Let's not play the CLASSICS

[robkelk]

The official Senate page, s.2393: CLASSICS Act, doesn't have very much information at this point.

The Register's story has much more information: US Congress mulls extending copyright yet again – to 144 years.

Folks, please make this an election issue. Let your Congresscritters know what you think of extending copyright yet again to benefit a very few big businesses and nobody else.

[Dartz]

But, the whole point of copyright is to incentivise the creation of new works by giving an exclusive right to them for a defined period...

....if there's no end to that defined period then surely there's no incentive to do anything new.

As modern pop music seems to suggest. Fuckin Ed Sheeran....

[hazard]

But, the whole point of copyright is to incentivise the creation of new works by giving an exclusive right to them for a defined period...

....if there's no end to that defined period then surely there's no incentive to do anything new.

As modern pop music seems to suggest. Fuckin Ed Sheeran....

No, the entire point of copyright is to make the copyright holders rich into perpetuity. Or what else do you think all those big media corporations are doing?

Disney is actually one of the worst offenders too.


(This leaves aside that the actual point of copyright was to protect artists of any stripe the exclusive right to produce any copies of their own work and to smack down anyone attempting to profiteer of them. Like if a big, far reaching publishing company gets a copy of your manuscript for a new children's book and publishes it without even filing the serial numbers off of it, while paying you nothing. Copyright lets the author walk to a court and say 'that stuff's mine and I say they've no permission to make those copies', and unless the company can hand over a contract that says otherwise and how the author is compensated that company is in big trouble.)

[Rajvik]

its not just the artists but the creators of anything. Granted someone who comes up with some new widget that everyone wants is going to get bought out by a big company, but they are seriously going to pay for it one way or another. Do i think copyright should be extended, not really, but in all honesty its not that big a deal with me, even when it comes to music or art. The artist in question can sue if they haven't gotten their cut.

[Labster]

I thought the purpose of copyright was to ensure that the last great mythologies of mankind are the Wizard of Oz and the Chthulhu Mythos. And, of course to fight global warming by increasing piracy.

[robkelk]

... Do i think copyright should be extended, not really, but in all honesty its not that big a deal with me, even when it comes to music or art. ...

So you're okay with this thread (that you started) being illegal? http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/s...p?tid=8419

[Norgarth]

... Do i think copyright should be extended, not really, but in all honesty its not that big a deal with me, even when it comes to music or art. ...

So you're okay with this thread (that you started) being illegal? http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/s...p?tid=8419

  Why would this new thing for copyright make that story any more (or less) illegal than it already is? 

It's a crossover fanfic, Rajvik does not own either source, so if he was making any money off it, he'd already be in violation of copyright law.    Extending the length of time the current holders keep control of the material wouldn't make it any worse.

[LynnInDenver]

  Why would this new thing for copyright make that story any more (or less) illegal than it already is? 

It's a crossover fanfic, Rajvik does not own either source, so if he was making any money off it, he'd already be in violation of copyright law.    Extending the length of time the current holders keep control of the material wouldn't make it any worse.

Technically, he's already in violation... just that doing it for fun, not money, just means it's not quite as worth going after.

Personally, I already think copyright law is distended well past the point that it means anything. Most everything I've been exposed to, except for the original Oz books, are already never going to enter the public domain until after I'm long dead, and likely after my nieces and nephews are also dead, unless the people who created them made a deliberate effort to release them into the public domain, and even then, the Copyright Cartel is making efforts to try to make it impossible for anyone to be able to do so in their effort to shove the Internet genie back into the bottle with regards to things like mandatory licensing schemes.

I'd be fine, if unhappy, with the current length of time, if it included a mechanism that basically was either "continued registration and regular renewal required to maintain it after the initial period" (basically, make it just barely not worth just sitting on it to sit on it) or "must be kept available for purchase as directly available content" (basically, after a point, either make it available for purchase, or give it up, again to not just be worth just sitting on it). There's likely already a large amount of stuff that's effectively lost, and more will likely be lost to us before anything is allowed to become public domain again. I'm definitely NOT okay with them trying to double the minimum length of it, because then it would mean that we'll have a generation that would have no clue what it's even like to have a public domain that's actually worth it in the culture.