Comment by gwbas1c

Comment by gwbas1c 21 hours ago

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That's a good question. IMO:

1: The formula dictates what you pay.

2: The money goes into a government-controlled escrow account.

At that point, the rights holder has a reasonable amount of time (years) to claim the money. Otherwise, if the rightsholder doesn't come forward, the money is forfeited.

(What happens to the money at that point? I think this is a great thing for people to argue about while the rest of us get the kind of copyright reform we need.)

(Likewise, what happens if the money gets refunded to someone impersonating the rights holder? That's also a wonderful thing to let people argue about while we get the kind of copyright reform we need.)

ssl-3 20 hours ago

Those are great answers.

I'd like to propose the following additions to help tie it all together:

Copyright must be registered. Registration requires sending a digital copy to some officious government body, such as the Library of Congress, for preservation. (It used to be ~about this way; it can be this way again. Disk is cheap. Git and email both exist. It can be figured out.)

This registration will be open and publicly-available to query (online, of course, but also by phone, and mail, and just by walking in the front door and asking), so the question of "Who to pay" is always easily answered.

All forfeited money from licensing goes to help pay for the preservation of the collected works, and for the ongoing expense of providing the registration database. It won't be nearly enough to cover those expenses, and that's fine: This means that the balance always has a place to land.

Copyright should not span generations. It should still time out completely, and do so after a period that is shorter than a normal human lifespan.

If a person saw a film when they were 5 that they really enjoyed, and if they manage to live long enough, then they should eventually be able to walk into the Library of Congress, give them some money, and walk out with a physical copy of it, and be able to freely upload that copy of it to YouCloud for their great, great grandchildren (and indeed, the world) to see, and be able to do all of this without becoming a criminal.

(How much money? Something in the realm of 15 Big Macs worth of dollars sounds about right.)

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  • shagie 20 hours ago

    > Copyright must be registered.

    https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_04_e.htm

        Members shall comply with Articles 1 through 21 of the Berne Convention (1971) and the Appendix thereto. However, Members shall not have rights or obligations under this Agreement in respect of the rights conferred under Article 6bis of that Convention or of the rights derived therefrom.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

        Author's rights under the Berne Convention must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration.
    This would require the country to back out of the Berne Convention and TRIPS (and by implication the WTO). Protection of copyright is automatic and does not require registration.

    Just because I haven't sent the latest batch of photographs to the Library of Congress for registration (so I can collect punitive damages rather than just compensatory damages) doesn't mean that the images that I have created are not copyrighted and protected.

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    • ssl-3 20 hours ago

      I'm aware of the Berne Convention. It can be vacated. Sweeping changes have sweeping effects.

      I can't conceive of a way for any of this hypothetical copyright system to work (ie, to not fall completely apart) without requiring registration.

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shagie 20 hours ago

Which government? Who controls the account?

How do I claim it?

How does this work across national boundaries? (e.g. how does someone in Wakanda license a work created by someone in the US? How does someone in the US license a work created by someone in Wakanda?)

What happens if the government refuses to pay me (or return the money to me after the period of time has elapsed)?

What happens if the government refuses to acknowledge the escrow and uses the money themselves?

---

I would contend that this suggestion puts too much faith in governments and their handling of money, record keeping, and not using financial tools to penalize individuals and countries.

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  • gwbas1c 20 hours ago

    > I would contend that this suggestion puts too much faith in governments

    Copyright only works if you have faith in your government to create and enforce laws.

    Otherwise, if you don't have faith in your government, you have bigger problems than a poor system of copyright.

    ---

    Anyway, all of your points are wonderful things to argue about while we get the kind of copyright reform we need. When we argue about details like this, we can assume that compulsory licensing is a good concept overall.

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    • shagie 20 hours ago

      Which government do I need to have faith in for enforcing the copyright for a citizen of Wakanda who is infringing upon my work?

      The floor of copyright reform is set by TRIPS and the WTO. That's 50 years. If one wants to try to set another floor, it involves every country in the WTO to agree on that. Setting an floor that expires sooner is likely a non-starter given concerns about things getting slurped up into AI models.

      Mandatory licensing is a "no". I should not be required to license my material to anyone. I do not want my works of photography, fiction, or software development to be mandatorily licensed to someone who could then take it and make derivative works that I don't want them to. Consider how many people object to their CC work being included in AI models.

      Much of the suggestions of copyright reform would involve the relevant country to leave the WTO and withdraw from the TRIPS agreement. That is unlikely to happen.

      Resetting copyright to the floor dictated by TRIPS would be a possibility that a country could entertain.

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      • gwbas1c 19 hours ago

        > Mandatory licensing is a "no". I should not be required to license my material to anyone. I do not want my works of photography, fiction, or software development to be mandatorily licensed to someone who could then take it and make derivative works that I don't want them to. Consider how many people object to their CC work being included in AI models.

        You just made the argument for mandatory licensing.

        Why?

        Piracy is about to become a lot harder to prosecute. (See the news coverage of the Cox case in the Supreme Court.) All those usages of your work that you object to (which many people consider fair use), are about to become much harder to prosecute.

        Thus, shortening the period of exclusive control and introducing a period of mandatory licensing allows you to get paid in situations where it is extremely hard to prosecute for copyright infringement.

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      • kmeisthax 14 hours ago

        > If one wants to try to set another floor, it involves every country in the WTO to agree on that.

        This is less of a tough sell than you think. In pretty much every IP-related trade negotiation, you can divide the world into two categories:

        * Ultra-rich countries that want to push through every insane IP idea they have (life+50, DMCA 1201, etc) onto as many other countries as possible

        * Everyone else

        Notably, the ultra rich are all "dealmaker countries". They're the ones dictating the terms of international trade to everyone else and whatever terms they insist upon will be accepted without question. So yeah, if, say, South Africa or India want shorter terms, they still have to respect America's terms, at least up to life+50. But if the US wants shorter terms out of India, they will get shorter terms out of India, come hell or high water.

        Conversely, Mexico has life+100 terms, but nobody is trying to use them to ratchet up terms elsewhere. They're a deal taker.

        The real question is if another ultra-rich country will stop one that tries to lower the Berne minimum. Keep in mind that the ultra-rich subdivide into groups that, in order of relative IP insanity, are: Europe, Japan, and then the US in the crazy slot. If the US were to, say, repeal DMCA 1201; Europe would cheer and Japan would grumble.

        Actually, the Berne convention happened during a time when Europe was the copyright basketcase and America was in the "everyone else" category[0]. The US had 28+14 terms up until 1976, and we didn't join the Berne Convention until 1988 - almost a hundred years late[1]! So if the US were to drop the Berne floor, you could totally imagine the EU going insane and trying to trade war the US out of it. But at the same time, the EU isn't very good at fighting trade wars with other ultra-rich blocs. Or at the very least, they fold very easily.

        [0] For exactly the same reason why China is today. China is in the same position America was a century ago, where it had a huge manufacturing base and basically no cares about copyright.

        [1] In particular, the US really, really hated automatic registration. While it is true that you don't have to register copyright and users of creative works have to treat everything as copyrighted; creators still have to register anyway if they want to actually enforce their rights. And if they don't do it right away they don't get statutory damages, which are almost always the only damages that matter. So you get all the problems of automatic registration with all the problems of copyright formalities.

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        • shagie 13 hours ago

          The US couldn't drop to the Berne floor... because it is a member of the WTO and restricted by TRIPS which has a floor of 50 years.

          Going to anything less than 50 years would entail leaving the WTO and backing out of TRIPS. That in turn would be disastrous to the companies that work with information (music, movies, microcode (software), and ̶h̶i̶g̶h̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶i̶z̶z̶a̶ ̶d̶e̶l̶i̶v̶e̶r̶y̶).

          Want to do away with registration for punitive damages? Absolutely. On the other hand, want to make it so that anyone can wholesale copy my photographs and sell them for pennies after a few years? No.

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