Comment by eudamoniac

Comment by eudamoniac a day ago

11 replies

View on Hacker News

I genuinely don't understand the instinct of HN to decry copyright for fictional works in general. I would not find it distasteful for even a far longer copyright to exist. I just don't see it as a problem. What is the societal ill that is caused by being unable to sell Harry Potter fan fiction, ever? Why can the author not invent his own setting? I understand people want free things, but this sentiment seems to go beyond that. The work is still available to be bought and sold, and if the price isn't right, there are billions of other options. I don't get it. I don't feel personally entitled to make derivations of Moby Dick, so if I found out it had exited public domain somehow, that would not upset me at all.

snohobro 21 hours ago

My issue isn’t so much derivative works, but the original content being sat upon by the owner and refusing to make it available to the public (for free or for sale) in any meaningful way. Keeping with the theme of Disney, I always enjoyed the Captain Eo attraction. I’d love to be able to regularly rewatch that short film. Other than a bootleg YouTube version, there is no way for me to access it right now, and there is a very real risk that Disney copyright strikes that. I just have to hope that someday Disney makes a high quality version available to me or adds it back into the park. If it were copyright free though, I might have a chance at seeing it. Now just because it’s copyright free doesn’t mean it magically appears in front of me, but it does open the door to anyone who has a high quality version squirreled away somewhere to make it available to me for sale or for free, and TWDC would be unable to stop that from happening.

Reply View 4 replies
  • shagie 21 hours ago

    As a photographer, why should I be forced to sell prints of the photographs that are hanging in a restaurant?

    If the limitations on copyright weren't present, why wouldn't the restaurant make copies of the photograph that I took that they have hanging on the wall and sell it at the front door without reimbursing me in any way?

    Reply View 3 replies
    • snohobro 18 hours ago

      I don’t think copyright shouldn’t exist at all, I think the general consensus in this topic has been that the length of copyright protection is longer than is considered reasonable.

      You don’t have to sell the prints if you don’t want to. But if someone else does fulfill that market demand by selling or giving away your photographs after those photographs have entered into public domain, that’s a win for all those who wished to enjoy your art. Without having to visit that particular restaurant. The length of time to get to public domain is the issue at hand.

      I want you to make money on your photography. It’s a good incentive to keep doing that scope of work and more art in the world is a win for humanity. But if you haven’t been able to recuperate losses and make profit on a particular photo after 70 years, I don’t think it’s going to happen for ya.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • shagie 16 hours ago

        If I understand this correctly, your assertion is that me selling you a print 14 years ago (or 28) would now give you (or anyone) permission to put that on T-shirts and sell them despite that I'm still making prints of that photograph and selling it?

        Aside on this is that it disincentivizes me to display anything that I don't want to sell and think I can make money on during the copyright protected period.

        I have hundreds of photographs... the idea that I'd need to pay some amount to re-register them (individually?) extend their copyright protection is likewise absurd. (Compare : do you pay to re-register the copyright on each file in an open source repository ... because each file has a different copyright on it ... or the entire collection? But what is a logical collection of photographs?)

        I have photographs that have made more money in the past 5 years than they have in the 30 years prior.

        Moving things to the public domain faster than the artists who created the material would likely make them less likely to produce, publish, or sell things that would enter the public domain before they could benefit from them would result in the material becoming a patronage based system or the material never being created at all.

        I do not want all artwork to be locked behind a patronage system. e.g. "Here's my patreon - all members at the $20 level get a high quality digital image each week." That would be bad for art as a whole... you'd never see it at an art festival or in a gallery or a restaurant wall.

        I realize this is becoming more and more popular... but I don't think it is good. Shorter copyright terms would make this even more prevalent because of the difficulties being able to make money as an artist off the material. The long tail of a photographer's library is very much a thing and part of one's livelihood. Cutting off that tail prematurely doesn't put more material into the public domain - it results in less material being created.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • snohobro 13 hours ago

          Your response has shifted the discussion to a different topic and doesn’t really address my original point. I was explicitly calling out situations in which an owner refuses to make their product available by any legal means and they can legally prevent anyone else from making it available if they so choose for the remainder of its copyright lifespan, which could very well terminate after I die.

          As a human with limited lifespan, that sucks.

          In your scenario, as an artist you are still actively selling and making money on your art. That’s great, and maybe there should be exceptions in copyright for late bloomers who found their popular stride way later in their career with their earlier art. Regardless, you’re selling it and now I can buy it, awesome. This solves my problem.

          However if I saw a photo of yours, from say 35 years ago in a restaurant you did as a commission, and you don’t want to sell me that print (totally fair) but also you don’t want anyone else to sell the print to make money off your 35 year old work, then I’m kinda hosed. I’ve got no options. I just have to travel to that restaurant, hopefully still open and they kept the photo on the wall, or just use my good ole noggin to remember what it looked like.

          Just feels fundamentally broken, ya know?

          I’m sure you could argue “well it’s my art and I’m allowed to determine its availability.” Now we’re into morals and what’s good for humanity. I will say art is in my subjective opinion good for humanity. Keeping it locked away is bad.

          I don’t recommend a binary all or nothing approach to copyright protections, I just think at a certain point it’s for the betterment of the people now, not for the individual.

          I appreciate your healthy challenging to my ideals.

          Reply View 0 replies
bustadjustme 20 hours ago

You make a good point -- it's easy to knee-jerk react based on the "I like free things" vibe and decry long-copyright as nonsensical.

I think a reasonable argument against copyright being so long is that things I experienced as a child, and especially shared experiences with others, have become a part of me: they've become shared culture, even parts of our shared language. "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts roasting..."; still under copyright in the US for another ~15 years) is just as much a part of Christmas to me as "Angels We Have Heard on High" (public domain). Maybe a good example of this is the "Happy Birthday" song: that song is synonymous with birthdays to me and those I associate with -- if you have a birthday that song is sung, if you hear that song sung it must be somebody's birthday. Yet for the longest time it was excluded from movies, TV, radio, establishments, because somebody was thought to own the copyright for it. It was part of our shared language and experience as much as aspirin or kleenex or thermos (genericized trademarks). Similarly, "hobbit" means the same thing as "halfling" to me, but don't use the word in a published work. Eventually copyrighted works seem to become pretty genericized, much quicker than ~100 years, yet their protection remains.

Disney's Snow White is about as old now as the Brothers Grimm version was when Disney's was made. I'm not allowed to make derivative works of Disney's version; should Disney have been disallowed from making it because elements of the story were "so recent"?

Obviously people should be able to profit from their own work, but I think the "shared culture/language" aspect is a decent argument that the public has an interest that counterbalances the interests of authors/creators.

Reply View 0 replies
jandrese 19 hours ago

Imagine a little known work from 1920 written by an author that died in 1955 featuring a boy wizard in a magic school who's estate sues J. K. Rowling in 1998 for copyright infringement. We might never have gotten any further books.

This probably seems unlikely, but it's the flipside of exceptionally long copyrights, especially ones held by corporate interests who hire lawyers specifically to enforce copyright. The growth of AI is only going to make this more of a problem in the future. Imagine a ContentID like system but on the concepts and themes of works.

Reply View 0 replies
nancyminusone a day ago

Why should the author have rights to my Harry Potter fan fiction idea? They only came up with the characters but somehow control the whole thing?

Reply View 0 replies
zelphirkalt a day ago

The issue is with limiting creativity in all kinds of works and areas. It would be great, if we could organize society in a way, that makes artificial limits and boundaries to information sharing unnecessary.

Reply View 2 replies
  • eudamoniac a day ago

    That is tautological. Why is limiting creativity in works and areas "the issue"? What concrete problem is happening because Mickey Mouse was under copyright until recently?

    Reply View 0 replies
  • GuinansEyebrows a day ago

    of all websites, hacker news dot com is not ready to discuss the abolition of the profit motive from society.

    Reply View 0 replies