Public Address | Cafe | Speaker: Losing cultural treasures under the TPP

nzlemming

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 18:47:37 +1300

Muahaha!

izogi

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 22:12:10 +1300

But if I wrote and published that, and made money from it, and all that money went to me and none to her, that would feel wrong too.

To me it’s about to what extent information and speech can be considered property and be ‘owned’. It’s also about the main…

tussock

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 22:10:56 +1300

But aren't all rights* artificial goods we've created for public policy reasons?
No. Rights are things we, the people, kept cutting heads off the heads of state until the next ones took the hint and gave them to us. There's quite a long history of power shifting between the heads…

Keir Leslie

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 21:04:31 +1300

But aren't all rights* artificial goods we've created for public policy reasons? And while copyright as such is artificial, the right to be paid for your labour isn't!

* I mean, even if the underlying principle isn't artificial, the specific expression of any given right is highly artificial.

Sacha

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 18:31:18 +1300

I didn't put that well. Thanks.

Stephen Judd

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 18:27:50 +1300

Disney ripping off old European fairytales

Although that's kind of the point. It wasn't ripping off, to retell them. That's legit reuse from my POV. The rip-off is creating a private good out of them that NEVER reverts to the public.

Sacha

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 17:59:15 +1300

But the effort that went into making that thing doesn’t go away.

and nor do the surrounding social investments that enabled that creation – like education, social capital, communication networks, employment, income support, commercial protection, law, government.

Sacha

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 17:52:18 +1300

Wills can be challenged.

True. Can bequests be? I've just twigged that might be an example of the other instruments Scott was referring to.

Sacha

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 17:50:03 +1300

And in the end, this lobbying isn’t for creators like your Mum. It’s for a few large companies to continue extracting value from portfolios they own

And this is the biggest problem – copyright tends to be owned by intermediaries these days, not the actual creators. Though the interweb may…

Stephen Judd

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:52:38 +1300

I certainly don’t know much about the extent of copyright.

It’s already really, really long – much longer than it was when it was first invented. If your Mum died tomorrow, which of course we hope she won’t, her work is still protected for another 50 years. 80 years for…

Lucy Telfar Barnard

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 13:12:58 +1300

No, I probably wouldn't think that right should exist in perpetuity (except maybe for the aforementioned ban on use in ACT party advertisements...). But maybe as long as anyone who knew me well in person is still alive, which could conceivably be longer than 70 years.

Russell Brown

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 12:56:21 +1300

But quoting, sampling, retelling, reframing etc – what if I don’t want the thing I’ve created quoted, sampled, retold, or reframed? If I’ve created it, don’t I have that right? Or is that the moral right mentioned earlier, separate from copyright?

Should that right exist in perpetuity?

Keir Leslie

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 12:42:09 +1300

I have seen it argued that it is not possible to renounce copyright, or give a license to the world at large, on death as that would give the other heirs a reason to challenge the will, particularly if the copyright represents a very large amount of money. (In the…

Lucy Telfar Barnard

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 12:35:36 +1300

Besides which, copyright applies not just to “creative” works,…

Martin Connelly

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 12:14:26 +1300

Its called "Make a Will". Tell your lawyer what you want, its not hard.

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 07:59:31 +1300

©lockwork freerange...
A lot of use of copyright is not by listening or watching, but by making a new work out of them: quoting, sampling, retelling, reframing, whatever.
.... why, that sounds like general conversation©,

I foresee a fifty year cycle of reissues – each iteration launching a new ©lock,…

Don Christie

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 23:17:02 +1300

Thank you for this.

To put it another way...

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.…

izogi

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 21:29:10 +1300

I’d agree with Stephen on this. Copyright has its benefits, but it isn’t in any way a natural right. It’s an artificial legal compromise on free speech, where society decides to grant the creator of a work a temporary monopoly on stuff they said first, so that nobody else is…

Kumara Republic

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 20:47:12 +1300

The original intent of copyright was to provide an incentive for people to create, because creation is a public good. Now, it's grown to the point where it's an impediment to creation. We all know that the real reason terms have grown in the US is so large corporate holders…

ScottY

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 20:15:05 +1300

It is called a will, last I heard.

Which is probably why I wrote "your will, or under some separate legal instrument..."

If you own the copyright yourself I presume you can state in your will that you wish the executors of your estate to place any copyright you hold…

Stephen Judd

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:29:01 +1300

I favour the Brazilian approach, where if a copyright work is not available after a certain term, the copyright lapses. In this way a incredible trove of Brazilian popular music from decades ago, where the publishers are defunct or don't care, is slowly becoming available again.

Stephen Judd

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:27:32 +1300

A lot of use of copyright is not by listening or watching, but by making a new work out of them: quoting, sampling, retelling, reframing, whatever.

You can't just say dear owner, here's my money, now I'm going to make a derived work, and then do it. The owner may…

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:21:36 +1300

Wills can be challenged.

Juha Saarinen

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:21:01 +1300

You'd have to... come back.

steve black

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:10:34 +1300

some separate legal instrument that comes into effect upon your death

is that a thing?

It is called a will, last I heard. I am currently acting as the executor of a friend’s Estate right now. My job is to distribute the property in his Estate as he requested.

steve black

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:08:22 +1300

He asked about how he could STOP the copyright at his death not EXTEND it.

If the publisher owns the copyright it is in their hands.

If you own the copyright yourself I presume you can state in your will that you wish the executors of your estate to place…

Sam M

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 16:32:39 +1300

Could you grant a general license to the world at large (e.g., open source model)? That may be enforceable against your heirs.

Sacha

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 16:27:43 +1300

some separate legal instrument that comes into effect upon your death

is that a thing?

ScottY

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:25:58 +1300

I realise that, at the moment, the copyright is really with the publisher, but is there anything I can do to make sure they don't apply for extensions when I'm dead?

If your publisher owns the copyright, then most probably the only rights you retain any control of will be…

Martin Brown

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:14:17 +1300

US music copyright protection is currently 70 years after death and I believe heading towards longer. The danger for NZ is that current and future US enforcements would prevail, meaning massive, non-negotiable fines for small/naive breaches rather than actual commercial damage compensation.

Jeremy Malcolm

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:10:13 +1300

There is actually no way to extend copyright. You get life plus 50 years neither more nor less, and that's that (unless you are Walt Disney, in which case you can ask Congress for a 20 year extension and they'll give it to you).

So your publisher won't be able…

Jeremy Malcolm

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:07:12 +1300

This U-shaped graph explains the problem: http://ip.jotwell.com/how-copyright-prevents-us-from-getting-the-books-we-want/. After the short initial short period when the peak profits are earned from the work, the rightsholders don't bother to keep their works commercially available, so they are essentially lost. This graphic covers books, but for other types of works the same has…

Lucy Telfar Barnard

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 11:38:03 +1300

I'm not sure I completely understand the issue. Just because things are still under copyright, doesn't mean you can't see them, or hear them, or read them. It just means you might have to pay someone for the privilege (or get them from the library).

To be topical – if…

HORansome

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 10:22:30 +1300

So, I asked this question on Twitter and I'm going to ask it here: I'm the author of the book "The Philosophy o Conspiracy Theories" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and I want to know how I can prevent the extension of copyright on my work post my death. I realise that,…

Public Address

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 10:22:30 +1300

Discussion from blog post.