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Piracy


Cyber Rat
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If I had to shoot from the hip and make something up, I'd say... 20-25 years for the initial copyright - you could tell the industry it's still a generous extension from the original 14-year term, and it would be well timed so that the things people grew up with would be usable by them as adults. Then, for exceptional cases where they still use them actively - like The Simpsons, 10 year extensions could be approved on an individual basis by a judge. Say someone writes a classic novel, they die but have no heirs or next of kin, and the publisher decides to extend copyright? Sorry - not good enough; it's just an old work and they've already had 25 years to make the vastest share of profits already.

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I'm pretty sure this is just a thread. If you guys were to say pool together enough money to lobby this into law then you could maybe fix it. But you'd need an awful lot of money. To make that awful lot of money may I suggest releasing a series of books and films and using the acquired funds over the century to fund the change in copyright law?

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Now all that's left is to start a multibillion dollar lobby to argue in court for us, and buy politicians to pass the laws back toward the consumer's favour... -_-

 

[Dean beat me to it! I didn't even see that until I came back to check the thread...]

Edited by fuchikoma
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I'm here to play Devil's advocate and point out that the Public Domain is a great thing, sure. However, it's a double edged sword.

 

Take for example, Popeye cartoons. Popeye cartoons used to be available on every cheap dollar DVD around in piss poor quality with faded prints duped from 16mm masters from TV releases. The original negatives rested comfortably in Paramount's vault but since they were so cheaply and readily available in the public domain Paramount saw no market to release their prints out into the public where the public domain would just allow them to be ripped off.

 

Then through a twist of fate (and Congress) many of the classic Popeye cartoons were returned from the Public Domain back to Paramount. Paramount followed up by releasing some fantastically restored DVDs.

 

I'm not saying that infinite copyright is the best or that the public domain should be eliminated, heaven forbid, just that copyright if too short can have its consequences as well.

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That's not the fault of Public Domain. That's the fault of Paramount. They didn't see a market for a higher quality product for a higher price tag until they were given back their monopoly.

 

If companies knew that their Copyright was gone then they'd be forced to add more new content (which would have Copyright protection) and more quality to their release than to the public domain version in order to be competitive. It would (in an ideal world) lead to an economy where lower quality versions of your old, Public Domain product were distributed freely and could serve to advertise your brand, while some people would come to you for a better product or service and would pay more for that.

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  • 1 month later...
Try opening the nearest available basic economics textbook. Somewhere around page two or three you will be introduced to supply and demand curves. It will be gently explained to you that demand falls with rising prices. Thus something that sells for 10 cents will have more sales than that same thing priced at 99 cents. Something priced at free will have very much wider distribution than something priced at that 99 cents.

 

You cannot, therefore, take the extent of distribution at price 0 cents and conclude that that is the number of 99 cent sales that did not happen. It is illogical Captain.

 

THANK YOU!

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Did you read the full story? They didn't specify damages. That number is just what shakes up if you apply the maths of the claim strictly.

 

If you sue someone for your car being written off, you go for the maximum value of a car of that age etc at that time. The judge will then look at how you arrived at your figure and make an adjustment as he did in this case. So you might as well go for the big score.

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Except if you limit your arguments to a method that yields a number that's patently ridiculous like that then basically the judge's only alternative is to go with the defendant's reasoning, which is not what you want to happen. At most it seems to me like something you'd use as a throwaway argument to make your real argument look more reasonable.

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  • 4 weeks later...

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/06/japan-download-copyright-law/

 

Watch, the crazy and amazing Japanese are going to make a super proxy somehow. Seriously though... jail time? At least we over here in the States and elsewhere can pretty much ignore whatever threatening letters we get from this law firm or company unless it got a judge signature on it. Imagine the US implementing a system like this.

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