Posts by Kyle Matthews
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How can you possibly say that it's not a broken system when every time a century-old cartoon character is about to become available for everyone to use, he's retroactively granted a couple more decades of protection?
I can't see anyone arguing for copyrights being extended based on the demand of one person or company. That's a silly system, but you get that in the USA. If it's copyright for life plus 50, or plus 70 or whatever, that should be the system, if it changes it should be for good reason rather than Mickey Mouse being another 25 years older.
Because Tolkien was popular, his descendants are entitled to a whopping income for decades to come.
Actually Tolkien, for one of the most popular authors in history, didn't do particularly well out of his books during his lifetime. He was comfortable, but certainly not rich like a lot of authors who have sold a lot less books.
I do think you need to take into account what Keir has said about the payback from a copyrighted work flowing after the work for a number of years, not like a wage and salary where you get paid two weeks later.
I think lifetime plus 75 years is too long. But lifetime would be too short for me. Many authors publish shortly before their death, or even after it (again, Tolkien, edited by his son). If it was just lifetime someone would just reproduce it straight away. Which sounds fine in theory, but the publisher would never publish it as they couldn't protect it, and we wouldn't necessarily see books like the Simarillion and the Children of Hurin.
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And call me an old crank, but I'd rather not see Three outsourcing editorial decisions to the Ninth Floor or the Opposition Leader's office. They're perfectly entitled to decline to appear, but it's rather spineless and disingenuous of Three to pull the plug on the whole exercise.
Yeah, that's what disappointed me. Clark and Key's behaviour, not the best, but not totally surprising. TV3's decision to not run a debate with everyone else - some of whom could be very significant post-election, just sad.
I'm not sure why the debate suddenly became non-viable without the top two. Sure, less people might watch it, but you'd still pick up a pretty significant audience for a 'minor parties' debate. More than watch some of the other silly things TV3 runs.
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Even the crappiest teams (like the Pirates* and the Washington Capitals) win ~60 games.
I believe the baseball team is the Nationals. The Capitals are the ice hockey team, and they're better than average, as of last season anyway - scraped in to win their division.
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Did they simply end up not paying out?
Yes. I ended up paying the $500 excess, and then once that year's contract finished, sent them a nice letter explaining why I had taken my business elsewhere.
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If the sole benefit is the work's existence, then surely the second a book goes out of print, or a painting is sold, copyright should cease to exist? After all, the artist has now received as much money for the work as they ever will
No, artists can continue to get financial benefit from their work for as long as they have copyright. If you want to reproduce a painting, you have to get the permission of the artist, no matter who owns the actual artwork. You most likely have to get the permission of the owner of the work as well.
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A debate's more dynamic, and although she'll be rehersed, I don't expect her to manage it for the full duration.
One suspects they'll have her pumped up with 40 or so 30 second sound bites. She'll probably ignore the question, come out with a sound bite that vaguely matches, and add god bless America at the end. It'll be moderately effective, play to the base but not the middle.
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Your blog title says heroes and villans.
So in the spirit of the latter, can I give a big shout out to State Insurance, who I signed up to in the mistaken belief that "it doesn't matter" and they had fly buys, which brings my sister down to visit her nephew and niece.
Having taken photos of the paint marks on the next door neighbour's car that hit my parked car on the street late on a Friday night, and then having been told "er, no that's not enough evidence for us to pursue them, as they have said it wasn't them", I promptly switched insurers. Since then I've discussed State with a number of other people who informed me that "yeah, I've heard they're shit".
Hero: Graham (I think that's his name) at Novus glass here in Dunedin who, after some drunken idiot on Friday went down my girlfriend's street smashing car windows, and her new caravan window, drove up there on a Saturday, took the caravan away, fixed it on a Sunday (a day I presume he doesn't normally work) so that we could drive it up to its new home near Oamaru. And to the police who apparently caught the multiple window-breaker, and will be seeking (among other things), money from him for the rest of his life to pay for everyone's windows.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the right to a person's national superannuation die with them in this country? I'm pretty sure it's not a transferable income stream.
Yup. Artists also labour under this oppressive law as well.
If I run a business and die, my next-of-kin inherit my business, which might be worth quite a bit of money.
If I'm a writer my only assets are my rights over my intellectual property.
If copyright could not be passed on after the death of the creator, then any work that was created shortly before death would be immediately in the public domain, and reprinted without royalties. You'd be actively encouraging people not to produce work near the end of their life.
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Cresswell has responded.
I stopped reading when he kept bringing up the government forcing him to pay for no-hopers to breed.
As far as I got, he never actually engaged Russell's criticism about the knife attacks being domestic incidents, but just brought out loopy talking points.
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It was a long time ago - Tom Hulce, straight from Animal House to portraying Mozart as manic boofhead, then into well-deserved obscurity. If that's the take on Mozart that you're content with, hey, don't worry, be happy.
The fact that it appeared in a movie doesn't make it inaccurate.
Mozart was a court musician in Salzburg, but he went somewhat AWOL searching for better opportunities and pay, and was eventually fired. While at Vienna until his death he continued to suffer financially, despite his rising fame, and had to borrow money and move in order to survive. He also took on a lot of work which was well below what he was capable of as a composer - sale of dance music, keyboard performances etc.
What I am against is society being deprived of access to make free derived works from something that was produced by a person who's been dead for 20 years, or from, say, a book that hasn't been through a printing run for three decades.
I don't see any reason why, as a principle, rights to a work shouldn't inherit to immediate family. If you were the partner of a writer/artist etc, and that person died, you sure have the rights to collect income from their work, in much the same way that you might inherit their superannuation asset etc. Artists die with young children and partners left behind like anyone else.
Apart from anything else, if copyright only lasts for your lifetime, then we have a rather gruesome reason to kill off artists.