The enforcement of copyright law is really simple.
If you were a kid who used Napster in the early 2000s to download the latest album by The Offspring or Destiny’s Child, because you couldn’t afford the CD, then you need to go to court! And potentially face criminal sanctions or punitive damages to the RIAA for each song you download, because you’re an evil pirate! You wouldn’t steal a car! Creators must be paid!
If you created educational videos on YouTube in the 2010s, and featured a video or audio clip, then even if it’s fair use, and even if it’s used to make a legitimate point, you’re getting demonetised. That’s assuming your videos don’t disappear or get shadow banned or your account isn’t shut entirely. Oh, and good luck finding your way through YouTube’s convoluted DMCA process! All creators are equal in deserving pay, but some are more equal than others!
And if you’re a corporation with a market capitalisation of US$1.5 trillion (Google/Alphabet) or US$2.3 billion (Microsoft), then you can freely use everyone’s intellectual property to train your generative AI bots. Suddenly creators don’t deserve to be paid a cent.
Apparently, an individual downloading a single file is like stealing a car. But a trillion-dollar corporation stealing every car is just good business.
@music@fedibb.ml @technology #technology #tech #economics #copyright #ArtificialIntelligence #capitalism #IntellectualProperty @music@lemmy.ml #law #legal #economics
@kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon My late congresscritter, Howard Coble, was responsible for that. A product of north-central North Carolina, he was nicknamed “The Congressman from Disney” in the district (and in Washington) because of all the water he carried for that corporation on IP matters.
@panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Funfact: With very few exceptions like #StarWars, most of the big #Disney #IP is based off #PublicDomain content…
Which makes it even worse as they basically now squat that and prevent everyone from making good new works unless the few cases were their IP has also lapsed…
Which is hillarously good when it happens and someone times their release just right…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3E74j_xFtg
@kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Oh, I know. I did some reading on Coble and Disney in the late 1990s, and I was stunned to learn about how much stuff they were squatting on. But money talks loudly enough to drown out all other voices.
@panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon which is why I want #IP like #Copyright to be limited just like #Patents are:
A fixed period of 10-25 years and that’s it!
Anything else is a gross violation of social contract given the fact that noone can make content past their death, so 70 years postmortal IP protection can only serve corporations and license administrations and noone else.
i would add two additional stipulations to that: copyright restriction should not be automatic, and should be renewed every year. one would have to pay a fee for copyright restriction (without the fee, restrictions would default to a much more permissive CC BY-SA–like system) and the fee must be paid every year the restrictions are renewed
that way, eventually the cost of keeping the material restricted will outweigh the profits, and the license holders will stop paying. it automatically enters the more permissive set of restrictions, and it gains a new life among sharers and remixers
@kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Oh, I quite agree. Coble’s hometown paper editorialized against the copyright changes Disney bought through him at the time, but nobody else listened. Coble certainly didn’t.
@kkarhan @panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon 25 years is a long ass time to turn ideas into cognitohazards you can’t watch nor use in culture.
Any time at all is quite long for deciding you can choose what others may think and say.
#AbolishCopyright
@lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon i think it depends on type of content. Song, book, film? Whatever.
Software, though? IT moves so fast, and copyright can cripple interoperability so much, that perhaps for software, it should be much shorter.
@chucker @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon The other factor with software copyrights is the issue of legacy software.
There’s a lot of software out there in the world that’s still in use, still under copyright, but no longer sold or supported by a vendor. In some cases, it might not even be clear who actually owns the copyright.
Sometimes it’s for specialist equipment that’s built using obsolete software. (Hello, OS/2 ATM machines.)
Sometimes it’s for large enterprises that still use legacy VAX machines, token ring ethernet equipment, CP/M applications and Windows XP desktops.
Sometimes it’s run by retro computing hobbyists who really loved the Atari ST or Speccy.
There’s a good argument to be made that all abandonware should be released to the public domain. It would certainly make life a lot easier for many people.
@ajsadauskas @chucker @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon The Software Preservation Network is working on this in the US, carving out exemptions for software preservation under the DMCA. https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/core-activities/law-policy/
@ajsadauskas @chucker @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Share alike is better in many respects than PD. This is purely to make life easier, not for another round of making profits by adding some little modifications here and there.
@forthy @ajsadauskas @lispi314 @kkarhan @panamared27401 @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon maybe, but like any license, share alike only works if you continue a work’s copyright in perpetuity
@chucker @kkarhan @panamared27401 @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon I think that being unable to use nor remix music for years is far too long.
It doesn’t remain broadly relevant for all that long in popular culture anyway. Before the internet that cycle was at the very most decade-long, now it has shrunk dramatically as information travels faster and more broadly.
Copyright also inherently assumes you have a right to control the minds of others, which I deem unconscionable.
@lispi314 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon I think a lot of musicians (cf. R.E.M.) with sizable back catalogs to which they own the rights would disagree with you, and honestly, I don’t know what the right answer is.
That said, if you would, please explain why you mean by “copyright also inherently assumes you have a right to control the minds of others.” I’m not following.
@panamared27401 @chucker @kkarhan @ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml @senficon Copyright inherently means you cannot replicate an idea you might have come across before in any way without licensing it (which is profoundly exclusionary due to the economic dynamics involved).
Given that human culture generally involves the sharing of stories and ideas, it turns all culture covered by copyright into cognitohazards that poison any attached material.