Lone Wolf sends Cease & Desist letters to anyone using the term 'Army Builder'

[Remus Lupin]

Well, whether copyright or TM should be limited to 10 or 20 years (which I agree is on the short side for some things, though not all), I do think that the way that it keeps getting extended in the U.S. is abusive.

Whether a creative commons license in TM is possible, the larger concept of creative commons gives a good alternative to the kinds of burdensomely exclusive uses of copyright (leave TM out of it for the moment), that make life difficult for people who want to utilize IP under fair use.

To give but one example: In a book I edited a couple of years ago, one of the authors had inserted a line -- a single line -- from a hymn, and I had to remove it because we realized too late in the process that we hadn't secured copyright permission, and at that point it was easier to change the article than get the permission if we were to stay on schedule. For one line in a hymn, which ought to be protected under fair use, that's ridiculous.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Well, whether copyright or TM should be limited to 10 or 20 years (which I agree is on the short side for some things, though not all), I do think that the way that it keeps getting extended in the U.S. is abusive.

I've got no problem with CC for Patents or Copyright, as long as the original authors are okay with that.

Trademarks, people need to realize, are different.

They never prevent anybody from using the term for non-commercial or what is called fair use, which has been discussed before. So freedom of speech is not at stake.

In most cases, you can apply for the a trademark of the same name as long as the product or service is in a different category.

To get federal protection you need to pay a fee.

There is a review process in place to prevent abuse.

Trademarks actually have a short lifespan--Federal registration must be done every 10 years, and they must be actively be used (or in some cases, intended to use, though there are limits to that). If you are not using it actively it can become abandoned and then free for another to use. There's no real danger of an "orphaned" situation regarding Trademarks.

They are vital to commerce, as they are part of a company's or product's identity and thus the existence of trademarks for companies is a vital necessity to fair trade.

I think Trademark Law can be abused, but there is a lot less abuse here then you'd see from the other forms of IP.

 

[pawsplay]

You miss my point. Some societies don't even have the concept of private property, and thus you can't steal land. Gold as a standard of trade value wouldn't exist in some cultures, they might barter. The concept of money is an artificial law, yet we have laws against counterfeiting, stealing, virtual transactions, etc.

You're missing the point. Even without the concept of private property, I can steal land. I can walk up to your hut, knock it over, and announce I am taking over. Theft merely requires taking an object to which one is not entitled.

But the key point is, you are trying to argue (based not just on your immediate prior posts but other posts) that IP can't be compared to property because there's no physical objects involved, and I'm not certain that's the case. The terminology "Intellectual Property" came about because most elements of society feel there is real value involved and it must be protected.

Are voting rights property? Is the right to receive emergency medical aid property? Is a baby property? The terminology came about because someone decided to make an analogy between property and what is now called IP.

Despite people like Stallman saying that the term is bogus and should be rejected, I think it's an apt term (and Stallman is something of a radical--he LOVE to play word games and engage in memetic warfare). The US has the NET act (NO ELECTRONIC THEFT), which technically doesn't deal with theft, but with copyright violation, yet congress considers it an apt term.

It's a terrible term. Even if infringement were theft, which it is not, the issues are so different that it would be beneficical to emphasize the differences between them.

Well, turning it around, does making D&D, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and other books and items public domain assist the common good? The implication is that entertainment = advancements of the science and arts.

Yes. I do not understand why this is not completely obvious. Imagine if you still had to pay royalties to publish Plato's The Republic because the Athenean League decided to extend copyrights for 3000 years. Imagine if the King James translation of the Bible was still under copyright. Imagine if someone was still collecting patent royalties on the invention of the wheel.

The whole point of IP is so we get Mickey Mouse. To get Mickey Mouse, we need Disney, and for Disney, our system currently relies on IP. Mickey should have been in the public domain a long time ago. We are glad we have Mickey, but I don't see how Disney is entitled to millions of dollars forever because they can say, "Well, you know, we invented Mickey, back in the day... well, Walt Disney did, and we have lots of money so we own it now."

And if what you say is true, if there's a huge commerce around these creations, they should be protected as well as any other industry.

There used to be huge commerce around child labor, too. There's huge commerce around selling alcohol to minors. Nigerian bankers do a fair amount of commerce, too.

"People can become billionaires on this!" does not mean it should be protected. I do not regard concentration of wealth, without regard to its use to society, as an absolute good, but rather, an intrinsic inequality to be avoided.

I mean, I can understand limits to exclusive rights to inventions that help society, like a new drug, you don't want unlimited patents on those. And you don't want copyright law to be abused and applied to all ideas and prevent competition. I also saw recently the documentary "Food, Inc.", and it talked about the patents on DNA, something I think goes too far. (And especially blaming seed cleaners for violating something that can't be helped due to the nature of cross-pollination).

Copyrights lasting longer than 25 years is too far. Longer than 50 years is just ridiculous.

But over the last 100 years, large economic interests have sprung up, industries that have a lot of workers and a whole subset. We never had audio/visual recordings during the constitutional days. I don't believe many of these works going into the public domain is going to help our society, rather, I believe it would hurt it. I think, for instance, the Disney company is a great caretaker of its creations and should remain so as long as the law allows. I'm not sure the copyright extensions can just be attributed to the so called "Evil MAFFIA" (the term for RIAA/MPAA used).

Disney is pretty much the epitome of what's wrong the with system. Want to watch "Song of the South" in a history class, or a film history class? Too bad! Disney won't distribute it. Want to include segments of the world's first talking cartoon at your technology museum? Too bad! Steamboat Willie was protected from entering the public domain thanks to heavy lobbying, not the least thanks to Sonny Bono.

And Disney? Imagine, if you will, that IP had been extended on such original works as Pinnochio, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast? Does Disney pay royalties to the descents of Hans Christian Anderson, or to Victor Hugo, or the the brothers Grimm? How does society benefit from things entering into the public domain, again? Hmmm.... But at least I can tell you how Disney benefits!

It's the worst hypocrisy imaginable for Disney to cry over their works moving into the public domain. They built their empire on creating origional works, based on material in the public domain.

I've seen a lot more, especially when the OGL is discussed. I've seen dozens of posts saying copyright should be limited to something like 15-20 years, it's outdated, etc., people getting mad when WoTC chooses to sue pirates, etc. Even if this thread one person talked about setting up "creative commons" for trademarks (something that is not possible), etc.

I don't really want to go into the whole IP thing since this was basically about Trademarks, and I'd like to stick to that.

None of that equates to doing away with IP law. All that relates to attempts, well-reasoned or not, to make IP law something good instead of something bad.

 

[pawsplay]

I think Trademark Law can be abused, but there is a lot less abuse here then you'd see from the other forms of IP.

It's the backdoor to extending copyrights indefinitely. Example: the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs using trademarks on "Tarzan" to prevent people from making movies of Tarzan, even though the book entered the public domain years and years ago.

 

[Nikosandros]

I can't give more XP to pawsplay, but thanks for making the point about all the public domain things that Disney has used to profit.

 

[JohnRTroy]

It's the backdoor to extending copyrights indefinitely. Example: the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs using trademarks on "Tarzan" to prevent people from making movies of Tarzan, even though the book entered the public domain years and years ago.

Not necessarily. First of all, the additional protect Trademarks give to copyrights is only a small part of the entire Trademark law.

Secondly, the Trademark only allows certain limits. You can't use the name in trade but you may be able to refer to the individual. DC has been able to give their Captain Marvel books, by replacing the name with their own version of Shazam, yet they still can use the name Captain Marvel to describe the character in-story. I know that while you can't use the Sherlock Holmes trademark to advertise a book or movie, you can include the character in works like Moore did for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, because prior stories are in the public domain, and it didn't prevent other authors from writing Sherlock Holmes stories, such as The Seven Percent Solution.

Considering how well Pathfinder and the Retroclones are going, I doubt you need to have control over the Trademark D&D to (a) communicate your product is based on an older rule set and (b) use things that are legal for you to use.

S'Mon might have better expertise as what can be blocked as to a fictional character when copyright expires.

 

[pemerton]

Not that I think those kinds of properties are the best examples to bring into this discussion, but just for the sake of argument... you can destroy a debt. Obviously, I cannot destroy a debt I owe to you, since you "hold" the debt, but you could destroy it (indeed, the US Treasury will dutifully acknowledge this as income on my part), and a bankrupcy court can destroy a debt.

Similarly, shares are easily destroyed. Any time a corporation gets liquidated, all its shares become rubbish.

I'm not sure I agree with all the above - not that I dispute the points of law, but the sense of destruction involved here is not natural but artificial (or, as you say, "statutory"). In that sense IP rights can be destroyed (eg subject to constitutional constraints on bills of attainder, an act could be passed declaring that there shall be no IP rights in respect of Mickey Mouse).

Foraging rights are the possession of an object (in this case, a physical territory). I can use foraging, I can destroy it (by, for instance, burning down a forest), and I can certainly exchange it. Foraging rights are ultimately permission to use my land, with my land being the thing I own (privately, or in common with others).

Burning down a forest wouldn't necessarily destroy foraging rights in respect of the land concerned, although it might reduce their value (depending on the nature of the rights and the cause of the fire, it might also vest the beneficiaries of the foraging rights with an entitlement to compensation from the owner of the forest).

Depending on the details of the social and legal system in question, foraging rights may be alienable, but then so are IP rights.

Now, I will happily argue that ownership of land, property and other things is "natural" only as it pertains to possession, use, and future possession and use. If your uncle dies and you inherit a banana farm 2000 miles away, I consider that statuatory. There are situations where I would assert your ownership may not trump other, more basic rights. For instance, I would not consider being an absentee landlord of a banana farm to give you unlimited rights; in the event of a famine, if locals eat your bananas, that is unfortunate, but whether it constitutes theft is a statuatory matter.

Imagine a scenario where a billionaire and 24 people are trapped on an island that the billionaire ostensibly owns. Can the billionaire demand they pay him $10,000 a day to have access to water and food supplies on his island? If the rest of the world dissolves in massive warfare, what claim does he have of ownership?

I don't really dispute any of the above, although I'm a bit more sceptical about even the limited sorts of natural property rights that you refer to above.

It's certainly not my intention to defend (nor to criticise) the system of IP law in the US or any other jurisdiction. But, because of my scepticism about natural property rights, I'm not sure that criticising IP on the grounds that it's not really property is a sound way to go.

My preferred starting point for thinking about IP law is to try to understand the social and economic causes that have led to a situation where, in order to enjoy a common and popular culture, we are dependent upon private commercial actors producing it; and then to try and understand the social and economic consequences of that dependence. Until these sociological and historical questions are worked through, I don't feel we have an adequate handle on what the critique (or defence) of IP law would mean.

 

[Krensky]

My preferred starting point for thinking about IP law is to try to understand the social and economic causes that have led to a situation where, in order to enjoy a common and popular culture, we are dependent upon private commercial actors producing it; and then to try and understand the social and economic consequences of that dependence. Until these sociological and historical questions are worked through, I don't feel we have an adequate handle on what the critique (or defence) of IP law would mean.

Most copyright law traces it's roots back to fear of the printing press by the church and governments in Europe, often combined with scribes and illumination trying to hold onto their old, obsolete business model.

It's evolved quite a bit since then though. In the US, it was originally an explicit deal. You get unlimited rights for 20 years (a good chunk of a professional lifetime in the eighteenth century), then it enters the public domain. Technically speaking, it's still a limited term, but who wants to bet we won't see another Mickey Mouse Protection act in the 2020s?

 

[pemerton]

Krensky, I guess I was thinking more of the underlying sociological issues.

For example, before the 19th century popular culture (to the extent that we can meaningfully talk about such a thing - "folk culture" might be a bit better though still problematic) was generated in collective contexts by ordinary people acting out of non-commercial motives. Copyright was therefore a non-issue for most people - even if, for the sake of argument, Mozart enjoyed IP rights in respect of his compositions, for most people the legal restriction this would have placed upon their reproduction of his works would be irrelevant. They had their own musical culture ("folk songs") which they acquired and/or created through non-commercial means and which they enjoyed without any mediation by legal or commercial considerations.

Over the course of the 19th century this largely ceased to be true, at least in industrialised countries. People in such countries are dependent today, for most of their culture, on acquiring cultural "product" from commercial enterprises who have a commercial interest in producing that product, and depend for commercial success upon controlling non-commercial access to it. This is a dramatic social transformation. And I tend to feel that this is what is central to understanding and debating IP.

 

[Krensky]

That's what threw me.

You need to go a long long way back in history to find a point when entertainment wasn't commercialized. Probably so far back you're in the murky pre-history business. What has changed though is the size of the companies involved, and the technology for reproducing it. Mostly the companies, but then again record companies where screwing artists over from day one the same way the Stationer's Guild screwed authors in Britain over. The current trend of monetizing and seizing every single possible dime (and calling any you may hypothetically think you might have missed somewhere a loss) is a modern contrivance.