Green Party on copyright

Ian Osborne said:
Do we want to live in a world where every new movie is based on a book or comic that's a decade and a half old, with no payment to the author?
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That sounds kind of like the world we live in right now. Most of the stuff movies are based on is at least a decade and a half old. (Ninja Turtles? Transformers? Marvel?)

I think that copyright needs some serious reform, but 14 years may be a bit too short.
 
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Darat said:
Because one might be a better movie or TV programme than the other.
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How can one be better than the other when they are identical, bit for bit?

But it would seem you contradict your own argument for copyright, if copyright is to incentivise new works copyright actually reduces the number of new works.
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No it doesn't. Why would it? You're not making any sense.

That aside of course I am actually not arguing to do away with copyright, just limit its stifling effect on creativity.
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Why would extending copyright for, say, 10 years beyond the death of the author stifle creativity?

Yet we see very successful series such as Sherlock (the current BBC version) and Elementary (USA network show) using the same non-copyright creative property and both are very successful.
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You are aware that both shows are copyrighted, are you not?
 
Ziggurat said:
You are aware that both shows are copyrighted, are you not?
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Yes, the shows are, but the characters are not. I couldn't put a Star Wars show on without permission from Disney, for example, because the characters are still copyrighted. It doesn't matter that my story is original.

Now, the difference between Sherlock Holmes and Star Wars is that one of them is in the public domain, and the other one will never be as long as Disney can do something about it (e.g. lobbying to make copyright extend further...and further...and further...)
 
fuelair said:
I am forced to assume this is a joke. Decent non-comedy Robin Hoods stopped with Richard Greene.................
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Well, I liked the Sean Connery and Michael Praed interpretations as well. (words NOT to be added to that sentance: as Costner's)
 
Ian Osborne said:
It seems the outcry did not fall on deaf ears. The proposal (which isn't a commitment for the next parliament) is for life + 14 years, not 14 years from publication, and it's under discussion anyway.
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Death plus 14 years is obviously a lot better than creation/publication plus 14 years, but in itself 14 years is too short. A reversion to 50 years would suffice, and unpublished works should be harmonised with published ones.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Again, the idea of copyright is, nominally, for the author of a work to financially benefit from said protection. A dead person is well past the point of being able to create works, spend money, or otherwise derive any benefit from their creation(s)... indeed, they are past the point of being able to do, well, anything. :D

Let the offspring of the author create their own work rather than gaining benefit from the protection of a work they themselves played no part in creating.

A well-made point, but I am still reluctant to agree.
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Probably because you don't seem to get the idea that income from writing is usually very much a delayed payment. It's more like an investment, and I would guess that you wouldn't be too keen on the idea of ownership of investments being made null and void by the death of the person who made them?

If the person is paid an hourly wage, I would presume if they are not able to be at work no pay is being earned.
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I meant in the sense of someone who gets paid at the end of the month in arrears working for the first half a month, and then dying a couple of weeks before pay day. Should their employer be able to withhold the two weeks pay their next of kin at the end of the month, because the person who did the work is now dead?
 
Darat said:
Because one might be a better movie or TV programme than the other. But it would seem you contradict your own argument for copyright, if copyright is to incentivise new works copyright actually reduces the number of new works.

That aside of course I am actually not arguing to do away with copyright, just limit its stifling effect on creativity.
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I would certainly agree that 70 years is excessive, and it certainly does have a detrimental effect on critical and historical re-use of texts that can be in excess of a hundred years old.

Yet we see very successful series such as Sherlock (the current BBC version) and Elementary (USA network show) using the same non-copyright creative property and both are very successful.
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Holmes in, of course, an intersting example, as the Conan Doyle estate has long contended that the character is still copyrighted in the United States due to some of the stories being first published (posthumously) after 1923, even though the majority of the stories are in the public domain. Effectively they sought to claim protection on the character as a whole - and by extension the public domain stories - via the stories that are still copyrighted to the end of 2022.

In practical terms, this meant that British productions - such as Sherlock, but also going back to the Jeremy Brett ITV series - didn't have to pay anything to the estate for distribution in the UK (as the Conan Doyle UK copyright expired at the end of 1980, of even if revived by 1995 legislation, the end of 2000), but they did have to be paid off for distribution in the United States. The latter previously applied to both Sherlock and Elementary. This is effectively acknowledged by the estate, as they very carefully say, "Conan Doyle Estate licensed [Sherlock] for US exhibition on the PBS network as part of its Masterpiece Mystery! series," on their website.

It is only relatively recently that a US court has confirmed that the pre-1923 stories are emphatically public domain, and can thus be exploited as such. This question is now how producers will react to this ruling. If their productions contain no identifiable elements unique to the post-1923 stories, they should be able to tell the estate to whistle.
 
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Axiom_Blade said:
I guess I don't understand your argument.
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That without copyright protection, those shows would never have been produced.

The fact that one company is producing Sherlock and another company is producing Elementary and they both draw from the same fictional character doesn't stop them from both making money. They are different shows, with different plots, settings, actors, etc. People can pay for one or the other or even both. But neither can make money if another broadcaster can take the actual footage that they're broadcasting and simply rebroadcast it, without paying anything.

So neither show would be produced without them having copyright protection. But Darat's scheme would make it possible for production companies to lose all copyright protection at any moment. That's a massive risk, for basically no real benefit.
 
Ziggurat said:
And lastly, who holds the copyright to a song made by a four-person band, each of whom had a hand in its creation? What happens if one member of that four-person band should die before the others?
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Which is why Micheal Jackson is the most important Beatle.

Can we all just accept that Steam Boat Willy will never be allowed to enter the public domain?
 
Darat said:
Why assume it would be lost? Shakespeare plays are still performed every year without anyone holding the copyright.
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But think of all the revenue his estate could generate if these never fell into the public domain! They would be the largest media company in the world!
 
ponderingturtle said:
Can we all just accept that Steam Boat Willy will never be allowed to enter the public domain?
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Maintaining and even expanding the current copyright rules or taking the drastic action Darat has advocated are not the only options here.
 
Ziggurat said:
Maintaining and even expanding the current copyright rules or taking the drastic action Darat has advocated are not the only options here.
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Then of course music recordings only used to have a 50 year copywrite, but that would mean Elvis and the Beatles would have started to become public domain, and there is way too much money to be made for that to happen ever either.

Be real people, things are not going to enter the public domain anymore. Accept it.
 
That's the problem, isn't it? It's got nothing to do with making the actual art or music available, but with how much profit can be achieved from it.

The way companies are folded into companies and corporations buy portfolios of copyrights makes it almost impossible to use a post-1923 image, or a post-1895 "corporate work-for-hire" unless you can afford someone on staff to research every single item.

Otherwise you risk somebody suing you for using a piece of newspaper from the 1930s as a background in an art piece.

Andy Warhol's pop art would never have been able to exist in our current copyright climate.

Walt Disney's been dead nearly 50 years now. I think it's time to let his mouse go instead of continuing to milk it for every possible cent.

(Seriously, you can be sued for a black silhouette comprised of 3 circles like the Mickey logo)
 
ponderingturtle said:
Then of course music recordings only used to have a 50 year copywrite, but that would mean Elvis and the Beatles would have started to become public domain, and there is way too much money to be made for that to happen ever either.

Be real people, things are not going to enter the public domain anymore. Accept it.
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"Things" are entering the public domain all the time. Examples: Virginia Woolf's works in 2012, Radclyffe Hall's in 2013, Beatrix Potter's in 2013....
 
deadrose said:
That's the problem, isn't it? It's got nothing to do with making the actual art or music available, but with how much profit can be achieved from it.

The way companies are folded into companies and corporations buy portfolios of copyrights makes it almost impossible to use a post-1923 image, or a post-1895 "corporate work-for-hire" unless you can afford someone on staff to research every single item.

Otherwise you risk somebody suing you for using a piece of newspaper from the 1930s as a background in an art piece.

Andy Warhol's pop art would never have been able to exist in our current copyright climate.

Walt Disney's been dead nearly 50 years now. I think it's time to let his mouse go instead of continuing to milk it for every possible cent.

(Seriously, you can be sued for a black silhouette comprised of 3 circles like the Mickey logo)
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Well, in the context of UK copyright legislation - which is what we're talking about here - all photographs taken on or before 31 Dec 1945 are now public demain en masse, since they were all already public domain at the time the legislation on photographs was changed to photographer's life + 70 years (previously it was creation + 50 years). Where the photographer is unknown, creation + 70 years means many will continue to fall into the public domain progressively from 1 Jan 2017 onwards. Even if an photographer was identified subsequently, any penalty cannot exceed what would be the market price for such a photographer, so if for example someone reprinted a photograph and an image library came up with proof that they owned the copyright (not just that they had it in their collection - notb the same thing at all), they could not retrospectively change more than their standard rate.

In the UK at least, art using original bits of old copyright works would not be an infringement.
 
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