Quote:
Copyright is automatic and always has been
No, it hasn't "always" been that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law
"The U.S. Congress first exercised its power to enact copyright legislation with the Copyright Act of 1790. The Act secured an author the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right of renewal for one additional 14 year term if the author was still alive. The act did not regulate other kinds of writings, such as musical compositions or newspapers and specifically noted that it did not prohibit copying the works of foreign authors. The vast majority of writings were never registered — between 1790 and 1799, of 13,000 titles published in the United States, only 556 were registered."
People being too fracking lazy to follow the law, eventually pressured the government to change copyright law. In ***1992*** they abolished the renewal requirement, making copyright perpetual and derailing the system that would have otherwise allowed works to enter the public domain. You don't know what you are talking about if you think this is how its "always" been. There was no need for them to abolish renewal requirements, just so that Disney wouldn't lose Mickey Mouse. They could have adjusted it, so that it included something like X years since the "last work" by the same company that was a direct dirivative of the prior work, or something sane. Instead they threw up their hands, went, "Who cares about some crap from 50 years ago that people don't watch, lets protect the mouse forever."
Sure, there is some "supposed" standard saying that some point in time exists when it "might" go public, but the truth is, without renewal requirements there is both a) no certainty of that for the owners and b) no guarrentee that they won't decide to extend it to 100, or 200, or 500 years some place down the line and tell everyone "screw you!".
As for old works. You're not thinking when you say that. The movies produced in the 1920 are the block busters of "today". Its certainly harder for "every" copy of a modern movie to be lost, but not impossible, especially if its under defacto perpetual copyright and 100 years from now the only copy is sitting on the shelf of Megacentury Pictures, who bought up who ever currently owns it and dumped everything they didn't really want in the basement. Hell, just in the case of books, which where written in my life time, there is no certainty that about 5% of the ones I own will "ever" be republished, "are" in the library of congress or any place else that would prolong them and will almost certainly in many cases cease to exist once the author is dead and the copies in private collections are eventually lost to time. Are those "irrelevant" too?
I can understand that you don't care about things you haven't seen and probably don't want to, but its short sighted and stupid. You might as well, with that attitude, be advocating something like the burning of the library in Alexandria in ancient times. But not to destroy the works, so much as because you don't care if they are lost or if anyone has a copy of them. We have produced more books and other things in the last two centuries than in the prior 2,000 years. Probably only 10% of those 2,000 years worth of works still exist. Think of all the movies you have ever seen, then pick 1 out of every ten *you* think should be saved, reminding you that history isn't going to care about which ones "you" want saved and half of those you pick might instead vanish, with the *worst* ones you ever saw in their place.
That is the world as it *was*. In 1790 they tried to both "protect" the interest of the artist *and* make sure they survived by "forcing" them into the public domain. Now.. The "ownership" outlives the artist and the media its on, depending on when it was produced **might** live anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of a human life span. That "still" means that maybe 50% of everything we have ever seen in our lives "might not" exist by the time we are in our 90s. The fact that its only half, not 90%, or 99% is better how, especially if copyright keeps being dragged out and public domain keeps becoming more and more of a total joke?
Oh, and to be clear.. You "could" makes something "based" from the prior work, more or less, but that won't stop some ass digging through the basement finding the script for something from 1925 and deciding to sue you for failing to pay some sort of royalties on the original. Its a complete mess and the only difference between people like David Brin, who shrug their shoulders and go, "Well, guess they copied another of my ideas.", when refering to the movie "The Core" (very similar to his book "Earth") and Hollywood is that big picture companies are not going to shrug their shoulders, they are going to go after you with attack dogs. Kind of makes derived works, even accidental ones, scary prospects... |
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