Slashdot Log In
White Paper Decries RIAA Attempts To Raise Infringement Payouts
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Feb 06, 2008 03:02 PM
from the making-a-quick-buck dept.
from the making-a-quick-buck dept.
Little Big Man writes "Public Knowledge, the CEA, and six other industry and public interest groups have issued a white paper critical of the attempts of the RIAA and other major copyright players to have statutory infringement levels raised. 'Noting that the courts can currently award massive statutory damages without rightsholders having to demonstrate that they have suffered any actual harm, the white paper calls current copyright law a "carefully designed compromise" meant to balance the interests of both parties ... The authors of the white paper paint a dreary future where "copyright trolls" file lawsuits in order to rake in massive amounts of statutory damages, where innovation is stifled, and where artists are afraid to "Recut, Reframe, and Recycle" because of the financial risks involved.'"
Related Stories
Submission: New white paper blasts PRO-IP Act by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Nice idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice idea but... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Not going to make a difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Put simply, corruption and bribary are the language of American politics.
CEA to RIAA: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Poison Pill (Score:5, Interesting)
But only if they cut copyright back to 14 years instead of life + 70 yrs.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather see it reduced to ~70 years or the artist's lifetime (whichever is shorter), with (significantly) derivative works expiring at the same time. This wouldn't fix the current mess, or the dystopian future of shotgun laws
Re: (Score:2)
What you're effectively saying is that anyone who produces any sort of intellectual property which becomes sufficiently popular should receive an exception to the rule of thumb which says "keep some of your money aside and put i
Wash. Rinse, Repeat (Score:2)
They'll accept the offer, then in 13 years when there's a different Congress they'll have copyright extended again.
Re:Poison Pill (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Poison Pill (Score:5, Interesting)
Aug 3, 2007
Ladd jury orders WB to pay up over profits
The 12-juror panel then ruled 10-2 to adopt the plaintiffs' suggested damage calculations for 12 films produced by the Ladd Co., including "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and the "Police Academy" movies.
The Superior Court jury delivered a unanimous verdict in finding that the studio breached its duties to the producers. The 12-juror panel then ruled 10-2 to adopt the plaintiffs' suggested damage calculations for 12 films produced by the Ladd Co., including "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and the "Police Academy" movies.
---
The movie was profitable loooooong ago and the studios are still ripping people off with fancy accounting.
I personally support the original "14 years + option to reup 14 years".
The current disney purchased "forever" system is obscene and removes any respect for the copyright system because it is so obviously unfair and corrupt.
Parent
Re:Poison Pill (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Poison Pill (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright was not originally intended to guarantee the artist a paycheck for the rest of their life. Having copyrights that last for the life of the creator isn't about "encouraging the arts" it's about locking in control and legally enforcing a profit, neither of which are what it was created for.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No they're not. That's the incorrect assumption that keeps this stupid argument about "intellectual property" going.
"Being creative" is no different than providing any other sort of service. For most types of services, you get paid for what people think is the value of the provided service, at the time that you provide the service. Only the greedy want to get paid over and over for providing a single
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you still do subscribe to the idea that the artist should profit from their work, the idea that an artist should CONTROL (or sell control of) their work for their lifetime is a separate issue. It would be possible to award civil damages for use of a work without compe
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Poison Pill (Score:5, Insightful)
However, ideas are an infinite good. Some people don't want to share their creative ideas unless they have some way to profit from it. Because ideas can't be controlled like a physical thing can, some people a long time ago designed copyright to give incentive to those people. In brief, copyright is the government granting a temporary monopoly on your idea (so that you can profit from it) to you in exchange for you to share that idea with society. During that copyright period, you are free to charge however much you want for the use of that copyrighted material (free use excepting). After that copyrighted period though, the public and society as a whole is now free to build upon that idea however they see fit. If you want to have another monopoly that allows you to create money off an idea, then you have to come up with something new and creative again. Thus, copyrights give incentive to create more copyrighted work from even the original author. However, with a copyright term that is guaranteed for life, what incentive do you have to create something new more than once? Sure you can create more works to make even more money, but if you are content with what you have, you have no reason to create new works. Let's take an example. If the copyright for Star Wars ran out in 1993 (14 years after 1979) then George Lucas would have been forced to come up with something new to make money. He couldn't just continue riding the Star Wars wave the rest of his life. (For those of you who didn't like the prequels, this means that after 1993 anybody could have made them). As it is, he just sits around and makes money off of a few properties he's made.
I will only be for lifetime+ copyrights once my work as a plumber guarantees me and my posterity money for all individual jobs I do. If I make a toilet and install it somewhere, then guarantee me that I can get a decent income from that work for the rest of my life and my childrens' lives as well. If I happen to want more money, then I will install a second toilet and then you have to guarantee me profits from two toilets. But it doesn't work like that in real life and it shouldn't be that way for anything else. To make a more appropriate analogy: Say you are a marketing guy and you come up with a neat way to advertise a product. Should you be guaranteed an income for you and your posterity for that one idea? No, that would be silly. You get paid a salary and if you stop coming up with ideas then you're fired and the next idea-man gets hired in your place. Same with individual authors of creative works. They should have to keep coming up with ideas if that is how they want to make a living. If they don't, then they can go work as a salaried employee somewhere.
In either case, if you want to leave your children some inheritance, that is your deal. People who don't make money off of copyrighted things have to save up and invest in order to provide for their families. Why should a person who came up with some idea before anyone else be treated any differently in that regard? We, as a society, gave them an opportunity to market their creative work and make money, now it is our turn to build on it.
I have kind of gone astray. Anyway, the purpose of copyright is to grant a temporary monopoly to give incentive for you to release your work of art into society. Society grants that (through the government) and in return we get your creative work and get to build upon it. Copyright gives incentive to people who have creative works to release it upon society for the express reason of society being able to use that
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Poison Pill (Score:4, Interesting)
It means that it'll show up on boot-leg DVDs for $5/pop - with all $5 going to the person who ripped the disk and nothing to the creator.
Good! That's how it should be!
Someone taking a near infiite resource (digital info), combining it with a very finite resource (time/airwaves) and then finding a hungry market for it!
Everything I create I release to the public domain, yet I still make good income on it.
Parent
Re: limited terms (Score:5, Insightful)
Go re-read the Constitution
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
So does having a fixed period of 14+14 years. Having it automatically outlive the author by a given number of years, however, could be an incentive to keep the author alive in a persistent vegetative state for 50 years....
*shivers*
Re: (Score:2)
P2P Killed Elvis [slashdot.org]!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Copyright isn't there to create a gravy train. It's there to encourage the useful arts and benefit the country as a whole, not just the original content creators of things that become popular.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, it was originally 14 years with the ability to renew once for an additional 14, for a total of 28. That would mean that unless a title was not making money, the effective term was 28 years. That would release anything made before 1980. That pretty much puts all the old UNIX code in the clear plus a few early Atari games, but not much else.
Also, you seem to mistakenly believe that copyright holders are usually the original creators. Almost all works of consequence made since about 1970 have
Is this misworded? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm misunderstanding how the assignment of statutory damages without a demonstration, much less proof of harm can be considered in the interest of both parties.
Obvious really (Score:5, Funny)
* Spoken in Dr. Evilese
Re:Obvious really (Score:4, Funny)
The executions, themselves, will be recorded (and copyrighted) and then tacked on the beginning of every DVD or future media type.
After a few years, consumers will be able to purchase "The best of RIAA Executions" in a variety of formats (each disk or download fully protected by DRM, of course).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Finally it would be clear what exactly the RIAA "executives" do.
Future? (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright lawsuits to censor, intimidate, or extract cash are already fairly common. Also, the financial and legal burden to remixing content and culture is already so high that no independent artist can endure it, and most big-name outfits avoid it wherever possible.
Welcome to the future.
This just in (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I think Lars Ulrich or James Hetfield would be the perfect
subjects to be oversized the "troll" holding a poor media
consumer up in the air by his leg.
Higher return-on-investment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Having their cake and eating it too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Having their cake and eating it too (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
"carefully designed compromise", my ass! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't. I think copyright is WAY out of hand. Terms should be brought back to the eighteenth century's tewnty years, and no noncommercial use should be called infringing except in the case of plagairism.
P2P is advertising and MP3s are free samples of a far better commodity.
If copyright were reasonable, you wouldn't have folks on slashdot calling for its abolition like you do now.
-mcgrew
PS- I hold hundreds of copyrights, two having ISBN numbers. The two registered ones would have gone into the public domain already if I'd had my way, as they are both over 20 years old. How are you going to convince Jimi hendrix to record any more songs? That is what the US Constitution says the purpose of copyright is!
Re: (Score:2)
This is disingenuous. The difference between a 256kbps MP3 and an audio CD is negligible and you know it.
The complaints about copyright--and I might add that holding copyrights does not make you an expert, though it might make you an outlier--boil down to "I can get it for free, so I want it for free."
Re: (Score:2)
People aren't on slashdot arguing about copyright because copyright is a problem. They are doing it because it helps them justify piracy/theft. There was no huge outcry 20 years ago about copyright terms or the penalties for infringement. In fact, I never heard anyone ever criticize anything about copyright until it became easy to download copied music and movies from the web.
Guess you weren't born early enough to hear the whining about VCRs, [wikipedia.org] were you?
I'll gripe when any industry gets too big for its britches 'n' starts pissing on the consumer. No "piracy" excuse needed.
Re:"carefully designed compromise", my ass! (Score:4, Insightful)
"P2P is advertising and MP3s are free samples of a far better commodity."
I've purchased hundreds of MP3 and AAC tracks. Not once have I proceeded to purchase the CD version, nor have I gone to see the performer play live, or -- to use the Slashdot cliche -- "bought a t-shirt." The track was the product, not an ad. And the fact is that there are many, many consumers like me. If I could have legally gotten those MP3 files for free, then the copyright owner would have seen exactly zero money from me. Let's not pretend that MP3 files hold no value... while I acknowledge that many people reading this use P2P as their primary source for music, Apple and others have done quite well in the business of selling downloads.
"I hold hundreds of copyrights, two having ISBN numbers. The two registered ones would have gone into the public domain already if I'd had my way, as they are both over 20 years old."
Possibly a dumb question... if you hold the copyright, don't you have your way? Does obtaining an ISBN hamper your ability to release something into the public domain?
I'm thinking of what Cory Doctrow has done with some of his stuff... he didn't see the need for it to be under copyright any longer, so he set it free. His stuff, too, has ISBNs, so I don't understand what the difference is here.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You would think this would already be the case as current copyright law stomps all over the first amendment.
Colors (Score:5, Insightful)
Already seeing "Copyright Trolls" (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not widespread yet as a means for profit, but copyright protection laws are being already being (mis-)used to silence critics and competitors. There was the Lexmark DMCA case [techdirt.com] where they argued that a competitor's ink replacement system was a violation of the DMCA. There are the widespread Scientology claims of copyright on items they don't own, but want offline [chillingeffects.org]. In general, anyone who wants a site offline quickly [techdirt.com] can just file a DMCA claim on it You can sort out those messy perjury issues later (if they come up at all). Attach a financial reward for filing DMCA claims and suddenly copyright trolls will appear everywhere.
Corporate use of an individual's copyrighted work? (Score:5, Interesting)
The case went to trial in federal court November 5th, 2007 (case 06-01164, District of MN -- my copyright infringement claim and multiple counterclaims over me "disparaging" them...it was a bench trial and I'm still waiting for the judge's ruling).
I explicitly permit non-commercial use of my photos -- personal web pages, schools, etc. (I require a photo credit, but I would not sue over it). But I greatly object if you are making money from my work, you HAVE A BUDGET to pay me, but are cutting me out of the loop to inflate your profits while I'm earning nothing.
There are excessive penalties for copyright infringement where the infringer does not seek to profit, but (speaking subjectively) I would like the corporation that stole my photos (two photos, actually), lied about it, forged evidence, and tied up in court since 2005, to pay "a billion dollars"...not just a token amount, or a few hundred. The risk of getting caught has to be a deterrent, which (for this company) it was not.
(licensing photos largely relies on professionalism and the honor system; if a local bank tells me they are going to use my photo in 1,000 brochures, I assume they are not using it in a TV campaign, billboards, and 100,000 brochures -- if so, the damages should outweigh the benefit of lying).
I guess this relates to the change in copyright law (to address P2P) that equated infringement without a profit motive = infringement with a profit motive.
Re: (Score:2)
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso
What was that you were saying?
There is nothing new under the sun (Score:2)
Honestly, if you can't come up with material yourself, you shouldn't call yourself an artist.
If you can't be bothered to ask the originator if she minds if you reuse her work, you can't call yourself respectful.
If you can't honor the wishes of the originator when he says he doesn't want you reusing his work, you shouldn't call yourself honest.
All in all, the only way in which I'd miss the recyclers is in the lack of easy targets for mockery.
Everything in art is recycled. If you can't see that, you have not studied art, literature, or history. Go ahead, find me one original piece of art, something that has never, ever been done before, and which is not influenced by anything which went before. Or try a thought experiment: if you raised a kid in a box with no contact with the outside world, would they be capable of producing anything approaching art?