Enjay wrote:Everyone is bleating on about restrictions of freedom and so on but a lot of it comes down to "I used to do this and now I'm worried that I can't" even though "this" is something that they perhaps shouldn't have been doing from the outset.
This is ultimately the "think of the children!" for copyright. Of course the basic idea of preventing people from unfairly taking other peoples' work is good to have, but the issues are far more complex and nuanced than can be solved by automated systems, or by suggesting that linking to a web page could be as bad as copying it. Thinking that automated algorithms can fairly and accurately detect things like fair use (parody, teaching, news reporting, etc) is laughable, the tech industry has said it's laughable, and we have empirical evidence showing that it's severely flawed even when implemented by a company that invests heavily in automated algorithms, but it was voted through anyway. It's not only going to be ineffective at stopping copyright infringement, but it's going to cause a lot of collateral damage.
It doesn't help that the current situation with copyrights is ludicrous, with all signs suggesting it's going to get worse before better. It was originally something like 20 years or something after publication, IIRC (yes, you could be alive to see your own work become public domain). The idea of copyright is to give you a time-limited government-granted exclusivity of making copies of a particular work, so that you could sell it to sustain yourself as you continued to create new things. Copyright isn't a human right, it's not something you get just by being alive, it's something the government grants you with certain conditions and limitations. It was to incentivize creativity by allowing creators to make money from the things they create, with the understanding that it will eventually become public and part of the free culture and society that enabled you to create it in the first place. After 20 or so years, you should've made your money back on the creation*, and moved on to other things to make money from and sustain yourself on.
But as it is these days, if I make something right now, this minute, my great-grand-kids would lucky to see it enter the public domain before they die of old age. And as long as Disney is scared of losing exclusivity of the Mouse, my great-great-grand-kids likely won't see my creations in the public domain either.
* It should be noted that losing copyright doesn't prevent you from continuing to sell the creation, you just don't have the exclusive right anymore. If after 20+ years you still think there's money to be made on something, there's nothing to stop you from incentivizing people to buy from you instead of finding a free copy elsewhere.
I'd actually be interested to hear what people think might be a more workable way to protect copyright than people just shouting "OMG I CAN'T POST MEMES".
The problem is, IMO, the copyright system as it currently is isn't worth increasing the protections of. It's a monstrosity warped by greedy corporations that do everything they can to block competition and maximize profits, and trying to improve protections within the current framework is going to give massively unfair advantages to those corporations that made it what it is, to the detriment of indie creators and the rest of society.
Copyright needs sweeping reform before we can see how to fairly protect it, and significantly shortening its length should be the first step. There should also be provisions in place for being able to easily identify the owner of a copyright. Especially in the games industry these days, there are so many titles where no one can say who actually has the copyright (or the copyrights are such a tangled mess, it can't be undone without significant work that there's not enough monetary gain to do; a clear sign the copyright has probably completed its purpose if there's so little money left to make on it). So many things are left buried never to see the light of day again, because no one can say they own it... or worse, someone does say they have it but refuses to do anything with it (again, a sign the copyright has probably completed its purpose if they no longer need to make money on it).