Copyright Discussion and Debate

[S'task]

Limiting, if not eliminating, intellectual property

That will do nothing to limit megacorporations and would in fact actually advantage them over little folks. Yes, right now our copyright laws are kinda fucked up and in some ways favor corporations, but if you just go and eliminate them entirely? You utterly remove the capability for small producers of content to even BEGIN to profit off their creative endeavors while enabling large corporations to make money off their efforts with absolutely no effort on their own. Right now, if Disney came onto a site like TS and grabbed up someone's original story and made a movie out of it, they would be on the hook for millions of dollars of royalties and in all sorts of legal troubles. Without copyright, they could literally take a story from anyone anywhere, make a movie out of it, and keep all the money, while the original creator of the work sees nothing and has no legal recourse. On top of it all, the megacorp has ALSO now limited the potential return for the work, as the original creator can no longer make a movie and expect to profit from it. Further, Disney could write their own sequel to the story and that effectively undercuts any sequels the original author might try and make and profit from.

The abuse of copyright against small timers by corporations is a very recent issue due to the ease of distribution on the internet and the rise of the "critique entertainment" that Youtube effectively enabled. It is an unusual problem and not one that has been well addressed yet, but that is mostly due to Youtube's inane method of handling copyright claims, not an inherently flaw in the law itself.

 

[The Name of Love]

Conservatism and Libertarianism have extremely common roots, and one of the political left's greatest accomplishments of the 20th century was getting Libertarians to align with them.

No, conservatism and libertarianism don't have "common roots." Conservatism is rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Burke and Joseph DeMaistre. Libertarianism is rooted primarily in the classical liberals like John Locke and the Levellers, anarchists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Lysander Spooner, and Georgists like Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov. Though there has been crossover between the two, they come from very different political traditions. Libertarians actually have more in common with anarchistic socialists than with conservatives, and it wasn't until the advent of Frank Meyer's and William F. Buckley Jr.'s fusionism that libertarianism started being associated with the right wing.

Conservatism is statist at its core. It holds that the state is a natural institution that acts for the common good. This stands in stark contrast to classical liberals and libertarians, who hold that the state is man-made institution created through a "social contract."

That will do nothing to limit megacorporations and would in fact actually advantage them over little folks. Yes, right now our copyright laws are kinda fucked up and in some ways favor corporations, but if you just go and eliminate them entirely? You utterly remove the capability for small producers of content to even BEGIN to profit off their creative endeavors while enabling large corporations to make money off their efforts with absolutely no effort on their own. Right now, if Disney came onto a site like TS and grabbed up someone's original story and made a movie out of it, they would be on the hook for millions of dollars of royalties and in all sorts of legal troubles. Without copyright, they could literally take a story from anyone anywhere, make a movie out of it, and keep all the money, while the original creator of the work sees nothing and has no legal recourse. On top of it all, the megacorp has ALSO now limited the potential return for the work, as the original creator can no longer make a movie and expect to profit from it. Further, Disney could write their own sequel to the story and that effectively undercuts any sequels the original author might try and make and profit from.

The abuse of copyright against small timers by corporations is a very recent issue due to the ease of distribution on the internet and the rise of the "critique entertainment" that Youtube effectively enabled. It is an unusual problem and not one that has been well addressed yet, but that is mostly due to Youtube's inane method of handling copyright claims, not an inherently flaw in the law itself.

Disney already takes original stories from everywhere and profits from them. How many stories from fairy tales and mythology have the taken and made into movies? Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves... the list goes on and on and on. So, it's kind of pointless.

On top of that, I don't think profits from copyright are actually legitimate. They are a form of rent-seeking. Companies can just sit back on their laurels and bathe in the profits passively, without making anything new. That's why you have Disney making a bajillion sequels and live-action remakes to older properties. Copyright doesn't incentivize creativity, it stifles it! Furthermore, copyright laws never apply to the little guy because the little guy usually doesn't have the money to copyright a ton of different things. Larger corporations will always have the advantage because they can use their large numbers of copyrights to censor you.

 

[LordsFire]

No, conservatism and libertarianism don't have "common roots." Conservatism is rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Burke and Joseph DeMaistre. Libertarianism is rooted primarily in the classical liberals like John Locke and the Levellers, anarchists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Lysander Spooner, and Georgists like Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov. Though there has been crossover between the two, they come from very different political traditions. Libertarians actually have more in common with anarchistic socialists than with conservatives, and it wasn't until the advent of Frank Meyer's and William F. Buckley Jr.'s fusionism that libertarianism started being associated with the right wing.

Conservatism is statist at its core. It holds that the state is a natural institution that acts for the common good. This stands in stark contrast to classical liberals and libertarians, who hold that the state is man-made institution created through a "social contract."

...What country do you live in? Because American conservatism, IE 'conserving the principles on which the nation was founded,' absolutely is not statist.

Disney already takes original stories from everywhere and profits from them. How many stories from fairy tales and mythology have the taken and made into movies? Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves... the list goes on and on and on. So, it's kind of pointless.

On top of that, I don't think profits from copyright are actually legitimate. They are a form of rent-seeking. Companies can just sit back on their laurels and bathe in the profits passively, without making anything new. That's why you have Disney making a bajillion sequels and live-action remakes to older properties. Copyright doesn't incentivize creativity, it stifles it! Furthermore, copyright laws never apply to the little guy because the little guy usually doesn't have the money to copyright a ton of different things. Larger corporations will always have the advantage because they can use their large numbers of copyrights to censor you.

Have you ever actually been involved in much creative production? The most basic form of copyright is automatic. As in, all it takes is proving you created the thing, and you can sue people who've copied it. I mean, I suppose this could have changed since I last looked into it, but as a writer with some original material, this is a concern of mine.

Now, there's much more in-depth levels of filing for copyright control obviously, but this is not something that 'the little guy' is incapable of making use of.

 

[The Name of Love]

...What country do you live in? Because American conservatism, IE 'conserving the principles on which the nation was founded,' absolutely is not statist.

American conservatives have, historically, been in favor of most of, if not all of, the policies I list. Or are you saying people like Anthony Comstock and Phyllis Schlafly aren’t American conservatives?

Have you ever actually been involved in much creative production? The most basic form of copyright is automatic. As in, all it takes is proving you created the thing, and you can sue people who've copied it. I mean, I suppose this could have changed since I last looked into it, but as a writer with some original material, this is a concern of mine.

Now, there's much more in-depth levels of filing for copyright control obviously, but this is not something that 'the little guy' is incapable of making use of.

You can’t sue people who have more money than you. So if Disney really wanted to steal ideas from the Sietch, they could do so with impunity.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

You can’t sue people who have more money than you. So if Disney really wanted to steal ideas from the Sietch, they could do so with impunity.

Back when I was much younger, I used to watch lots of Disney cartoons with Mickey and the rest there

Nowadays I somehow only have one real idea of Mickey Mouse



Also, speaking of big corporations, is it me or they’re REALLY disconnected from the fans or actively ignore their complaints and barely do quality control beforehand

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

You can’t sue people who have more money than you.

Now see, I know you don't actually believe that, because if you actually do the only reasonable response is violent uprising.

And if you think this sort of absurd statement is remotely believable I want you to do a quick little google.

 

[S'task]

Furthermore, copyright laws never apply to the little guy because the little guy usually doesn't have the money to copyright a ton of different things.

You can’t sue people who have more money than you. So if Disney really wanted to steal ideas from the Sietch, they could do so with impunity.

Firstly, copyright is automatic and requires no filing. The minute that you put words on paper in a unique way, it's copyrighted to you. This makes it unique among intellectual property laws, as all other forms (Patents and Trademarks) DO require registering.

And on the second quote, no they couldn't. In fact, them stealing original ideas from something posted here would be a lawyer's wet dream. The entire copyright system is, in fact, premised on protecting the little guy from the big guy. That is the entire origination point of copyright as a matter of fact, it was to prevent big city printing houses from taking something written in a smaller market and distributed by a local printing house and just printing it in their big city while cutting out the original publisher and writer.

Yes, modern copyright laws have been DISTORTED against this original purpose, with copyrights extending so long, but at the end of the day, I can guarantee you if Disney or any other large corporation stole original fiction from someone online, the copyright lawyers would be lining up to take the case and argue it in the courts. Why? Firstly, being a lawyer who successfully takes on a megacorp and wins a clearcut copyright case looks GREAT on a resume. Secondly, the payout could potentially be quite lucrative and the lawyer would get a cut.

And yes, Disney HAS uses "other people's stories", stories that are explicitly in the public domain and mostly ones that are so old that either nobody knows who even told the original story anymore. Advocating the elimination of copyright just makes EVERYTHING public domain, and removes what little protections people DO have. In fact, elimination of copyright would only encourage more people to simply be consumers, as by eliminating it, you undercut people's ability to be producers of creative works, as, after all, in order to be productive producing creative works, one must be able to make a profit off those works, and if you cannot control the distribution of the creative work you created, you cannot effectively profit off it.

For someone so concerned with people not being producers, you seem to be very much against one of the main ways of protecting producers from malignant consumers who would put no effort and simply steal from producers.

 

[The Name of Love]

For someone so concerned with people not being producers, you seem to be very much against one of the main ways of protecting producers from malignant consumers who would put no effort and simply steal from producers.

That's because I don't believe there's any evidence that copyright law actually incentivizes creation in any way. Also, I do believe that any profit that comes from copyright is a form of rent-seeking. Rent-seeking is the very opposite of productivity. It's sitting back and letting the money roll in. It's theft.

 

[Morphic Tide]

That's because I don't believe there's any evidence that copyright law actually incentivizes creation in any way.

Would you actually be willing to pour weeks of carefully considered effort into painstakingly building every little detail of a setting if you knew that the instant you mention any facet of it in public, every single one of those pieces will be immediately used by other people to make money?

Also, I do believe that any profit that comes from copyright is a form of rent-seeking.

Including the simple fact that it's our system for making it so that the creator actually has any degree of lasting control over what they made, so they can actually be the one selling their work?

Rent-seeking is the very opposite of productivity. It's sitting back and letting the money roll in. It's theft.

I'm curious. Do you consider license fees, where the original creator of something has their price be a periodic payment for ongoing use, to be a form of "rent seeking"? Does this notion extend to the concept of subscription fees, where access to an online connection for a particular title is tied to a periodic payment?

Where's your line for "rent-seeking"? It's a very important question, for intellectual property (stories, drawings, videos, etc.), as we live in an age where the scarcity of information is virtually nonexistent. Any purely informational product is functionally unlimited in supply once initially made, so where's the line for seeking payment for your work on something that's only data becoming "rent-seeking", for you?

The entire notion of art that's video or audio in nature holding material value has been massively damaged by the functionally unlimited replication of information, because there's nearly zero work in replication. Once initially made, the supply of an image or sound is unlimited for all practical purposes. How do you monetize the initial creation without an "arbitrary" restriction of access, if it is, effectively, replicable in perpetuity to the whole of the world for negligible cost?

 

[Certified_Heterosexual]

Normally I'd be peeved over this thread getting pretty badly derailed by a debate over the efficacy of copyright law, but this is an issue I don't have a solid opinion on and both of you seem to be making good points and I'm learning a lot, so I personally am willing to let it slide, That said, I don't know what The Sietch's policy on thread derails is, and we may already be violating it. Perhaps it would be prudent to make a new thread for this discussion?

 

[Duke Nukem]

I

Normally I'd be peeved over this thread getting pretty badly derailed by a debate over the efficacy of copyright law, but this is an issue I don't have a solid opinion on and both of you seem to be making good points and I'm learning a lot, so I personally am willing to let it slide, That said, I don't know what The Sietch's policy on thread derails is, and we may already be violating it. Perhaps it would be prudent to make a new thread for this discussion?

I can make one, what should the title be?

 

[S'task]

Normally I'd be peeved over this thread getting pretty badly derailed by a debate over the efficacy of copyright law, but this is an issue I don't have a solid opinion on and both of you seem to be making good points and I'm learning a lot, so I personally am willing to let it slide, That said, I don't know what The Sietch's policy on thread derails is, and we may already be violating it. Perhaps it would be prudent to make a new thread for this discussion?

I

I can make one, what should the title be?

Or I can just abuse my powers and pulls the posts into their own thread, give me a minute.

 

[Terthna]

Copyright law needs to be fixed, but abolishing it entirely is nothing more than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'd argue one of the things that should be done to fix it is to drastically shorten its duration (twenty, thirty years tops), and perhaps make it non-transferable. There also needs to be more explicit protections extended for Fair Use outside of a courtroom; because as it stands, the process has become the punishment.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

the process has become the punishment

that's much more a Youtube thing than a Law thing. And Fair Use as a non-affirmative defense would, in effect, basically kill copyright anyway.

 

[LordsFire]

"The argument will basically boil down to whether the empirical evidence of whether copyright increases creativity, and that's not something you can empirically measure."

You make incredible assertions like this, and don't substantiate them in any way. You act like people have to use your ridiculous premises in order to argue with you, when it's statements like this that people are disagreeing with in the first place.

Empirically measure?

The USA is the engine of creative production in the world. When it comes to science, music, movies, literature, the USA outproduces literally every other nation in the world. That's a pretty damn good chunk of empirical proof that copyright protection, patent law, and all of that matters.

You want a directly tangible example?

Me, myself, personally. I have original material e-published, that has earned me money. I never would have taken the time to do that if it weren't for the fact that I can earn money off of it. I would have just kept older drafts of the same material on my hard drive, and left it at that. There, empirical evidence.

Now, do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up your assertion, or is it just that, a baseless assertion?

 

[The Name of Love]

Okay, @LordsFire, you seem to want to have this debate with me, so I'll have this debate with you.

You make incredible assertions like this, and don't substantiate them in any way. You act like people have to use your ridiculous premises in order to argue with you, when it's statements like this that people are disagreeing with in the first place.

Okay, what "ridiculous premises" are you actually arguing against? Because I think you're all over the place. For instance, you seem to think copyright is justified because "without it, the big companies will just steal from the little companies." However, they already do that and more effectively thanks to copyright systems. Folk music is often pilfered by companies, as seen in the example of "Happy Birthday to You", a folk song that is now copyrighted by AOL/Time-Warner, which aggressively polices its use. The American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) also threatened kids' summer camps because they used songs like "This Land Is Your Land" and "Ring Around the Rosie" in campfire gatherings. So, the copyright system already threatens "the little guy." This is the first among the many things you overlook in your defense of copyright.

Empirically measure?

The USA is the engine of creative production in the world. When it comes to science, music, movies, literature, the USA outproduces literally every other nation in the world. That's a pretty damn good chunk of empirical proof that copyright protection, patent law, and all of that matters.

Here's the question: is it the engine of creative production because of copyright or in spite of copyright? I say "in spite of copyright." You say "because of copyright." Either way, looking at the volume of entertainment products coming out of first world countries like the U.S. isn't going to cut it because there are a LOT of different factors besides copyright that go into why the U.S. produces the amount of stuff it does. It'd be like saying "oh, Japan has stricter gun laws and less crime. Clearly, there's a connection here!" You wouldn't accept such reasoning from a gun control activist, so why are you using that same kind of logic here?

Here's a more logical explanation: copyright as an idea emerged out of Enlightenment liberal thought, particularly the ideas of Thomas Hobbes. This Hobbesian idea of the author as the owner of original ideas was mixed with the Romantic conception of the genius artist in the nineteenth century to form the basis of the modern ideal of copyright. The rise of Enlightenment ideas coincided with scientific and technological advancements, advancements that allowed for the increased prosperity. From this increased prosperity came the rise of fandoms which in turn allowed authors to profit from their stories like never before. These new profits were compounded by copyright because copyright allowed authors to have a monopoly on all stories that were remotely similar to theirs. They justified this later by claiming "copyright is the only way I earn profit!" when in reality, they never knew a world without copyright, so they'd never know this. At all.

You want a directly tangible example?

Me, myself, personally. I have original material e-published, that has earned me money. I never would have taken the time to do that if it weren't for the fact that I can earn money off of it. I would have just kept older drafts of the same material on my hard drive, and left it at that. There, empirical evidence.

You admitted when you agreed with me that Disney profited from stories in the public domain, aka those stories whose creators either weren't alive when copyright as a concept was invented or never bothered to copyright the song in the first place. But if that's the case, why couldn't every story maker just use things in the public domain and profit from it? Doesn't that give up the lie that you can't profit from stories that you don't own? Disney doesn't own Aladdin, even if they copyright their specific version of the story.

But sure, let's grant that you wouldn't make as much money without a monopoly privilege. So? Am I supposed to be sympathetic to you for that? Why would I want rent-seekers to make more money?

 

[S'task]

Folk music is often pilfered by companies, as seen in the example of "Happy Birthday to You",

Funny you should mention this as an example of copyright law not protecting the little guy and being abused by the Big Corporation because, well, you see...

Once the issue was actually litigated, guess what was determined by the courts, under US Copyright law?

"Happy Birthday" is Public Domainand not only that, Warner ended up paying back the money they collected for it.

I'm unfamiliar with your other examples, but it appears you have a lot of your understanding of how copyright works and is regarded as, well, somewhat backwards from reality. I would further note that your belief that the idea of copyright is a creation of the Enlightenment is also seriously flawed. Firstly, the idea of copyright naturally grew out of the idea of a Patent of Monopoly, and the first such was granted in 1518 or 1501. It should be noted that the earliest most people say the Enlightenment began was in 1687, though the more common dates put it around 1715, or, in other words, the idea of copyright PREDATES the Enlightenment by 200 years. OH, and just to utterly finish this ahistorical revisionism, the first formal copyright law that resembles the modern copyright structure was passed in England as the Statute of Anne in 1710, again, predating the common start of the Enlightenment by five years.

Copyright as a concept was a direct result of the printing press and the development for the first time of mass media. It developed not out of some high minded Enlightenment ideals, but rather out of the pragmatic earlier concepts of Guild Patents and Monopolies that had been a defining structure of Medieval Europe.

 

[LordsFire]

But sure, let's grant that you wouldn't make as much money without a monopoly privilege. So? Am I supposed to be sympathetic to you for that? Why would I want rent-seekers to make more money?

...You can't even keep who was making what arguments straight; I wasn't the one raising Disney as a point. Also, using a pejorative like that against someone who has never earned as much as 20 grand in a year in my life, and actively being unsympathetic to my position as a low-income content creator, really does not paint you in a good light, or endear me to you or your position.

And as S'task points out above, you're again making claims that are the exact opposite of the truth.

Not just wrong, but the example you're trying to claim proves you're right, actively proves that you are wrong.

How are you this bad at making an argument?

And can you admit at this point that you are at least partially wrong?

 

[Terthna]

that's much more a Youtube thing than a Law thing. And Fair Use as a non-affirmative defense would, in effect, basically kill copyright anyway.

You don't really understand the costs associate with legal battles; corporations can afford to pay those costs easily, but the average citizen? Going to court has ruined lives, even if they end up the victor in the end; and the corporations know this, and use it as a threat to get people to comply with their demands, even when everyone knows they'd lose a court case.

Then again, this is more an issue with our legal system in general, than something unique with copyright; so perhaps making Fair Use a non-affirmative defense is nothing more than an attempt to put a band-aid on a deeper problem.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

You don't really understand the costs associate with legal battles;

Copyright abuse is often one of the easiest types of cases to get a lawyer on contingency for. AKA, you don't pay them until/unless they win and then you pay them a predetermined amount of the pay out from the case.

even when everyone knows they'd lose a court case.

If everyone knows they'll lose then you SHOULD be able to find a lawyer on contingency.