New Bill to Limit Copyright to 56 Years, Would be Retroactive

[Dannyalcatraz]

the Colonel's blend of elven herbs and spices aren't protected.

BEST. USE. OF. ELVES…..


EVER!!!!!!

“Do you want original, spicy, extra crispy, spicy extra crispy, cram, spicy cram or lembas?”

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I regret not using numerals.

I REGRET NOTHING, EXCEPT NOT ORDERING MY BUCKET OF SPICY ELF X-TRA CRISPY!

 

[Rabulias]

BEST. USE. OF. ELVES…..


EVER!!!!!!

The Chef's Complete Book of Typo Recipes also refers to "rendered bard" in many Southern recipes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Chef's Complete Book of Typo Recipes also refers to "rendered bard" in many Southern recipes.

I bet those recipes taste funny.

 

[Lanefan]

As a copyright attorney myself, I’m really not in favor of rolling back durations on it.

Why not? The durations as they stand now are far too long. Life-plus-twenty seems more than enough if the author is known; 50 years flat if the author is unknown and-or the IP is owned by a corporation.

Further, an author or creator ought to be able to sign (one or more of) their creation(s) over to the public domain at any time - including having such in their will - should they so desire, something which from what I gather is currently impossible at least in the USA and Canada.

This is mere political grandstanding that probably wouldn’t survive judicial review even if it did pass. Which it won’t, because it would put the US at odds with the aforementioned Berne treaty and other international law.

Sad, but probably true.

 

[Lanefan]

The fact that Disney can defend its rights better than others with less money- even to the point of abuse- is not the best argument to strip those same rights from others.

That the wealthy can defend their rights better than the less powerful is a truism in every field of law, in every aspect of life. Reducing their rights by necessity reduces the rights of the less fortunate in the same position. And whatever remains of their rights after restructuring? They will still be able to defend themselves better. If you cut copyright durations to 25 years, Disney would still be able to throw an army of lawyers at a possible infringement.

Which merely points to a fundamental problem with the so-called legal system in most countries: access to it is not equitable.

It would take a major upending of the system to fix this, an upending which you as a lawyer unfortunately might not like very much.

For a start, lawyers would not be hired by those involved in a suit or case but would be randomly assigned by the bench based on that lawyer's specific skill sets. Each side in a suit or case would be strictly limited to having the same number of lawyers as the other. All these lawyers would be paid by the state* on a wage basis, and the whole thing would be state*-run.

So, were I to sue you for something the state* would assign each of us whichever lawyer was next up on the local list, and that's who we'd have to work with; ditto if I were to sue Disney or Amazon were to sue me.

All in all, not too dissimilar from how nationalized health care works in the UK or Canada.

* - by 'state' here I don't mean the USA version of state, I mean the judicial branch of the national government of the country this takes place in.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why not? The durations as they stand now are far too long. Life-plus-twenty seems more than enough if the author is known; 50 years flat if the author is unknown and-or the IP is owned by a corporation.

Personally, I disagree with your opinion.

Excluding own creations from the discussion, most of my copyright clients have been solidly middle class or lower. Several were below the poverty line. And those creations didn’t spring from a vacuum- they almost all had some kind of financial support in their endeavors from family.

If it so happened that one of the songs or poems found a new audience and gained commercial value 30, 40 years down the road, IMHO, their survivors deserve to see some return on that loyalty, even if the artist has passed on.

How often does it happen?

Old songs find new life all the time. Old poems and stories get set to music. Or film. Or TV.

Stranger Things has Kate Bush’s 80’s hit “Running Up That Hill” hitting #1 on iTunes. “Dancing with myself” has inspired a game show. I hear old music in commercials all the damn time, like Billy Cobham “Stratus”, ”Fractal Zoom by Brian Eno, Biggie Smalls’ “Hypnotize”, Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight”, etc. (I know several of those were major hits; not all.)

The Verve famously ripped off a lesser tune by The Rolling Stones to make “Bittersweet Symphony”- incorporating segments without crediting them to avoid payi mechanical royalties. (They also ripped off Aphrodite’s Child- Vangelis’ family’s band on another song on that same album, but it was never released as a single,) If they had paid the fee, they might have had a longer career.

Just a reminder, too: copyrights exist in the recording AND the composition. Just because you’ve never heard the song before doesn’t mean it won’t be recorded in the future.

Further, an author or creator ought to be able to sign (one or more of) their creation(s) over to the public domain at any time - including having such in their will - should they so desire, something which from what I gather is currently impossible at least in the USA and Canada.

Actually, abandoning copyright is recognized in American law. There just isn’t a clear codification of how to do it. Abandonment notices are recorded by the Copyright Office, but there’s no response given that it is effective.

The law of abandonment, such as it is, is hidden in court decisions, not legal codes. The methodology the courts provide: the copyright owner must intend to abandon the copyright, and must perform an overt act to manifest that intent, That’s it.

https://www.lawcatalog.com/media/productattach/l/j/ljp_694publicdomain.pdf

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For a start, lawyers would not be hired by those involved in a suit or case but would be randomly assigned by the bench based on that lawyer's specific skill sets.

This is a horrible idea. There’s a reason why some lawyers in a given field can justify higher fees. It’s not a 1:1 relationship, but in many ways, you get what you pay for.

Do you really want to trust your copyright case- potentially your livelihood- on a ping pong ball in a hopper? Tangentially: would you rather hire a criminal defense attorney or use the public defender’s office.

Attorneys aren’t interchangeable. There are different levels of competence. There are different levels of resources.

Throwing myself under the bus, I had a band come to me looking for help on a piracy case (mid-1990s). They had a record label deal with a small company, and their first single was doing OK. It was also being pirated 3x more than it was being legitimately sold, mostly on Russian websites. The best I could do was ask the CC companies to stop processing that site’s charges- basically, slow, ineffective whack-a-mole. Anything truly effective would have required someone with more resources and connections than I had then.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Counterpoint against further limiting copyright:

Winnie the Pooh Enters the Public Domain, Immediately Becomes a Serial Killer

Horror film Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey feels like a concept the studio's been sitting on since 2010.

gizmodo.com

In all seriousness though, I think that since companies with great big franchises have the most to lose here, I don't think the bill has a chance. Nor do I believe for a second that the bill isn't motivated by punitive intent.

Not that it isn't a nuanced issue. For every instance where a corporation has profited off of the actual creator's characters while barely acknowledging their contributions, there's one where I can think of countless worst-case scenarios without an estate to safeguard certain intellectual properties. It's like, how horrible would a sequel to Lord of the Rings written by someone else be?

Best Mythos story I ever read was by Neil Gaiman. Hell, it used the Mythos and Sherlock Holmes. It’s a hell of a story.

The fact is, if copyright was very limited or only protected your right to be credited for your work, etc, exclusivity just wouldn’t be how creators make a living. They’d still make content and make a living.

But we needn’t go so far. We could simply make copyright nontransferable except to living relatives and documented heirs/via will.

And tbh, I don’t even really believe that society needs to allow relatives to hold exclusive rights to works created by their dad or whatever.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OTOH, the original 2 detectives in Law & Order: Criminal Intent are based on Holmes & Watson (with a generally more competent Watson analog). He had his own Moriarty-esque opponent who was in 4-5 episodes. When DiNofrio stepped away for a while, Goldblum’s character provided a similarly hyper-competent detective with different flaws.

They told stories “mostly“ original to the show. Great show, and would have been completely legal even if the original wasn’t in the public domain.

And as I noted above, Superman is still in copyright, and there are literally dozens of versions of him in DC comics and in the universes of their competitors.

But it is wholly absurd that a corporation with no relation to the creator of, say, Wonder Woman, can legally hold onto that copyright, and frankly it’s beyond ridiculous that Superman, a century old character, can still be copyright protected!

How does that serve the public good?

And there is a difference between works like Law and Order CI, and works like Elementary. Both have a great deal of value.