Abandonware?

[Agathon]

Copyright law exists to protect the rights of the producers of copyrightable material. As I said, and you would agree I think, it was put into place because without it, many people would not produce the works they otherwise would, which would hurt the public. So in that sense, the law benefits the public. However, the law was not created for that specific purpose; it was created for the quite selfish purpose of protecting the creator of the works.

No it wasn't.

Owned...

It was created to make sure that these works were produced to benefit society (in fact the earliest copyright laws were a form of censorship = but that's another story). That utilitarian understanding of copyright has been upheld by the SCOTUS in every decision it ever made -- and US copyright law was the model for everyone else's.

Copyright law benefits producers only as a means of benefiting consumers, since it is the consumption of ideas that is valuable, not the production of them. If copyright laws no longer served the public good, that would be the end of them... whatever the producers said.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I would rather see copyright for things like books and films go back to 60 years, and for things set to 20 years, at most.

and perhaps even shorter for abandoned product - say 10 years or less.

What, 60 years?

17 years is a long time for the producers to gain a reasonable monetary compensation for their efforts. As for computer games, 5 years is a long, long time. Most games are taken off the shelves in one year.

[Agathon]

I agree - have agreed the whole time - that copyright law is beneficial to both producers and consumers.

No one disagrees, but it is only beneficial to producers as a means of being beneficial to consumers (the public).

Let's see. From the US Constitution:

"Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: "Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

That doesn't say that the point of copyright is to benefit producers, but that benefiting producers is a means to the end of promoting the public goods of the sciences and arts.

This was a landmark case:

1834: Wheaton v. Peters

The case arose from a dispute between the official reporter of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Richard Peters, and the previous reporter, Henry Wheaton. Peters began publishing "Condensed Reports" of cases decided during Wheaton's tenure and Wheaton sued. The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Peters argued that Wheaton had failed to properly obtain copyright, while Wheaton argued that authors were entitled to perpetual property rights in their works. Justice McLean delivered the majority decision, stating that "since the statute of 8 Anne, the literary property of an author in his works can only be asserted under the statute. . . . That an author, at common law, has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress against any one who deprives him of it, or by improperly obtaining a copy endeavours to realise a profit by its publication cannot be doubted; but this is a very different right from that which asserts a perpetual and exclusive property in the future publication of the work, after the author shall have published it to the world." The decision struck a decisive blow against the notion of copyright as a perpetual natural right, and the utilitarian view of copyright embodied in the U.S. Constitution prevailed, i.e., "that patents and copyrights are exclusive rights of limited duration, granted in order to serve the public interest in promoting the creation and dissemination of new works." See the amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by Tyler Ochoa and Mark Rose in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, May 20, 2002.

All modern copyright law is based on this idea.

[dunk]

Originally posted by Agathon
This was a landmark case:

1834: Wheaton v. Peters

The case arose from a dispute between the official reporter of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Richard Peters, and the previous reporter, Henry Wheaton. Peters began publishing "Condensed Reports" of cases decided during Wheaton's tenure and Wheaton sued. The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Peters argued that Wheaton had failed to properly obtain copyright, while Wheaton argued that authors were entitled to perpetual property rights in their works. Justice McLean delivered the majority decision, stating that "since the statute of 8 Anne, the literary property of an author in his works can only be asserted under the statute. . . . That an author, at common law, has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress against any one who deprives him of it, or by improperly obtaining a copy endeavours to realise a profit by its publication cannot be doubted; but this is a very different right from that which asserts a perpetual and exclusive property in the future publication of the work, after the author shall have published it to the world." The decision struck a decisive blow against the notion of copyright as a perpetual natural right, and the utilitarian view of copyright embodied in the U.S. Constitution prevailed, i.e., "that patents and copyrights are exclusive rights of limited duration, granted in order to serve the public interest in promoting the creation and dissemination of new works." See the amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by Tyler Ochoa and Mark Rose in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, May 20, 2002.

All modern copyright law is based on this idea.

Yes it is. To serve the public interest in promoting the creation and dissemination of new works. Not to have someone else reproduce your work later to sell at a lower cost or disseminate freely. Copyright rulings from the 20th century have created the lifetime copyright in order to make it even more worthwhile to create these types of things and thus better serve the "public interest". The "public interest" is served by the creation of new works being produced. This ruling says nothing about works from 20 years ago.

Whether you like it or not, current copyright law prohibits the distribution of any media without the express permission of the copyright holder. And that was the exact intent of the law, to protect the producers of copyrightable material. The phrase about public interest has nothing to do with us being able to get books or music or computer games 15-20 years after original publication. It's to promote these arts by making them profitable business oppurtunities. It's so the works are created and disseminated in the first place, not so I can play Impossible Mission on my PC 20 years after its been published.

And patents have a duration of 17 years, not copyrights. Patents are longer for pharmaceutical substances.

Patents and copyrights are different. A patent is for a device, process, or idea. Copyright is for things like books, movies, and computer games. No one can ever prodcue a computer game called Civilization where you start out as a little covered wagon, build cities, and so on and so forth. You can make variations, but the exact game of Civilization is copyrighted and you can't prodcue it and sell it. But, now, anyone with the proper equipment can manufacture Tylenol (as long as they don't call it Tylenol, the name is copyrighted )

[dunk]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Which then follows that no company would develope NHL 2005 or similar and wait for other companies to develope it instead, hence no-one would be developing anything and consumers would suffer.

I think that was his point.

Pretty much, yes.

[Agathon]

Whether you like it or not, current copyright law prohibits the distribution of any media without the express permission of the copyright holder.

Whether you like it or not, the this is not the purpose of copyright law, but a means to an end.

If the law is not actually promoting the end, then it's time to scrap it. It makes no difference that we are talking about things from 20 years ago. That's my point, so come up with an actual argument please, if you wish to dispute it.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


What, 60 years?

17 years is a long time for the producers to gain a reasonable monetary compensation for their efforts. As for computer games, 5 years is a long, long time. Most games are taken off the shelves in one year.

IIUC the original idea was that an author had copyright in her lifetime, and that the fixed time of 60 years was to assure heirs of the same period of protection a (young) author would have had. For books at least, this doesnt seem all that unreasonable, and I dont recall hearing major griping with the old copyright law. The problems, I think are 1. The extension and 2. the new media.

As for games, I just bought the Paradox Strategy 6 pack, largely for eu2, which is what, 3 years old now?. Ive also recently bought a jewelcase version of Moo2. And again, we're not talking only about sales of the game itself, but issues with sequels, etc.

[dunk]

Originally posted by Agathon

Whether you like it or not, current copyright law prohibits the distribution of any media without the express permission of the copyright holder.

Whether you like it or not, the this is not the purpose of copyright law, but a means to an end.

If the law is not actually promoting the end, then it's time to scrap it. It makes no difference that we are talking about things from 20 years ago. That's my point, so come up with an actual argument please, if you wish to dispute it.

*points to the other parts of my post*

The "end" was to promote creation of these things. The law does so as it is now.

[Urban Ranger]

dp

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
For books at least, this doesnt seem all that unreasonable, and I dont recall hearing major griping with the old copyright law.

I reckon people did complain about it when the extension was first put into place. Probably prompted by Mickey Mouse about to fall into public domain, like what would happen this time around.