I'm not entirely sure how this can be discussed without violating the 'banned topics' list.
(Admittedly, I have no idea what was going on in the other thread.)
edited 25th Jan '13 10:49:01 PM by Meklar
Join my forum game!
Just awesome like that
Well, it was unlocked, so unless there was a mistake, it should be fine.
A note to the OP: I'm not sure how familiar you are with OTC, but you need to put all possible relevant detailed information to getting the conversation started in your OP itself. That way, people don't have to guess to figure out what the thread's topic is.
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.
Any system where you can make more money from painting a picture of someone painting a house rather than from actually, ya know, painting a house, is borked. That's basically it as far as I am concerned for my part in this argument. Sayonara.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, as with all things, it all depends on how much someone is willing to pay you, right? There are a whole, whole lot of paintings that cost much, much less than the price of housepainting.
For instance, people often bemoan the fact that actors and sports figures get paid more than teachers, when teachers are much more important to society. My argument about that is not that actors/athletes are worth millions themselves per se, but that they are worth the price of admission to a whole lot of individuals. It has always been my opinion that one is worth whatever salary one can secure for oneself. If you can find someone willing to pay your price, more power to you.
The discussion back in the Doctor Who thread seemed to mainly be about how copyright laws persist long after people's death and how that limits potential spin-offs of their works.
"Steel wins battles. Gold wins wars."
The armored raven
I have argued before that intellectual property is -not- the same as creative ownership. The latter is what we can agree -should- be protected, whereas the former is just a series of red tapes meant to siphon money to those who don't deserve it, like people who refuse to make something more than 50 years old in age open domain.
What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
I agree. If I go around blabbing about every little detail of my novel and someone else uses my ideas first, that would be extremely irritating, but it would be my fault. However, when I publish my novel, if someone takes it and writes something that goes against my intention and makes money off it, I should be able to do something about it.
I think that some copyright laws are excessive, but abolishing all of them is overidealistic.
Without copyright, big companies can plagiarize works from unknown creators without any repercussions. Either that, or cyber-vigilantes become more rampant and aggressive.
I see the Awesomeness.
I'm okay with scrapping them entirely and using a "only the original creator can charge for a profit" model. It won't stop anything from being created, see fanfiction for evidence.
Fight smart, not fair.
Then what happens if the creator drops dead? I think a small amount of years (ten or fifteen at the most, instead of the ludicrous seventy or above) is okay, for the benefit of the creator's family and smaller publishers.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Or if the copyright is specifically willed to someone else.
I see the Awesomeness.
What if the creator drops dead? What's significant about that? Like I said, the creator is the only one allowed to authorize for profit sales, free or at cost distribution is totally protected. If the creator dies, anyone can distribute for profit, but free distribution is still protected.
Fight smart, not fair.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
If a grace period is in there it also stops companies from jumping on the property for a quick buck.
Not Three Laws compliant.
People can already do that easily, because individuals don't have armies of lawyers. It doesn't happen too much with the big companies, but it's a pretty well-known trick with digital porn books. Somebody steals a few stories off literotica or wherever, changes the names, and publishes them on Amazon as a digital download for a dollar. If somebody calls them on it, they just do it again under a different alias. Porn is used because less people care about it, and it doesn't need to be as high quality.
The idea that other writers writing about other things that you don't like, using your ideas as a base point, is a form of the original work taken away, is a ridiculous result of the "property analogy".
While I agree that artists whould be protected from publishers directly bringing their work to the print shop without asking, the only reason why the idea that artists should have control over other artists' creative process, and stop the creation of, new works in that established "IP", isn't seen as a gross violation of the freedom of speech, is because it got itself a Grandfather Clause justification in our copyright culture.
Seriously, if I write the first novel about hobbits, and then you also write a novel about hobbits, then there is nothing being taken away from me, only some vague sense of creative fulfillment, and the idea that this sensibility needs to be protected by law, is a classic example of Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence
edited 26th Jan '13 1:30:08 PM by Ever9
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Sorry, I had a bad experience with that once. I wrote a story that was a retelling of Frederico Lorca's Blood Wedding for a school assignment and I let a few other people read it. I had put it in a fantasy world and all that, but one of the people who read it took my idea almost exactly but twisted it from being a classical tragedy into being, basically, extremely detailed smut just slotted in there. They failed the assignment but when I asked why they did it, the said it was because as long as I didn't copyright it, it was fair game. If they had borrowed the idea, I wouldn't have cared, but turning a tragic romance into something directly against the point of the version I wrote, while using the names and places in my version!
Yes, I based it off something else, but I at least tried to be respectful.
edited 26th Jan '13 1:48:51 PM by Zendervai
Not Three Laws compliant.
Art is a form of communication, between the artist and the audience. The law shouldn't be used for enforcing respectful communication.
People should have as much of a right to write nasty things about "your characters" and "your settings", as saying nasty things about you. Giving certain artists the power to silence other artists is especially ridiculous, since all art is derivative, so this just ends up stiffling a specific type of copyrightable ideas, such as character and location names, and treating their copying as theft, while the same critics who accept this are often cheering on "spiritual successors" and "reimaginations" that avoided the formal pitalls of copyright.
There is no good reason why the Tolkien estate can still dictate who is allowed to write about hobbits (that is, pretty much nobody), while George A. Romero is fondly respected as the father of the modern zombie, but if he has anything to say about Plants Vs Zombies, or Highschool Of The Dead or Zombieland, he can bring it to the forums like any of us.
Yet the latter is never treated as being robbed, simply because "zombies" never happened to be legally enforcable in copyright, so we just accept this.
edited 26th Jan '13 2:51:14 PM by Ever9
The armored raven
I can agree with this one. There's a difference between creative premise and creative product. Franchise and fanfiction shouldn't be treated the same way, otherwise the lawyer army can win everytime in favor of the former.
Honestly, I don't think that ideas should be owned or property. The only reason they can be is copyright law.
The armored raven
The reason why that is happening because copyright laws are ill-defined and highly abusable.
What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...
No, no, no. Ownership of ideas is inherent to copyright. You have control over who can use your idea. What they can do with it. How much money they can make off of it. How much money you can make off of it. That's all ownership of the idea. If you reform copyright so that it is no longer ownership of the idea, then it will no longer be copyright.
The armored raven
What we'd like is that the ownership doesn't stretch far enough to become 'totalitarian' and beyond like erecting different departments in order to sue the crap out of anyone for thinking upon a specific ideal or scenario. Yes, original owners can and should have control over who makes money out of the work. But unless (a) the copyright registration costs less than printing and (b) the publishers have no post mortem say of the said work, then it's hard for all this to work properly.
What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...
And I disagree. I think there shouldn't be any ownership of ideas. At all.
Because the Doctor Who thread told us to knock it off.
Where were we?
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.