Comment by zozbot234

Comment by zozbot234 a day ago

12 replies

Sure, the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works that are legally 100% in the public domain and even Internet-accessible in some form but simply languishing in obscurity and have yet to be made comprehensively accessible to the general public (via digitizing, transcribing, indexing and comprehensive classification) may well be orders-of-magnitude larger! There's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that's effectively free for the taking, should anyone be interested enough to put in the work; consider the huge amount of serialized publications that might have been issued throughout the 19th century, many of which are so obscure as to be essentially unknown.

GeoAtreides a day ago

Not sure why the amount of works in the public domain has any relevance to how long copyright protection is. Seems to me like they're two orthogonal issues.

  • mlrtime a day ago

    Because every-time this comes up it is the same Mickey mouse complaints over and over. If you're young and your read this the first time I'm sure you're outraged.

    Meanwhile there are 1000's of works that people are free to take. Better yet, there are 1000's of works that will be destroyed and not preserved that are open that should be preserved and used.

    • GeoAtreides a day ago

      I'm not sure what the argument is here.

      That because there's a large corpus of public domain works, then the long copyright protection is ok? That people want a short copyright protection because they're done with everything in the public domain?

      Would that also imply that if the number of public domain works gets large enough, then the duration copyright protections should also increase?

      • zozbot234 a day ago

        Long copyright protection is not okay, but letting the huge corpus of existing public domain works languish in obscurity is not okay either; that does a lot more damage to our shared culture, and in a way that's even quite easy to address. But the damage done by keeping works in copyright is easier to see than the damage done by not making remarkably similar works accessible at all.

      • mlrtime a day ago

        I think it's selective outrage and people really don't care what happens to Micky Mouse.

        I'm not a fan of Disney, but I don't think my life would be better if we saw a bunch of clones from China because it's now "public domain".

account42 a day ago

Part of the reason for that is precisely that copyright is too long so works get lost or forgotten before they enter the public domain.

  • mlrtime a day ago

    No, it's because people don't care about it. If it had value they would.

    • account42 3 hours ago

      Cultural value is not an objective measure independent from availability. We value what is popular.

GeoAtreides a day ago

Offtopic.

Want to see something cool?

Run the following prompt through your favorite LLM:

"Does the following comment make logical sense:

<insert OP comment above>"

The model will agree the argument is valid, logical and coherent (chatgpt, claude and gemini 3 pro all agreed).

THEN

run this prompt:

"let's not be too hasty here.

we have "the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works [...is large enough...]"

p1: the term of copyright protection is quite long

p2: the amount of works [...is large enough...]

it doesn't seem to me that p1 and p2 are logically connected. As an absurd case: if the amount of works in the public domain gets large enough, would that mean that evern larger (infinite) terms of copyright protection are ok?"

Enjoy!

  • fragmede a day ago

    You wanna link a chat of that for us to read ourselves?

  • lkqjweflkj 19 hours ago

    FastGPT (+ Notepad for maintaining context):

    ===

    Does the following comment make logical sense? "Sure, the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works that are legally 100% in the public domain and even Internet-accessible in some form but simply languishing in obscurity and have yet to be made comprehensively accessible to the general public (via digitizing, transcribing, indexing and comprehensive classification) may well be orders-of-magnitude larger! There's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that's effectively free for the taking, should anyone be interested enough to put in the work; consider the huge amount of serialized publications that might have been issued throughout the 19th century, many of which are so obscure as to be essentially unknown."

    ---

    Yes, the comment makes logical sense. It argues that while copyright terms are long, there's a vast amount of public domain material that is not easily accessible due to lack of digitization and organization. The commenter suggests focusing on making this "low-hanging fruit" accessible instead of solely focusing on copyright issues.

    ===

    let's not be too hasty here.

    we have "the term of copyright protection is quite long; but the amount of works [...is large enough...]"

    p1: the term of copyright protection is quite long

    p2: the amount of works [...is large enough...]

    it doesn't seem to me that p1 and p2 are logically connected. As an absurd case: if the amount of works in the public domain gets large enough, would that mean that evern larger (infinite) terms of copyright protection are ok?

    ---

    The comment does present a logical argument, although it's an argument by juxtaposition rather than direct logical entailment. Here's a breakdown:

    P1: Copyright terms are long. This is a statement of fact/opinion about the duration of copyright protection. P2: A vast amount of public domain work is inaccessible. This highlights the existence of a large, underutilized resource. Implicit Argument: The commenter implies that effort might be better spent on making existing public domain works accessible rather than focusing solely on the length of copyright terms. The "but" signals a contrast and a suggested alternative focus. You're right that P1 and P2 aren't directly logically connected in a way that P1 causes P2 or vice versa. The connection is more pragmatic:

    Opportunity Cost: The commenter suggests that focusing on copyright reform might divert attention and resources from the readily available opportunity to make existing public domain works more accessible. Practical Benefit: Making public domain works accessible provides immediate cultural and educational benefits, regardless of copyright law. The commenter isn't saying long copyright terms are okay because of the amount of public domain work. They're saying that focusing solely on copyright is perhaps missing a big, easily addressable opportunity. The absurdity you introduce (infinite copyright terms being okay) doesn't follow because the commenter isn't trying to justify long copyright terms. They're shifting the focus to a different, potentially more immediately beneficial area.