Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Compendium PDF

[Horwath]

I always love these copyright discussions. It's stunning to see how little value people place on other people's ideas.

Not that copyright is perfect. I personally feel it's too long, to be honest. Life of the owner+10 would probably be a decent length, IMO. But, it's also a pretty complicated issue.

Life +1 years?

that is also too much.

10,15 or max 20 years would be plenty. Depending on category.

If you can't write a book every 10 years, do not bother to be a writer.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Life +1 years?

that is also too much.

10,15 or max 20 years would be plenty. Depending on category.

If you can't write a book every 10 years, do not bother to be a writer.

You're replying to a comment he made 2 years ago, so you know.

But either way, what a really bad idea, your comment. If someone creates something that has value, they should continue to get the rewards for as long as they have value. You're arguing that when Prince wrote 1999 back in 1982, he should not get any benefits when everyone and their grandma wanted to play it on Dec 31, 1999 because he should just write more stuff? Or that since I built my house in 2003, I should just give it away because I can build another one? Even outside of that, you are demonstrating you have no idea how the creative process works. A person can be a writer or artist, and be lucky to have one breakthrough creation but never again. Happens all of the time. They rely on that breakthrough creation to provide their living while struggling through everything else. Or maybe the can't write again. As long as it has value, the creator should be the one to get the reward.

"Sorry Mr. Upton Sinclair, but the last 40 years of your life, we get full rights to use The Jungle however we want without having to pay you a dime, even though your book is still hugely popular. We just waited for the 20 year period to end and now it's all ours!" (maniacal laugh)

 

[Gradine]

Copyright is a difficult thing. On the one hand, it unarguably stifles creativity and is bad for any number of other reasons, up to and including historical preservation. On the other hand, Shakespeare got to get paid, son. For as long as our culture insists that basic needs ought to be distributed based on one's market value, artists deserve to get paid for the works they produce. Anything after the life of the artist is BS, on the other hand.

Copyright law in the U.S. in particular suffers under guilt by association, as all of the more recent (that is, in the past 70 years) extensions of copyright protection were championed primarily by the Disney corporation, a nakedly crass and hypocritical position for a massive empire built almost entirely on the public domain works of others.

 

[Horwath]

You're replying to a comment he made 2 years ago, so you know.

But either way, what a really bad idea, your comment. If someone creates something that has value, they should continue to get the rewards for as long as they have value. You're arguing that when Prince wrote 1999 back in 1982, he should not get any benefits when everyone and their grandma wanted to play it on Dec 31, 1999 because he should just write more stuff? Or that since I built my house in 2003, I should just give it away because I can build another one? Even outside of that, you are demonstrating you have no idea how the creative process works. A person can be a writer or artist, and be lucky to have one breakthrough creation but never again. Happens all of the time. They rely on that breakthrough creation to provide their living while struggling through everything else. Or maybe the can't write again. As long as it has value, the creator should be the one to get the reward.

"Sorry Mr. Upton Sinclair, but the last 40 years of your life, we get full rights to use The Jungle however we want without having to pay you a dime, even though your book is still hugely popular. We just waited for the 20 year period to end and now it's all ours!" (maniacal laugh)

As many people said, long copyrights stifles creativity and possible improvement on the subject just because you cannot tamper with if the creator wont allow it.

Also, with the house, when you build it, you have to constantly pour money into it for maintenance or that house will lose value very fast.

Now, I understand that there are resources put in into creative work, especially R&D. There are huge costs to it, so the lab/company should get fair compensation for it and that comes from copyrights that you are the only one that can sell the product based on that research.
Some will argue on the duration of the rights and some will argue that there should be no rights and if it is your idea you should know best how to make it and make the most profit.

But, what I find most ridiculous is that patents last for 20 years, some with huge costs to make them, and copyright last for 100+ years with costs mostly in basic needs(food/clothes/house...and probably some illegal substances). Not much of an overhead.

Perhaps we should all be more like Nikola Tesla:
„I don't regret that others stole my ideas. I am sorry they don't have their own"

 

[Garthanos]

But, what I find most ridiculous is that patents last for 20 years

Software patents are evil... actually they are nonsense. (gaming patents have similar traits)

 

[Garthanos]

Copyright is a difficult thing. On the one hand, it unarguably stifles creativity

There are too many ways to express the same thing but it takes work to do so... copyright doesn't stifle creativity you are not creative if you are bumping into copyright you have chosen not to be.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Some people keep saying that Copyright stifles creativity. I'm failing to see that as, unless I live in an alternate universe, there's a lot of creativity out there even with copyright. Possibly even more so as people are forced to make up their own stuff for the most part.

What I do seem to be hearing is: "I don't wanna make up my own stuff. That's HARD. I wanna take YOUR stuff and bend it around a little and make a profit on it." Basically, YOU do the heavily lifting and I'LL profit from it.

Now, granted, I've only managed to get a few short stories published, but that was a lot of work and a lot of time. Not just the writing of the stories. But the editing, dealing with rejections, resubmitting, etc. really takes a toll on the soul. What I create, I want to control for as long as possible.

I mean, we're talking about thing like the UA or Lord of the Rings, it's not the same as the cure to cancer. We're talking (mostly) about works of fiction that, consumed or not, have little to no impact on the life expectancy of others.

 

[Parmandur]

Some people keep saying that Copyright stifles creativity. I'm failing to see that as, unless I live in an alternate universe, there's a lot of creativity out there even with copyright. Possibly even more so as people are forced to make up their own stuff for the most part.

What I do seem to be hearing is: "I don't wanna make up my own stuff. That's HARD. I wanna take YOUR stuff and bend it around a little and make a profit on it." Basically, YOU do the heavily lifting and I'LL profit from it.

Now, granted, I've only managed to get a few short stories published, but that was a lot of work and a lot of time. Not just the writing of the stories. But the editing, dealing with rejections, resubmitting, etc. really takes a toll on the soul. What I create, I want to control for as long as possible.

I mean, we're not talking about thing like the UA or Lord of the Rings, it's not the same as the cure to cancer. We're talking (mostly) about works of fiction that, consumed or not, have little to no impact on the life expectancy of others.

There is nothing wrong with copyright as such: but it has ballooned out of proportion, way past any reasonable timeframe for releasing IP into the Public Domain. It's historically ludicrous.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

There is nothing wrong with copyright as such: but it has ballooned out of proportion, way past any reasonable timeframe for releasing IP into the Public Domain. It's historically ludicrous.

I guess the idea that someone's work of fiction is somehow required to be released into the Public Domain is what I have problems with. The idea that 2nd or 3rd party can go "you've owned your ideas long enough, buddy. Now they belong to all of us. No, no. I know they're your property that you created, but you've had them long enough. And don't even think about letting it be used to make the lives of your descendants better, spitter!" is ludicrous to me.

Maybe I'm just not seeing where there should be a requirement for that to be so. If the copyright holder wishes it to be so, then groovy. Otherwise, piss off and make up new stuff.

Do we do that with any other property someone has created and left for their families? (Honestly asking.)

 

[Parmandur]

I guess the idea that someone's work of fiction is somehow required to be released into the Public Domain is what I have problems with. The idea that 2nd or 3rd party can go "you've owned your ideas long enough, buddy. Now they belong to all of us. No, no. I know they're your property that you created, but you've had them long enough. And don't even think about letting it be used to make the lives of your descendants better, spitter!" is ludicrous to me.

Maybe I'm just not seeing where there should be a requirement for that to be so. If the copyright holder wishes it to be so, then groovy. Otherwise, piss off and make up new stuff.

Do we do that with any other property someone has created and left for their families? (Honestly asking.)

Yes, as mentioned above, patents have a lifetime of 20 years. Copyright used to be in line with that. So, if you invent the cure for cancer or a better mouse trap, you have the exclusive rights to the techniques for 20 years. But if you draw a cartoon or write a poem, it remains out of the public domain for 100 years after your death. That's absurd, and ha sonly been the case for a very, very short time. It doesn't benefit artists, it benefits corporate interests.