Just Another Reason Why Copyrights are BS by 6ixStringJack

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I agree.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 8:42 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Okay. Someone explain to me how no one having copyright to the idea of a black Spidey suit would have made this guy more money, or provided him with more recognition. I'm not seeing that as a logical conclusion.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 4:29 PM

Well... seeing as how the concept of Venom was created by this guy and Marvel owns the copyright (after paying a measley $220 for it), Marvel has made boatloads of cash off of his idea and he hasn't seen a dime since the original $220. Reps at Marvel even admitted this to be the case.

I was just pointing out another flaw in the popular belief that the copyrights are there to protect the artists, when the exact opposite in so many cases is true. I don't believe that copyrights are inherantly bad, but they don't serve their original purpose anymore. The rich get richer off of the talent of the uninitiated.

You're a real smart guy Geezer. Did you really not get that, or are you being deliberately obtuse here?

EDIT: Thanks SignyM.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:25 PM

NAFLM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Well... seeing as how the concept of Venom was created by this guy and Marvel owns the copyright (after paying a measley $220 for it), Marvel has made boatloads of cash off of his idea and he hasn't seen a dime since the original $220. Reps at Marvel even admitted this to be the case.

After reading the article I believe he came up with the idea of a black suit but not of Venom; the article states that the stories with the black suit were "far different than Schueller's original one-issue tale".

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by naflm:
After reading the article I believe he came up with the idea of a black suit but not of Venom; the article states that the stories with the black suit were "far different than Schueller's original one-issue tale".

A mere technicality. With the millions, bordering on billions that the suit has generated, surely you agree that he is entitled to more than $220.... even if he's not asking for it. Are you deliberately trying to miss the point as well?

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 8:04 PM

SIGMANUNKI

Copyrights are _not_ designed to protect artists from there own stupidity.

----
I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Saturday, May 26, 2007 8:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
Copyrights are _not_ designed to protect artists from there own stupidity.

This wasn't stupidity. This was a naive kid 25 years ago who knew far less than even you or I know about laws. Remember that a kid like him 25 years ago didn't have an internet to go to. There was no Consumerist.com back then. He was just an innocient kid with a good idea that was excited as hell to be a part of the comic creation process and Marvel exploited him and his idea.

Any artist today basically sells their soul to get a contract. It took years before you heard old classic rock songs on commercials, whereas today a groups newest song can usually be heard on an iPod or Target commercial weeks or months before the album comes out.

Quote:
Copyrights are _not_ designed to protect artists from there own stupidity.

Part of that is right.... drop off the "from their own stupidity." and you're absolutly right.

It baffles my mind how anybody can even stand behind the big companies and the RIAA and their blatent abuse of copyrights today. Are you a CEO at Sony, perhaps Sigma? I just don't get it.

EDIT: The stupidity/naivity debate is moot. Copyrights were designed to protect the creators of intellectual property and to assure they get their dues. This was their original intent and it was good. Copyrights were not meant to consolidate all of the intellectual property in the world in only a few hands, which is what is happening now. They're currently trying to make it so that copyrights never expire as well meaning that this property, that oftentimes is not even in the owner's or owner's families' hands anymore will make money for the companies forever.... or at least until we nuke the planet to death.

There is no arguing that this is the case. Any argument that I've ever had on my views about copyrights is that copyrights are designed to protect the artist and this is a prime example of the very opposite being true. Please don't use cop outs like that and recognize this issue for what it is.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 3:22 AM

NAFLM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by naflm:
After reading the article I believe he came up with the idea of a black suit but not of Venom; the article states that the stories with the black suit were "far different than Schueller's original one-issue tale".

A mere technicality. With the millions, bordering on billions that the suit has generated, surely you agree that he is entitled to more than $220.... even if he's not asking for it. Are you deliberately trying to miss the point as well?

No, I understand the point, I wasn't disputing it. However, Venom and a black suit are not mutually inclusive; either could occur without the other but Marvel chose to put them together. I was simply trying to clear up what appeared to be a misunderstanding.

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 4:01 AM

FREMDFIRMA

I do not believe in "intellectual property".

A physical product should be the only thing ever copyrighted, because when you go assigning IP rights to information, you restrict not only the creative processes, but you also restrict knowledge itself, taking it out of the hands of the many, and putting it in the hands of the few to exploit greviously at the expense of the many.

And it should NEVER, EVER apply to personal use only, even in that case - if you wanna build your own PS2 for example, and you go down to radio shack and buy/build the damn thing piece by piece, and you are the only one using it, that should not be a violation, no.

You wanna copy the CD you paid for, to YOUR MP3 player that you paid for, to listen to in YOUR own house, that you paid for, on YOUR own property, that's YOUR business.

Copyright should apply to physical products only, information of any sort should be free - and restricting it in this fashion is why the USA is rapidly sinking to the bottom on technical and innovation fronts - unintended consequences abound here, and rather than protecting innovations, ingenuity and invention, we've effectively destroyed it.

The ONE thing america really had going for it, was our driving ingenuity, and what did we do ?
We legislated it right out existance.

Some time in the far future, people are going to look back on this with the same vague horror as the prosecution of galileo, and for much the same reasons.

The entire concept is idiotic.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 5:08 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Frem- thank you for saying what I didn't have time to post yesterday. One of the things that I really hated Clinton for was the DMCA. (Another was NAFTA.)

One of the stupider copyrights: "one click" ordering. One of the stupider patents: the wheel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1418165.stm

Imagine where we would be today if the alphabet had been copyrighted and everyone had to pay for using it. Or if the distribution of the wheel had been limited to one person. Our inventions and entertainment - everything of a creative nature- are all based on past work and fertilized by present ideas. Copyrights do not benefit society generally, but they DO benefit large corporations, which can now hang on to copyrights for the life of the author plus seventy years. Patents cause a lot of "churning" in research: thinking up and exploiting all possible ways to either protect a patent with "thickets" of other patents, or to refresh a patent with minor tweaks. (All that "research" that the pharmas complain about being so expensive? Believe me, it's not "ground-breaking" research, it's all patent related. The REAL ground-breaking research goes on in universities and research hopsitals.)

This is one area where the Founding Fathers got it wrong. People create because they LIKE to create, not because they want tons o' bucks. The real creator of routers never made a dime off them. The creator of PCR tests - which is the founding of all our genetic research- was a university researcher. Researchers, inventors, and artists need money to do their thing, but they need it in advance of their creation, not afterwords, and turning creativity into a money-making scheme is what gives us the cr*p that we have on TV today and what killed Firefly.

Anyway, here's a good summary of the state of your creative rights today:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1213491

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 5:58 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I was just pointing out another flaw in the popular belief that the copyrights are there to protect the artists, when the exact opposite in so many cases is true. I don't believe that copyrights are inherantly bad, but they don't serve their original purpose anymore. The rich get richer off of the talent of the uninitiated.

You're a real smart guy Geezer. Did you really not get that, or are you being deliberately obtuse here?

"I was just pointing out another flaw in the popular belief that the copyrights are there to protect the artists..."
Copyright is there to provide protection for an artist, but just like a seatbelt, if you don't use it right it does no good. Copyright is not there to protect you from yourself. It's tough that the fellow signed away his conceptual right to the black Spidey suit, but if nothing on film had ever come of it, he'd be up the $220.00 and have a nice story to tell.

I just see a disconnect between "copyright doesn't always insure a fair result if the creator isn't careful", and "copyrights are BS". I'm sure that J.K. Rowling is glad there are copyright laws.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 5:58 AM

SIGMANUNKI

@6ixStringJack:

You couldn't be more wrong. Even when I just turned 18 (i.e. my signature became legally binding) I knew NEVER to sign anything unless I actually understood it. If this kid was stupid enough not to contact a lawyer /before/ he signed anything, then it's his own damn fault.

Btw, copyright DOES work. As a... large example, just look at the open-source community. It wouldn't work without copyright.

Also, copyright is NOT being herded into the hands of just a few. That's what's going on with patents, which is a /very/ different thing.

"""
It baffles my mind how anybody can even stand behind the big companies and the RIAA and their blatent abuse of copyrights today. Are you a CEO at Sony, perhaps Sigma? I just don't get it.
""""

How did what I say mean that I "stand behind the big companies", etc? I said no such thing.

Btw, in the future, instead of making yourself look like perfect ass, perhaps you should ask more questions instead of assuming the asinine.

----
I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 6:06 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
This is one area where the Founding Fathers got it wrong. People create because they LIKE to create, not because they want tons o' bucks.

You make this sound like an either/or proposition. Ask Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, or J. K. Rowling if they mind making a ton o' bucks. For that matter, could many creative people afford to be creative if they couldn't live from the return on their creative output? Would Noam Chomsky or Jared Diamond - or Ann Coulter, for that matter - have the time to write if they had to depend entirely on other sources of income?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Noam Chomsky and Jared Diamond are professors writing about their fields of expertise. JK Rowling wrote between jobs, for a short time on the dole. I'm sure she, and other commercial writers, don't mind making tons o' bucks. OTOH I personally find JK Rowling's writing to be a pastiche of ideas already in the public domain. (Where would Rowling be if she had to pony up every time she used the idea of a magic wand?)

AFA the free software copyleft... if copyrights were gone, copylefts wouldn't need to exist.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:37 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Would Noam Chomsky or Jared Diamond - or Ann Coulter, for that matter - have the time to write if they had to depend entirely on other sources of income?

And the world would be a better place by just that much, less drivel, more real authors getting paid and read just like they did before this copyright BS ever even existed.

And no, that's not just a personal opinion, because Jim Baen, of Baen Books, fully agrees with my take on it, so too does Eric Flint, David Drake, and many other authors, but really, it's Eric Flint who said it best.

Don't bother robbing me, twit. I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any "losses" I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience. - Eric Flint

And they were absolutely, utterly correct, and thus, the Baen Free Library was born.
http://www.baen.com/library/
There's a *great* rant by Eric on the front page too, that goes into more detail on it.

GOOD Authors got paid before copyright law existed, and will continue to do so long after it's finally thrown on the trash heap of history where it belongs - propagandists and shills ain't gonna starve neither, cause fools and their money are easily parted, especially when a "cause" is involved, not to mention financing by those who benefit from the shilling, so THAT argument is now effectively blown to powder and bits.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:35 AM

SOUPCATCHER

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
...
And they were absolutely, utterly correct, and thus, the Baen Free Library was born.
http://www.baen.com/library/
There's a *great* rant by Eric on the front page too, that goes into more detail on it.
...

I'm glad you brought up Eric Flint, Frem. He's one of my favorite authors, in part, because of his attitude towards his customers. Some additional details... Mr. Flint publishes snippets from his upcoming books up to the date of release ( http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/category/snippets/ ). He also encourages fan fiction and has published many short stories by fans and included their developed plot points into his created Assiti Shards multiverse (also known as the 1632 universe). Most of these stories have been published in eBook form but at least three are out in hardcover (Ring of Fire, Grantville Gazette Vol I and II* - and Ring of Fire II is due out soon).

It's just a better way, in my opinion, of thinking about the creative process. Flint's creation has become a lot richer (and more marketable) through the input of others than it would've been if he had clamped down and gone all Disney on the fans.

And I wish that someone with foresight on the Firefly side of things had taken a similar path wrt fan work.

* edited to add: I found the following paragraph from the wikipedia entry on the Grantville Gazette especially telling:

Quote:
excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantville_Gazette
This first gazette was envisioned as an e-magazine experiment funded by Baen Books, originally to be published solely as a monthly electronic serialized-book anthology from Baen Books. The experimental joint venture between author-editor Flint and publisher Jim Baen was so successful that the e-magazine has become a sustained, self-funding operation of its own, now with Grantville Gazette VII in pre-production and Grantville Gazette VI released in March 2006 as a serialized e-magazine. ...

They're now up to Gazette XII. Sustained. Self-funding. And breaking the publishing cherry for many new authors. For more details: http://www.grantvillegazette.com/

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:18 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Noam Chomsky and Jared Diamond are professors writing about their fields of expertise.

Chomsky writes about linguistics?

But anyway, don't you think that the income from their books makes it easier for them to continue writing? and don't the profits their publishers expect to make from their books insure that those ideas get printed and widely distributed?

Quote:
JK Rowling wrote between jobs, for a short time on the dole. I'm sure she, and other commercial writers, don't mind making tons o' bucks.

So you'd prefer Rowling were still on the dole, and that commercial writers couldn't earn a living?

I really don't understand this. If you make something, whether it be a book, or a picture, or a chair, or a computer program, or a chocolate cake, isn't it yours to do with as you will? Should anyone be able to come take your book or chair or cake without recompense?

Quote:
OTOH I personally find JK Rowling's writing to be a pastiche of ideas already in the public domain. (Where would Rowling be if she had to pony up every time she used the idea of a magic wand?)

But her "pastiche of ideas" apparently sells well. Doesn't she deserve to benefit from the fruits of her labor, regardless of your opinion of her work?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:34 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
So you'd prefer Rowling were still on the dole, and that commercial writers couldn't earn a living?

Looks to me like Eric Flint is doing a damn good job of it without robbing me of my tax dollars on top of it to pay for the copyright law gestapo, and I will be DAMNED before allowing the powers that be to add *ANOTHER* psychotic alphabet agency to enforce bullshit laws over this.

Don't we have *enough* jackbooted goons trampling us already ?

Quote:
If you make something, whether it be a book, or a picture, or a chair, or a computer program, or a chocolate cake, isn't it yours to do with as you will? Should anyone be able to come take your book or chair or cake without recompense?

Take mine, no, but if you can write that book as well or better than me, if you can bake that cake recipe better than me, or what have you - if you think YOU can clone my work with your own damned resources and do a good job of it, go right ahead, and if you can take the core product and IMPROVE it, that's free enterprise, the so-called free market you pretend to support when it benefits you, but are in this thread all so fired to shut down when it doesn't.

This again is a PERFECT example of why I call you out when the words "Free Market" leave your mouth Geeze, because you don't really believe in it.

And this brings to mind an episode of real class on behalf of a young man I know well, he is the son of a friend and runs a small thrashmetal band which isn't half bad.

So while they were jamming it up at a fest, they started doin each others stuff as covers, and one other band did some of his bands stuff and did *such* a superior job of it that Joe walked over there and handed them one of his bands T-shirts with a copy of the song and lyrics and told em they had his nod to play it anytime and place they wanted to, cause they just plain rocked it.

That was serious class on behalf of the Joemeister.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:56 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Looks to me like Eric Flint is doing a damn good job of it without robbing me of my tax dollars on top of it to pay for the copyright law gestapo, and I will be DAMNED before allowing the powers that be to add *ANOTHER* psychotic alphabet agency to enforce bullshit laws over this.

Looking at my copy of 1632, I see "Copyright 2000 by Eric Flint". I've had to pay market price for every one of Mr. Flint's books I own, and every one by Baen Publishing. I'd bet that the ones I checked out from the library didn't get there for free either. I hit the 1632 site and the boards on the Baen site frequently, and have downloaded the Grantville Gazette (for a fee). If you don't have internet, you're out'a luck there.

If Mr. Flint, et al, want to peddle their works copyright-free (which I haven't seen happen) fine with me. Does this mean no one should have copyright protection? I don't think so.

Quote:
So while they were jamming it up at a fest, they started doin each others stuff as covers, and one other band did some of his bands stuff and did *such* a superior job of it that Joe walked over there and handed them one of his bands T-shirts with a copy of the song and lyrics and told em they had his nod to play it anytime and place they wanted to, cause they just plain rocked it.

So it was his choice to acknowledge a good performance of his work. What if another band had butchered both his music and lyrics, and then claimed "This is a song by Joemeister"? Should he have any recourse, or can they just abuse his craft?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:25 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
This again is a PERFECT example of why I call you out when the words "Free Market" leave your mouth Geeze, because you don't really believe in it.

Most people consider "free market" to be your freedon to sell what you create at whatever price the market will pay. If your concept of "free market" is one in which you are free to steal someone else's work and sell it as your own, Yep, I'm against that.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 12:52 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yeah but Geezer, don't the creators of the magic wand concept ALSO deserve some return for their work?

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Sunday, May 27, 2007 1:55 PM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Yeah but Geezer, don't the creators of the magic wand concept ALSO deserve some return for their work?

As you noted, magic wands are in the public domain. Their copyright (if there ever was one) has expired. At some point, Ms. Rowling's copyright will also expire, and Harry Potter, Hogwarts, and Quiddich will also be fair game for everyone.

But aside, from your attempt at misdirection...

Consider that every word exists somewhere in a dictionary. So every book anyone could write already exists, in potential. But it's the order of those words, and their combinations with other words, which a writer uses to create a unique story. It's the story, not the individual words within it, that is the writer's creation, and property.

A bundle of lumber can become a Sam Maloof chair, but not until Mr. Maloof uses his skills to create it. Should the chair then be available for anyone to take? Should someone with lesser skill be able to make a chair and call it a Sam Maloof chair?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:35 AM