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-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Supreme Court rules that works can be pulled out of the public domain and become copyrighted
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/scotus-re-copyright-decision/
I fail to see the point of this.
Comments
It's only if they're still copyrighted in their country of origin.
So? Preventing someone from performing a Stravinsky piece because of copyright is pointless, regardless of country of origin.
So, you're okay with the US not respecting foreign copyrights at all?
Hmm. Good question.
I have to admit, I'm having trouble seeing the purpose of copyrights being applied internationally, but if you want to frame it as "y u no respect international law, america"...
Actually, I'm curious now. I know that copyright law regarding classical music usually applies to the score. What does copyright law say about performance of that music?
Wicked: If you don't have copyrights applied internationally, you end up with situations like with the D'oyly Carte Opera Company - Gilbert and Sullivan copyrighted their operas in Britain, and then Americans ran performances and cheated them out of the profits from the national premiere. (When they figured it out and registered copyright in the US with a later opera, the same thing happened in reverse.)
Why you should always read the comments section:
"While I'd love to see stuff enter public domain upon the author's death, that opens up a possibility of *causing* the authors death to put their works in the public domain. John Lennon wouldn't be the only artist assassinated under that system"
*comments pointing out the ridiculousness of this idea*
"Have you paid attention to the world around you Inferno? Shit like that happens every single day. People in the world are disgusting."
This sort of nonsense always make my day happier.
^ Actually, that would make a pretty good motive for the murderer in a mystery novel. It might be difficult to subtly point out that the law has changed without totally giving it away though, not to mention that the character who always wears the "Information wants to be free" T-shirt becomes a screamingly obvious suspect.
^^ That is hilarious.
Also: "Any approach to copyright is stupid. You'd better remove the whole thing. Use a private contract, as any other work."
Screw Artists trying to make a living out of their work! Of course, one would ask what happens when one uses the work WITHOUT a contract if copyrights dont exist. And if there's no penalty for it, why bother with contracts at all. But logic is not evidently popular in the Wired Forums.
You're crazy if you think that copyright shouldn't exist at all. Creators have neither the time nor resources to negotiate every contract with every consumer individually, or even to negotiate a one-size-fits-all contract. A legal framework of copyright and fair use allows a creator to not have to worry too much about legalese and payment plans and such. Of course, a good copyright framework allows creators who desire to individually negotiate contracts to do so as well.
Really, I think what the problem is is that copyright and fair use law hasn't been updated to account for digital media. In the past, media copying meant cost-intensive, time-consuming physical copies, very often with reduced quality. In this age of digital media, however, you can make CD-audio or 1080p copies of audio or video data, with no loss of quality at all, at the price of a several-hundred-dollar computer that you probably already have for other purposes. The result is that media is much, much, much more readily available.
The problem the media companies pursuing overzealous copyright crackdowns have is that they are assuming that everyone who consumes media would have paid for it to consume it in the first place. Because media is much more widely available, a lot more people will come in contact with it and consume it...but that does not mean that they would have paid for it. ESPECIALLY if they hadn't even heard of it beforehand.
See, unauthorized distribution of a work, at no (or little) cost to new consumers, often has the effect of introducing new consumers to the work, making them fans of the work and causing some of them to spend money on a work that they otherwise would have known nothing about. This is effectively a advertising service that operates at no cost to the publisher or creator.
If unauthorized distribution is so awesome, then why are media companies going crazy about piracy? Because their works are already well known, and they would not benefit much from new people finding out about their works. Consequently, those that pirate their works are more likely (note: not entirely, but just more likely) to be consumers who would have paid to consume them.
There are five types of media pirates:
The first type, as its nickname implies, is kinda neutral on par. The second and third groups are your potential paying customers and advertising agents, so you want to be nice to them. The fourth and fifth groups are what you want to minimize.
I forgot a sixth type. This is also a "good guy" type:
6. "unavailable": Those who pirate stuff because they can't get it legally. It might be region-locked, sold out, out of print, or otherwise unavailable. Such people are likely to buy if given the chance and a reasonably affordable price. (Imports can be extremely expensive.)
The US originally didn't respect foreign copyrights till Mark Twain was getting annoyed that foreign countries weren't respecting his copyright
GMH is a sensible person.
I've thought of another type: those who say "I want to pay the artist, not the industry."
Depending on the industry, you don't have that option. The one where I work, for example, even relatively small projects take months and a large handful of people before you have a marketable product at all. You need a publisher to foot the bill and put food on the table in the meantime.
For the most part, the artist has already been paid as much as they ever will.
Well, some industries, such as the music and videogame industries, do have pretty strong "indie" movements.
Incidentally, their success--especially the success of the indie gaming movement--has been due in large part to the internet and its granting content creators the ability to disseminate information at low cost. And incidentally, SOPA and PIPA would totally fuck that up...which would benefit large, established publishers. :P
Indie games are in a really tricky position in that for the most part they're really bare-bones and minimalistic. Retro style 2D, puzzle games, etc., and many of the people involved in that are doing it on the side of a day job. Even just for a small XBLA title you need a decent-sized team and a few months, and someone's gotta foot the bill for that -- especially if it gets cancelled partway through, which happens pretty frequently (not uncommon to get right down to alpha and have your client go "nope, just isn't fun").
I'm not arguing with you that it gets out of hand, mind, just that the middlemen we're talking about are very much a necessary evil.
I'm not even saying that publishers are evil--they're capable of a very large amount of good, in fact, and they definitely have a place in the world of modern creative media. As you observe, larger projects--from top-of-the-line videogames that make use of cutting-edge graphics technology, to large-budget movies with A-list actors--does take lots of initial funding to get it off the ground, and that's where publishers really shine.