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Easy Diff posted:I've been reading/following this thread pretty closely, since my mother happens to be a NYT-bestselling author with a pretty substantial (30+ novels) library that my sister and I stand to inherit when she passes (she's in her 70s now). Monetizing it post-death will be basically adding an additional six-figure income to each of our households, and copyright is the only reason that windfall exists. I don't have a problem with that, my point is that you don't have an automatic right to the benefits of a copyright just because you're related no matter what the circumstance. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't inherit her money, but ongoing income from the copyright should stop. quote:I also think about Confederacy of Dunces, one of the best books ever written, which was discovered only after John Kennedy Toole's suicide. Would it have been published (and propogated) if Toole's mother wasn't able to get some amount of money for it? We forget in the current day of eBooks how easy distribution is - but in 1983 no one is printing hundreds of thousands of copies of a book with no copyright, no matter how good it is. I guess "The Bible" is a counterpoint, but that's a pretty edge case. This is a (unintentional I'm sure) strawman based on that neoliberal notion of rational actors; there's no way to tell if it would have been published or not. Stranger things have happened and there are other motives other than making a buck available. There's also the problem that people can and do sit on a copyright just so they can have it to themselves. The benefit of that makes no sense to me but it's obvious what the drawbacks are. Dover Publications for instance, publishes a lot of public domain material, in some cases its the only publisher of that material, because presently no one else wants to. Imagine what we're missing because someone is sitting on a copyright they don't want to publish.
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Dec 12, 2018 20:13
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Crain posted:That’s not relevant to copyright. The actual cg model is their property and is treated exactly the same as an office desk or work station. It is if you have copyright laws that say they are. You can copy a thing without taking any physical objects. That is the whole point. The copy rights.
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Dec 12, 2018 20:51
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I think it's fine if they have to roll their own security to protect their 3d model files. That's how it works for every other industry that keeps trade secrets. It'd still be illegal to steal the model files but, if it gets leaked, it's fair game for 3rd parties. If you get your hands on the coke formula you can make coke, if you get shrek.3ds or whatever the hell, you get shrek.
Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Dec 12, 2018 |
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Dec 12, 2018 20:58
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I think it's fine if they have to roll their own security to protect their 3d model files. That's how it works for every other industry that keeps trade secrets. It'd still be illegal to steal the model files but, if it gets leaked, it's fair game imo. That seems worse in every way than just having copyright laws.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:01
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It works fine for the financial industry, the flavoring industry, the chipmaking industry, or any other industry that relies on trade secrets instead of copyright/patents. I don't think there's anything exceptional about movie making that necessitates it be any different.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:06
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:That seems worse in every way than just having copyright laws. Why?
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Dec 12, 2018 21:12
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:It works fine for the financial industry, the flavoring industry, the chipmaking industry, or any other industry that relies on trade secrets instead of copyright/patents. I don't think there's anything exceptional about movie making that necessitates it be any different. The reason no one else can make and sell coke is absolutely positively not because no one has ever been able to sneak the coke formula out of the factory.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:23
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It is if you have copyright laws that say they are. You can copy a thing without taking any physical objects. That is the whole point. The copy rights. Copyrights and what goes into the public domain as we are discussing them here only pertains to what is registered with the US Copyright Office. Which would be the final edited film. Trade secrets/general property law covers things like the raw data files and digital components the company owns.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:26
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Scratching my head as I try to think of a downside to putting Coca Cola out of business.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:33
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The reason no one else can make and sell coke is absolutely positively not because no one has ever been able to sneak the coke formula out of the factory. Stealing it is illegal, but if it gets stolen and published and everyone copies it and starts making coke, coca-cola is SOL. (Of course, their business will be fine, because it turns out that people want the Coke logo printed on the can.) They don't have a patent, which would get time-limited exclusive rights to make it, because they don't want to publicly reveal what the formula is. The point of patents is to reduce the number of things that are kept as trade secrets, and by choosing to keep it a trade secret instead, they de facto surrender the right to enforce exclusivity should the trade secret become widely known. The idea that coke is successful because of a mythical "secret formula" is silly anyway, a recipe is not a manufacturing process let alone a business.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:52
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If copyright protection is dramatically shortened it will be the end of art, because all anyone will do is write Star Wars books.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:55
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Trade secrets and actual property are completely distinct things.
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Dec 12, 2018 22:13
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:It works fine for the financial industry, the flavoring industry, the chipmaking industry, or any other industry that relies on trade secrets instead of copyright/patents. I don't think there's anything exceptional about movie making that necessitates it be any different. Fashion comes to mind as well. ETA: wouldn’t the dumb cancer cure thing would easily be solved with eminent domain rules?
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Dec 12, 2018 22:14
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The reason no one else can make and sell coke is absolutely positively not because no one has ever been able to sneak the coke formula out of the factory. While that's probably true, it's also true that copyright law has nothing to do with it either, since a recipe isn't copyrightable.
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Dec 12, 2018 22:19
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Jethro posted:While that's probably true, it's also true that copyright law has nothing to do with it either, since a recipe isn't copyrightable. Not to mention that there's more to Coke than just the recipe.
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Dec 12, 2018 22:26
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Jethro posted:since a recipe isn't copyrightable.
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Dec 12, 2018 22:29
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General Dog posted:If copyright protection is dramatically shortened it will be the end of art, because all anyone will do is write Star Wars books. Or Harry Potter. Or Homestuck. Solkanar512 posted:Fashion comes to mind as well. Fashion, particularly fast fashion, is an amazing case study in how copyright rules and protections have so viciously gone off the rails. There's the usual IP cases where knockoffs are either designed to be juuuuust on the right side of copyright, but there's also tons of cases of fast fashion brands like Zara or Forever 21 just straight up ripping designs from social media and slapping them in their stores. Either stealing designs or taking drawings and art from places like Instagram and deviant art and putting them on items without compensating the original artist. Usually what happens, assuming the artist even notices in time, is that they just go "well it's out of production anyway" because the go to ruling is just "stop producing this product". Since these brands only sell stuff for a few months anyway they just jump from stolen design to stolen design. Trying to sue for the profits is a lost cause due to the usual "Multinational will just hold you up in court for decades while you ruin yourself" situation. Another reason where "copyright protection" really only works for the rich as it is. Granted this has a lot to do with how our legal system is organized. Crain fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Dec 12, 2018 |
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Dec 12, 2018 22:37
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:It works fine for the financial industry, the flavoring industry, the chipmaking industry, or any other industry that relies on trade secrets instead of copyright/patents. I don't think there's anything exceptional about movie making that necessitates it be any different. trade secrets are a quasi-form of IP with some legal protection
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Dec 12, 2018 22:51
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evilweasel posted:trade secrets are a quasi-form of IP with some legal protection This. It's not the wild west. Take the case of when someone DID steal the Coke formula and tried to sell it to Pepsi. Pepsi knew better than to accept stolen information. It's not just "it get's out and you're free to use it" for everyone but the original thief. https://thehustle.co/coca-cola-stolen-recipe Relevant wiki explainer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret#Comparison_with_patents "Compared to patents, the advantages of trade secrets are that a trade secret is not limited in time (it "continues indefinitely as long as the secret is not revealed to the public", whereas a patent is only in force for a specified time, after which others may freely copy the invention), a trade secret does not imply any registration costs,[31] has an immediate effect, does not require compliance with any formalities, and does not imply any disclosure of the invention to the public.[31] The disadvantages of trade secrets include that "others may be able to legally discover the secret and be thereafter entitled to use it", "others may obtain patent protection for legally discovered secrets", and a trade secret is more difficult to enforce than a patent." So while it doesn't prevent people from legally discovering it themselves, which a patent would, it doesn't mean if you buy stolen information from someone or use illegally leaked information that you're in the clear.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:09
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Crain posted:Take the case of when someone DID steal the Coke formula and tried to sell it to Pepsi. Pepsi knew better than to accept stolen information. It's not just "it get's out and you're free to use it" for everyone but the original thief. That pepsi story is silly because like, what the hell would pepsi do with the coke formula? People don't buy pepsi because they want coke. It was an absurd plan to begin with. If there was any value in those documents, and they published them in a newspaper or online or whatever, pepsi would probably be in the clear to use them. (I...don't think they would anyway. A formula is not a business, period. You don't get to supply a mcdonald's coke machine just because you have a recipe for coke.) So yeah, pepsi isn't going to respond positively to someone calling and saying "so, uhh, wanna buy some trade secrets", but I think if they were even one step more subtle than that, they could have.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:22
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I don't understand the proposed advantages of some "lets not have copyright anymore and shift everything to some sort of trade secret thing where copyright like rights are enforced by companies needing to physically restrict the ability of you to copy things" Why not either have copyright and just make it better than it is so it does the stuff copyright should do without being an eternal thing, or not have copyright and demand remix world where everyone can use any copy at any time for any reason including sale or use of other people's IP.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:32
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^^Why is this Ocean's 11 hypothetical the thing you're hung up on?^^Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Yeah - there's legal protection, you can get in legal trouble for stealing them, but if someone else steals them and publishes them, my understanding is they are fair game. Read the second part of the post. Legally discovering the secret is allowed. Using stolen information is not, even in the case of it being leaked publicly. Granted in the hypothetical that the Coke thieves took the recipe and took out a full page ad in the New York Times detailing it, Coke would then have to go after anyone using it in court and prove they were using the stolen information in their new "coke like" soda. But even with superfluous ingredients added to try and mask the formula, it's likely easily provable. Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't understand the proposed advantages of some "lets not have copyright anymore and shift everything to some sort of trade secret thing where copyright like rights are enforced by companies needing to physically restrict the ability of you to copy things" Why is this Ocean's 11 hypothetical the thing you're hung up on? The question initially was about how Asylum studio's playbook of making knock-offs would work better under my short term copyright idea, because they could go to the same CGI studio and use the same models that the original used (which would assumably be of higher quality than what they usually use) to make a sequel. My retort was that those models themselves wouldn't be included in the film entering the Public Domain because the rules for that apply only to the finished product that is registered with the US Copyright Office. Also that usually the contracts for work like that (and literally every manufacturing/production industry) stipulate that things created for the production are transferred into the control of the customer upon completion of the work, which is the studio in this case. This is currently how the law already works. This is not a new idea. This is not an idea I came up with. If Transformers 1 by Michael Bay entered the Public Domain tomorrow you wouldn't be allowed to try and steal the original cg models nor have any claim to them regardless of the Public Domain status of the final film. No one suggested that we replace copyright law with a goddamned Lupin the 3rd plot line. Crain fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Dec 12, 2018 |
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Dec 12, 2018 23:33
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Crain posted:^^Why is this Ocean's 11 hypothetical the thing you're hung up on?^^ Because "it would just work like trade secrets" is such an absurdly over complicated solution that is so weird ideologically. Like it seems like you'd either want copyright laws so the people get those benefits without weird physical action to physically lock things down, or you'd not want any of that and want information to be free. Some weird middle might makes right middle ground seems the worst possible solution, disney will be able to steal from me way easier than I can steal from disney and it just makes copyright eternal as long as companies can set their anti-espionage stuff up cleverly enough. this dvd movie will never be public domain if no one can crack the copy protection, but will be instantly if someone can.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:43
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Because "it would just work like trade secrets" is such an absurdly over complicated solution that is so weird ideologically. Like it seems like you'd either want copyright laws so the people get those benefits without weird physical action to physically lock things down, or you'd not want any of that and want information to be free. Some weird middle might makes right middle ground seems the worst possible solution, disney will be able to steal from me way easier than I can steal from disney and it just makes copyright eternal as long as companies can set their anti-espionage stuff up cleverly enough. this dvd movie will never be public domain if no one can crack the copy protection, but will be instantly if someone can. look up.
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Dec 12, 2018 23:45
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Crain posted:^^Why is this Ocean's 11 hypothetical the thing you're hung up on?^^
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Dec 13, 2018 00:03
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Interesting - looks like I'm wrong but it's complicated. My current conclusion in the hypothetical situation is that NYT is definitely liable, but folks who have no reason to suspect NYT was using misappropriated trade secrets could freely design a product around it, but it's murky. It's also unclear what would happen if it were a foreign newspaper instead - it doesn't seem like plausible deniability would be all that hard to create. (In one case someone was found guilty of misappropriation but the judge deemed that he couldn't order the content be taken down because of the first amendment, pretty weird.) Yeah. It’s super weird because it definitely relies on everyone acting in good faith like much of US law. If it did get published, even on the internet like on a blog or to reddit or something public that doesn’t curate posts before displaying, everyone’s supposed to go “well I never...” and just avert their eyes and not try to get away with using the info.
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Dec 13, 2018 00:15
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Crain posted:This is currently how the law already works. edit: Actually I feel pretty strongly a random member of the public could look at the Transformers' CGI models without causing any damage to anyone's intellectual property. edit2: Crain posted:Yeah. It’s super weird because it definitely relies on everyone acting in good faith like much of US law. If it did get published, even on the internet like on a blog or to reddit or something public that doesn’t curate posts before displaying, everyone’s supposed to go “well I never...” and just avert their eyes and not try to get away with using the info. twodot fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 03:49
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twodot posted:Is there case law saying CGI models aren't copyright-able? Nope. Nope. Nope. Reread it. Go back, you swerved onto the wrong exit, on the wrong road, going the wrong way into oncoming traffic. I did not say that CG models aren't copyright-able. I said that when it comes to what is specifically made a part of the Public Domain, the determining factor is what exactly is registered with the US Copyright Office. If you want to go and check what that actually means: Then have a loving go and look. I jumped to the section where copyright claims line up with the movie's release in 2007. The things that were copyrighted include: The final edited movie, the soundtrack, a copyright deal with HBO, a copyright on the physical DVD package including 2 disks and an information booklet (copyrighting the contents of said disks and booklet), a copyright on just the explicit visual media presented in the film, a copyright for the official studio media score that was released as an OST disk, and some amendments to other copyright registrations. That alone is what will become part of the Public Domain in 95 loving years and that is all that has a copyright on it because that is all that was registered for a copyright. So in the case of Transformers the GODDAMNED CGI models they made of the loving autobots are not godfuckingdamned covered by copyright and won't be loving Public Domain but are still covered by other laws concerning property and assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilcRS5eUpwk twodot posted:This is just wrong, if your trade secret becomes widely known, it's not a trade secret anymore. Read the part I quoted from the wiki and check the sources. Crain fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 04:16
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Forget it Crain, it's
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Dec 13, 2018 04:19
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^^^^ edit: nvm
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Dec 13, 2018 04:21
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Crain posted:I said that when it comes to what is specifically made a part of the Public Domain, the determining factor is what exactly is registered with the US Copyright Office. quote:Read the part I quoted from the wiki and check the sources. https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/international-protection/trade-secret-policy
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Dec 13, 2018 04:24
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twodot posted:This is wrong, stuff doesn't become public domain because you registered it with the US Copyright Office and then your copyright expired, see: the Mona Lisa. Copyright-able works are protected by default at creation, registering copyrights with government offices is a thing to you do to pay lawyers less when you go to court. You're mixing up depiction of a work vs. the discrete item. You can make a 1:1 copy of The Mona Lisa, but you don't have a claim to the discrete original work sitting in the Louvre unless you purchase it from the current owner. Same with the hypothetical CGI models of the Transformers. You can make an exact 1:1 digital sculpt copy of them as they appear in the movie but the studio doesn't have to release their original file to the public nor do you have a right to that exact file unless you convince them to give it to you. That's what I'm talking about. As far as registered vs. unregistered: You can't sue directly for damages on an unregistered copyright. See: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html So if that's what you mean by "pay lawyers less" then yes. Also when it comes to knowing what is in the Public Domain, registered copyrights are really the only source on what that counts for without doing your own leg work. When it comes to what I'm talking about it's a meaningless distinction since even if the visual depiction of the characters in Transformers goes Public Domain you still can't call up Paramount and go "Ok give me Optimus_high_Detail_final.obj." twodot posted:Like you're just wrong, this isn't a discussion, this is me telling you: you are wrong: Ok, I'll admit I'm wrong on that. This is clearer language than what I read. Crain fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 04:40
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Crain posted:When it comes to what I'm talking about it's a meaningless distinction since even if the visual depiction of the characters in Transformers goes Public Domain you still can't call up Paramount and go "Ok give me Optimus_high_Detail_final.obj.
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Dec 13, 2018 04:43
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twodot posted:Under no circumstances if a work is public domain can you call up the owner/creator and demand copies of the work which is public domain. Being public domain just means you are allowed to copy it on your own if you are willing and able. THAT'S MY POINT. That's literally what I wrote. Crain fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 04:44
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Crain posted:THAT'S MY POINT. edit: The reason why I'm hammering on this is because, under existing law, there is likely no reason to treat them as trade secrets, so they are likely not trade secrets, which means that treating CGI models as trade secrets isn't what's happening under existing law. This doesn't mean it's fundamentally impossible to treat them like trade secrets, but you can't claim that's what we're already doing. For all we know there's a thousand copies of Optimus Prime's models in some unsecured trash can/landfill somewhere. twodot fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 04:48
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Crain posted:Nope. Nope. Nope. Reread it. Go back, you swerved onto the wrong exit, on the wrong road, going the wrong way into oncoming traffic. As already said, none of this is correct and you are badly mangling how copyright law in america works. Copyright automatically attaches on the creation of the work. It becomes part of the public domain once that copyright expires. What you seem to be sort of vaugely suggesting in your later posts is that you believe The Public Domain is a library of no-longer-copyrighted things you can go in and copy. That's not what it means; that a work is in the public domain means it's not copyrighted. If the work, as a practical matter, can't be copied because there is no public copy of the work that's not the work "not being in the public domain". That's a practical, not legal, roadblock between you and the copying you want to do. evilweasel fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 05:35
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Crain, you need to read up on the Berne Convention which has applied in America from 1989. I'm not certain whether it's retrospective or not.
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Dec 13, 2018 07:49
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evilweasel posted:As already said, none of this is correct and you are badly mangling how copyright law in america works. Copyright automatically attaches on the creation of the work. It becomes part of the public domain once that copyright expires. Ok yeah I screwed that up with practical vs. legal meaning of PD works. So I that means if the studio didn’t make sure that all copies of their digital files were returned, then other producers could use the same company and they could use the files from a major studio production. Good meltdown me.
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Dec 13, 2018 15:38
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I feel like an immediate and obvious problem with coping with this is our own speculative fiction has been restricted by copyright and no one has really wanted to work through it due to the elephant in the room nature of it. Thread has been thought provoking thank you. I think it's become obvious to me that a large part of the problem is art is being treated as a commodity the artist is required to sell to survive, or that massive success demands massive compensations and it's really getting at the root of capitalist incentives to digest this stuff. Don't a lot of reasons for trademark go away if a created product can't really result in superwealth? The assumption being made that no one starves in post UP society. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 17:12
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RuanGacho posted:Don't a lot of reasons for trademark go away if a created product can't really result in superwealth? Trademark, while an IP right, is almost entirely unlinked to other IP rights and is more about ensuring that customers can recognize brands - so they know which products are good and which are bad. I assume you meant copyright, and here you've got a huge tension between the way that America thinks about copyright - exclusively the grant of an economic monopoly to produce income to incentivize the creation of new art - and the European way of thinking about copyright - as a moral right the artist has to control their work. So that's a basic problem when you're looking at individual works of art - music, books, etc. It breaks down hard when you start talking about works that require substantial investment to create and thus demand substantial returns - movies, video games, etc. You can probably get plenty of novels written if everyone is guaranteed a livable income and people can just write for the fun of it/for the reputation/etc. You can't really get a movie or a major video game created without copyright monopolies. That does go to the idea that has been floated before, that not all copyrights should be alike. Computer code, for example, could easily have its copyright expire in ten or twenty years while keeping longer terms for more personal works like novels or songs.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:30
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