in 15 years time.
But this is nothing to do with promoting creative endeavors. It is about protecting libraries held by corporates.
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Actually the US just basically copied the Statute of Anne which limited copyright to 14+14 years for the advancement of learning. Even then the publishers were pushing for infinite copyright "for the authours" even though even then their business model was to pay the authour a small amount for all rights.
Democracy was also failing then with the elected House of Commons quite willing to grant the infinite copyright and the unelected House of Lords putting their foot down and saying works need to enter the pu
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The author isn't protected, the corporation is. Just like every other US law right now.
The idea of copyright as put forth in the Constitution isn't really known right now. Copyright, no matter what your corporate buddies tell you, isn't this idea of "intellectual property" where work is held indefinitely so authors can squeeze every dime from it.
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I doubt it would benefit authors at all. Chances are they've sold their rights to a company.
Copyright has been perverted.
Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator (e.g. the photographer of a photograph or the author of a book) to receive compensation for their intellectual effort
The contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them.
I can't fathom how extending the terms after the works have been created is an incentive to create them in the first place.
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Are you kidding?
Perpetual rent seeking entrenched in law, allowing you to profit from the public domain stuff you ripped off in the first place, and preventing anybody from ever having access to stuff created generations ago which should have become public domain by now isn't an incentive?
Sorry, this is ALL about guaranteeing corporate revenues for the next bunch of decades.
This is just
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Exactly, copyright laws were created during a period when authors held the copyrights. Nowadays, authors don't hold copyright to their own work. Instead the publisher holds the copyright to his book. I suspect there is some favoritism between the govt and big business, which is why there is a push to increase the duration of copyright. If ordinary authors had held the copyright, these extensions would not have happen
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No, the copyright law that most of the countries based on common law follow was pushed by the publishers who wanted infinite copyright "for the authors" while even then their business model was paying a tip-pence to the authors and then collecting rent from others creations.
It was successfully argued that copyright should be limited for the advancement of learning. America followed suite changing learning to advancing the sciences and arts.
Lock everything up and no-one can create anymore.
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Because politicians are only shitty when they brand themselves republican or democrat.
Thank god we don't have either of those up here in Canada. The conservatives absolutely wouldn't cave to corporate pressure on anything like copyright extensions!
If the US ends up with a third (major) political party, the only thing that will really change is that you've got a third group to bitch about when they make laws that go against public interest. The reason small parties can make all sorts of grandiose claims ab
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62% of the voters (those that actually voted) did not vote for Harper.
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Actually, the US is the leader in caving before stateless corporations.