Yukon syl's List: Copyright

• Instead, the bill dubbed by critics as the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (after the U.S. version of the law) is the result of an intense public and private campaign waged by the U.S. government to pressure Canada into following its much-criticized digital copyright model.
• he U.S. Trade Representatives Office (USTR) made Canada a fixture on its Special 301 Watch list, an annual compilation of countries the U.S. believes have sub-standard intellectual property laws. The full list contains nearly 50 countries accounting for 4.4 billion people or approximately 70 per cent of the world's population.
• USTR, which, according to documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, made veiled threats about "thickening the border" between Canada and the U.S. if Canada refused to put copyright reform on the legislative agenda.

1 more annotation...

• The proposal would license the reproduction of copyrighted works at participating post-secondary institutions from 2011 to 2014. Under the current tariff, institutions pay a flat fee of $3.39 per full-time equivalent student, plus ten cents per page copied for use in a course-pack. The proposal would eliminate the per-use fee, and impose a flat fee of $35 for college students and $45 for university students - an unjustified increase of between 350 and 400%. 

   

   In addition to increasing the amount of the tariff, the proposal would also greatly expand its ambit and require institutions to provide Access Copyright direct and unfettered access to all property, digital or physical, including institutional e-mail accounts, in order to surveil the use of literary works. 

• You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.
• You shall not download any Content unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content.

• Helprin's article is the idea that physical and intellectual property are the same — that intellectual property ought to have the same term limit (none) as physical property.
• the state-created property monopoly of copyright was justifiable only to the extent that it would "promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts." It created therefore a fixed, and originally very short, period of time in which one might sell copies of one's works with state protection
• To destroy the public domain would postively harm the progress of science and the useful arts,
• killing off all creativity based on others' older works

  • "positively harm"??? is this the only alternative - does perpetual copyright have to mean total restriction? Couldn't it blend CC-type licensing?
• • I'm not sure how the quote from the Constitution actually leads to the conclusion that there is an expectation of Public Good - seems to me that he is overextending his reasoning without real support
    
• • Again, excessive statement. If every creator could leave their works to their children or children's children, it could be significant benefit for them?
• a very few
• Helprin argues that this final step of releasing the work into the Public Domain is a confiscation
• monopoly is created and granted to authors only because doing so Promotes the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts
• Copyright grants a legal monopoly where no natural monopoly exists
• the cost of this monopoly is only justified by a balanced amount of Public Good it will create in the end
• • A consistent theme of his argument yet I don't see that the public has invested that much - we, through the legal system, provide a way that the copyright holder can protect himself but he has to have the money to hire lawyers to make the system work. The system is not proactive about protecting his copyright.
    
• The public has invested in such free use by the grant of a monopoly to the author for a limited time.
• • Uncertainty is a fact of life. Very few ways to "extract a living" are certain. Weak argument from Helprin
• The net effect of infinite copyright would tend to discourage the creation of new works, rather than encourage them
• • Not sure I'm really understanding this. I can share my piece of land without giving it up It will change my experience of it and the value of it maybe?
• But no such deprivation occurs when a work enters the public domain
• • Not true. When my creative work enters PD it is no longer of value to me (cuz no one will pay for it then!) The only way to retain a value is to re-create it. Therefore, if we're talking about the original creative work, it is depriving me (or my descendants) of the value of it
• • Silly argument. We give the monopoly and then we take it away - what it is depends on which end you're at.
• Yet the expiration of a patent is not a "taking". It was a giving, of an exclusive privilege in exchange for an invention.
• Madison wrote a memorandum on "Monopolies [and] Perpetuities..." in which he makes it clear that the limit on copyright and patent was meant precisely to prevent perpetuities. Perpetuities in land were, for Madison, one of the tools by which European feudal and ecclesiastical estates maintained their power over time
• most of the price of a copyrighted book does not go to author's royalties. Rather, it is the monopolist's mark-up. Books from which the copyright has expired are in general cheaper, page for page, than copyrighted books because the market for them is competitive. The monopolist's surplus has become a consumer's surplus

  • And this situation is just reality - a scarce good that is valued by the public (a public?) has higher value than a freely available good. There is both good and bad in this
• writes

  • Silly. Although the underlying attitude (pain caused to outsiders can be justified for our collective gain) is what keeps us rich and others poor.
• "[Copyright] is, then, for the public good. But it might also be for the public good were Congress to allow the enslavement of foreign captives and their descendants (this was tried); the seizure of Bill Gates’s bankbook; or the ruthless suppression of Alec Baldwin."
• "idea/expression dichotomy"
• patent law, which does concern the protection of ideas, has never recognised a perpetual monopoly
• • Not understanding the full scope of this. Is an idea only considered "expressed" if others can copy it?

25 more annotations...

• Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren
• The answer is that the Constitution states unambiguously that Congress shall have the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” (The italics are mine, the capitalization was likely James Madison’s.)
• They represent, however, only a small fraction of writers,

  • His prejudice is showing! There are writers who earn good salaries who are not writing "sensationalist trash"!
• “Freeing” a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit

  • I'd say the bulk of the profit may have already been realized by the publisher when the work was under copyright - after all - they are professionals at negotiating lucrative deals. At least by freeing the copyright there is a potential that others can generate new works and start the cycle again.
• payment for the considerable and necessary protections they too enjoy

  • You could probably do some calcs on this but I think the taxes and fees that home owners or business owners pay go some way towards supporting the cost of providing their protection from expropriation?

3 more annotations...

• services and intellectual property would become primary fields of endeavor and the chief engines of the economy
• Would it not be just and fair for those who try to extract a living from the uncertain arts of writing and composing to be freed from a form of confiscation not visited upon anyone else

• • So how does this fit with his argument that the importance is that it enter the Public Domain after a "fair"? period of time? This would ensure that the copyright holder values the copyright and wants to preserve it - I like that. And it shouldn't be free to keep the protection of copyright law. At least not if you can keep renewing it - Lessig's quote isn't clear about how long you could keep renewing your copyright.
• …I describe a proposal that would move more work into the public domain than a total victory in the Supreme Court would have. The basic idea is this: 50 years after a work has been “published,” a copyright owner would be required to pay a copyright tax. That tax should be extremely low – this proposal says $50, but it could be $1. If the copyright holder does not pay the tax for 3 years, then the work is forfeit to the public domain. If the copyright holder does pay the tax, then its contacting agent would be made a matter of public record. Very quickly we would have a cheap, searchable record, of what work is controlled and what work is free.

• Education institutions and governments leading by example as a matter of policy