Posts by Matthew Poole
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Islander, just got home, haven't read your post, will reply in the morning.
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The issue for copyright now is similar to the major problem with DRM.
DRM potentially destroys all the benefit for society. If an uncrackable DRM scheme is somehow created (and believe me, I doubt (and sincerely pray) it could ever happen), everything protected by that scheme will never pass into the public domain because it will be unable to be extracted when the copyright finally expires. In that situation I would be lobbying for the abolition of copyright for all works protected by such a scheme, because it'd be a unilateral revocation of the social contract under which copyright is granted in the first place.
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I can't see anyone arguing for copyrights being extended based on the demand of one person or company. That's a silly system, but you get that in the USA. If it's copyright for life plus 50, or plus 70 or whatever, that should be the system, if it changes it should be for good reason rather than Mickey Mouse being another 25 years older.
Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's corrupt as all hell. But it's reality. NZ has life-plus-50 because of the first time it was extended to protect Mickey. We haven't moved to life-plus-70, but you can be certain that any FTA with the US will require not only life-plus-70, but also that we stay at life-plus-whatever as the terms keep getting extended. Twice Mickey's nearly entered the public domain, twice the term of copyright has been extended to ensure it doesn't happen. I'd almost put money on a hat-trick.
I think lifetime plus 75 years is too long. But lifetime would be too short for me. Many authors publish shortly before their death, or even after it (again, Tolkien, edited by his son). If it was just lifetime someone would just reproduce it straight away. Which sounds fine in theory, but the publisher would never publish it as they couldn't protect it, and we wouldn't necessarily see books like the Simarillion and the Children of Hurin.
I don't like lifetime at all. For one because it encourages people to knock off artists in order to get their works into the public domain. For another, because it discourages, as you observed, deathbed works from being published by their estates. But why does the author's lifetime have to factor into it at all? Why can't it just be a fixed term, say 33 years? Why 33? Because it's roughly half the current average lifespan. Remember, copyright is meant to confer a benefit on society, too, not just provide for the remuneration of creators over time. Once you start using life-plus terms, you're pretty much ignoring entirely the fact that society is meant to benefit too.
Consider the Beatles: when they formed, the average lifespan in Europe was roughly 10 years less than it is now. By the time McCartney dies, the average could be another five years higher. That's 15 extra years that their work is unavailable for the public at large to utilise in creating new works, and that's if terms don't get extended any further. Once you start down the life-plus path, you're ensuring that every generation has to wait even longer than the last before they get access to their grandparents' pop culture. -
Yup. That's about the measure of it. Hugely successful businessmen make their descendants hugely rich; hugely successful whatevers tend to be able to make their children rich.
Why shouldn't creators?
To be of value, a business must be successful. If it's inherited, in order to provide income to the inheritors it must continue to be successful. Successful businesses contribute to society, through tax paid, through employment provided, through goods and services provided to other businesses that allow those businesses to pay tax, and employ people, and so on. A business doesn't exist in and of itself, and it doesn't rely on the state saying "Pay up, or else" in order to exist. Inherited financial instruments rely on the continued success of the issuing body to remain of value. If I will you a million shares, but the company goes bust, those shares aren't much use to you, are they? Land, the ultimate asset, has value because it is scarce. If I own the land. you can't own it. If I will it to someone, you can't own it, because they'll own it, etc.
Contrast this with copyrights, which are of value to society as a whole only when the subject matter passes into the public domain. Until then, they're a private benefit to the creator and their family, and then to the creator's beneficiaries. Copyright doesn't exist solely to benefit the creator, it exists to benefit the creator and to benefit society. You're so fixated on the benefit to the creator that you cannot see that society must also benefit. If there's no benefit to society, why offer the coercive power of the state as an incentive to create?
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but in terms of the creation of IP, we've never had it so good
In terms of reusing existing IP, we've never had it so bad. And when Mickey's next coming due for release into the public domain, it'll probably get worse. How can you possibly say that it's not a broken system when every time a century-old cartoon character is about to become available for everyone to use, he's retroactively granted a couple more decades of protection?
His Estate wouldn't have got any money from the vastly popular films, even though he provided the important creative basis.
So bloody what? Why is the estate entitled to a damn cent just because it's the estate of someone who created something? That's your argument: "Because Tolkien was popular, his descendants are entitled to a whopping income for decades to come." If he'd died the day after writing The Hobbit, his estate would've been entitled to the income for the next 20 years. If he'd died 19 years after, with a fixed term of 20 years, they'd be entitled to the residual of whatever royalties he was paid during that 19 years, plus the remaining year.
The kids haven't done any of the work. What entitles them to decades of income from it? And don't try rebutting this question with the testamentary disposition of real property or financial instruments. They're not the same thing.
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The best analogy I've seen is it's like jumping the fence to a swimming pool.
That's actually pretty good. I like "If I steal your CD, you don't have it anymore and can't listen to it. But if I copy your CD, you have a copy and I have a copy, and we can both listen to it."
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Keir, how about you show us that it's not possible for creators (sorry Don, I think "painter" when I say "artist") to earn a good return in 20 years? It used to be that they got 28 years, at most, to extract maximum monetary value from their work. Dickens clearly didn't suffer much from those conditions. Nor did Twain.
Look at Rowling, who's gone from beneficiary to 12th-richest-woman-in-Britain in the space of a decade. Obviously she's a bit of an extreme case, but it demonstrates that it's not necessary to have an obscenely long term for a creator to make money from their works. In fact, I'd argue that having a stupidly long term is just a state-supported gamble on the future viability of the creator's work. -
Well, of course, we should start here, so people can see some of what we've been tossing around for the last couple of days.
Copyright is a state-sanctioned monopoly. Cutting through all the emotional stuff about moral rights and material rights, that's what it comes down to. The state grants you sole right to control what's done with the fruits of your labour. Sounds fair to everyone?
The contrast between the copyright and what I call natural rights is that natural rights exist without operation of law. Nobody debates that I have the right to live, to move around, to express my religious or political beliefs as I see fit. The state doesn't grant me those rights, it simply affirms their existence. The Elections Act doesn't give me the right to vote, it just confirms that as a resident aged over 18 it's my right. There's no legislation that grants me the right to free movement, or freedom of religion, just legislation affirming that those rights shouldn't be impinged upon by the state.
Copyright, however, requires the law in order to exist. Without the law, copyright is a nothing. There's nothing in nature to stop me from copying your work, there's only the law. So if it requires the existence and operation of the law in order to afford this right, what does society get in return for guaranteeing that right? Copyright puts the might of the judicial system (and the executive, in the event of criminal infringement) behind the enforcement of this right. That's no small thing, and it's something that shouldn't be granted without society getting something back.
The closest parallel to copyright is the law of patents, which provides similar monopolies over the fruits of one's labours. The quid pro quo is that, in return for throwing the weight of the judicial system into the protection of your right, you must publish the full specifications for your invention, such that others can copy it. There's an implied expectation that you will licence to others the right to produce your invention, if you lack the capital or other means to do so yourself. And once the term expires (with active renewal required to keep the patent for the full length of the term), your invention is available to all and sundry for their own purposes. So society gives you a monopoly, but in return once the monopoly expires you lose control.Copyright has a similar return to society, in that the work becomes available to all for their own use once the copyright term expires. But from the original 14+14 term given by the Statute of Anne in 1709 (or 1710 by the modern calendar), we're up to life-of-the-author-plus-50-years. This puts today's copyright works out of reach of those who enjoy them today, potentially even out of the reach of the creator's children until they're well into middle-age. Is that a fair return?
To me, it's not. Copyright is necessary, no question, and I'm not arguing that it should be abolished as an institution. It's even provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But that same Declaration says that people have duties to their state in return for the protection of their rights. I don't consider a lifetime-plus monopoly to be fair exchange. Based on the discussion in the thread above, I seem to be something of a lone voice on that. 70, 80, 90 years, or more, that's fair, seems to be the argument. But what is the artist contributing to the society in which they live? They're contributing their work to the cultural base of a future society, but to the society in which they live right now they offer little beyond the potentially non-existent tax on the potentially non-existent royalty payments. Doesn't sound like a good trade to me.
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Re State Insurance: I'd never touch them. Had a friend who had to take them to Disputes after they refused to pay out on a claim, arguing that it was his fault for running into the back of the other car despite my friend presenting a police letter saying that they only reason the other driver wasn't going to be prosecuted for careless driving was that both cars were speeding. Note that State is the only insurance company that feels the need to advertise about their pay-out rate (though they don't say that they reject a huge number of claims, which don't count).
Like Mark, my experience with AA has always been positive. They've never been to quite the same lengths for me as he got, but I've also never been in a position of needing them. I know I could get my insurance more cheaply, but at what hit to the customer service?I also rate the Auckland City Council call centre. I've rarely had to wait beyond the second ring, and they're always helpful. In August there were problems with the pedestrian signals on the Market Rd/GSR intersection, which is a serious issue for an intersection serving three nearby schools as well as a facility for the disabled. Both times I called it in they raised it as a priority incident, even when it was nearly 6 in the evening, and after I observed on the second call that it was the second call in a fortnight they passed it on to the contractors and it hasn't been a problem since.
Oh, and ups to the IRD. When one can get through to them (which isn't really the fault of the C/S staff), they always sound like they want to help you. Be nice if someone could crack ACC's collective head as has been done to IRD.
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Much as I admire the actions of Austin Hemmings I doubt very much that he expected a knife attack, that sort of thing is not that common in church circles. So being stabbed would have, probably, been the last thing on his mind.
I can see it now. A rash of stabbings at the altar rail, as congregants kneel to receive the sacrament. Rogue altar boys suspected, with abuse at the hands of clerics being blamed.
OK, I'll stop with the black humour now. You're right, as I said previously the kind of man it sounds like Austin Hemmings was wouldn't have considered that he might be in mortal danger. Danger of getting a thump, sure, but stabbed in broad daylight in the middle of Auckland? Not a chance. I doubt that many of us at all would've considered that possibility.