7 comments

  • theragra3 hours ago
    As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.
    • damnitbuilds0 minutes ago
      Almost all works make all their money in the first five years after creation.<p>5 years is therefore a very reasonable copyright term limit, that will benefit almost all creators and benefit - not penalise - the society that lets them have copyright in the first place, i.e. us.<p>Fuck the copyright cartels.
    • edent2 hours ago
      &quot;Up to death&quot; would provide a perverse incentive for people to kill creators in order to liberate something from copyright.
      • kibwen1 hour ago
        Taking the death date into account is literally already how prevailing copyright law works. You can just make it conditional on publish date.
        • edent24 minutes ago
          Sure, but Life + 70 means it is unlikely that anyone will benefit from the death <i>soon</i>.
      • benj11128 minutes ago
        TBF there&#x27;s currently a massive perverse incentive in that we want to encourage creators to create, but then allow the successful ones to retire making money from past works.
      • cubefox1 hour ago
        Maybe 100 years after birth instead.
        • cestith10 minutes ago
          That’s a disincentive to authors in their later years if it’s a straight rule.<p>We’d need something like a minimum of 20 years or up to their 100th birthday or something.
    • B1FF_PSUVM3 hours ago
      It&#x27;s rather incongruous that you register intellectual property for very little - and have states enforcing your rights for free - while a piece of land pays property taxes.
      • tacticalturtle30 minutes ago
        The state isn’t enforcing your rights for free - you still have to hire a lawyer and pay legal expenses yourself.<p>The state is just providing the infrastructure where you are allowed to make a claim, if you choose to do so.<p>This is like complaining that businesses get to use roads for free - ignoring that we all pay taxes already and built this infrastructure for enabling exactly that purpose.
        • cestith10 minutes ago
          Copyright infringement in the United States has both civil and criminal elements at law.
      • simonh3 hours ago
        Creators pay tax on their income.<p>We all get legal protections for our property.
        • boomlinde1 hour ago
          Real property owners also pay tax on their income. Income is taxed. Real property is taxed. Intellectual property is not.
          • simonh1 hour ago
            I&#x27;m in the UK. Simply owning land does not incur taxes here, we don&#x27;t have land value taxes. You pay capital gains tax on profits selling land. There are annual taxes on buildings such as council taxes on houses, specifically to pay for municipal services, but not generally on land.<p>If I make goods I&#x27;m not taxed for owning them, only if I earn income from the sale or use of those goods.
            • closewith51 minutes ago
              There are some analogues of a land tax in the UK. Council tax for residential property, rates for businesses, and the upcoming mansion tax.
          • brookst1 hour ago
            IP is next to impossible to appraise, unlike land.<p>It’s pretty easy to ballpark what a lot of house or office building is worth based on comparables that sold recently. IP doesn’t sell that much and comparisons are harder.
            • closewith54 minutes ago
              This is actually a solved problem. It is self-assessed valuation with compulsory sale at declared value, known as the Harberger Tax.
              • ralferoo16 minutes ago
                This is only a solution if you think it&#x27;s fair to have a regular ownership tax on top of the tax paid when purchasing &#x2F; selling something.
      • stevekemp2 hours ago
        &gt; while a piece of land pays property taxes.<p>In some countries taxes are annual.<p>In the UK you pay taxes when you buy&#x2F;sell property, or land. You don&#x27;t need to pay land&#x2F;property taxes every year.
        • lanceflt2 hours ago
          Council taxes are property taxes and are monthly.
          • dghf1 hour ago
            Well, technically they&#x27;re annual, but you&#x27;re allowed to pay them in arrears over 10 or 12 months.
      • ivell3 hours ago
        IPR is a form of incentive for creators in service of betterment of the society (it also could be detrimental like Mein Kempf though). On the other hand real estate does not need such extra incentives. Need or greed is enough.
        • GuestFAUniverse3 hours ago
          The book title is &quot;Mein K_a_mpf&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s related to the latin &quot;c_a_mpus&quot; &#x2F; battle field -- like most European languages, there are close relationships to the neighbors. While there were shifts in sounds: in this case not.
      • piaste2 hours ago
        The enforcement isn&#x27;t the issue, it&#x27;s the scarcity.
  • jlv215 minutes ago
    Archive link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;GxEPr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;GxEPr</a>
    • donohoe10 minutes ago
      Sadly archive[dot]ph uses its site to perform a DDoS against a blogger they don&#x27;t like, and are manipulating pages. They&#x27;ve been dropped by Wikipedia.<p>There is also this version:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20260301183248&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;copyrightlately.com&#x2F;mondrian-public-domain-controversy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20260301183248&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;copyright...</a>
  • bonzini3 hours ago
    I read &quot;The duration of the U.S. protection for all other works… was for 70 years from the artist’s date of death&quot; and thought wow, did Mondrian really live into the 1960s or so?<p>Next paragraph: &quot;Mondrian died in 1944. Any of his works subject to a life-plus-70 regime would have entered the public domain&quot; 10 years ago. Who even thought of including that in a legal argument??
    • input_sh1 hour ago
      Life + 70 has always been an oversimplification, we still haven&#x27;t even reached 70 years since the introduction of these rules (1973 in the US, in other countries depends on when the US strogarmed them into adopting similar rules).<p>There&#x27;s all sorts of quirks for anything published before that rule got standardised more-or-less worldwide, but in general 1930-1945 is still like a legal grey area that can be challenged in court and you should be good to go for anything published before that. And don&#x27;t get me even started on posthumous publications, that&#x27;s a whole different can of worms where a family member might claim some contribution (like for example Anne Frank&#x27;s father), pushing the copyright further to the life of the author + life of that family member + 70.
    • Someone2 hours ago
      based on your comment (the site is unresponsive, so I cannot check what exactly it says) I think the article is incorrect.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Works_created_before_1978" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...</a>:<p><i>“For works published or registered before 1978, the maximum copyright duration is 95 years from the date of publication, if copyright was renewed during the 28th year following publication. Copyright renewal has been automatic since the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992.<p>For works created before 1978, but not published or registered before 1978, the standard §302 copyright duration of 70 years from the author&#x27;s death also applies. Prior to 1978, works had to be published or registered to receive copyright protection. Upon the effective date of the 1976 Copyright Act (which was January 1, 1978) this requirement was removed and these unpublished, unregistered works received protection. However, Congress intended to provide an incentive for these authors to publish their unpublished works. To provide that incentive, these works, if published before 2003, would not have their protection expire before 2048.”</i>
      • masfuerte2 hours ago
        You quote a section about unpublished work. The painting was published nearly a hundred years ago so the quote isn&#x27;t relevant. If you think the article is wrong please state how.
        • Someone1 hour ago
          I don’t see that. <i>“For works published or registered before 1978, the maximum copyright duration is 95 years from the date of publication, if copyright was renewed during the 28th year following publication”</i> may not apply here, but if so, it isn’t because the work was published.
  • PowerElectronix2 hours ago
    Copyright doing what it does best. Killing new works that resemble a bit too much anything under its protection and allowing rentseekers to live off others.
  • damnitbuilds5 minutes ago
    We GIVE creators copyright to serve us by encouraging CREATION.<p>Mondrian died decades ago. He is not creating any more. Copyright of his works is not serving us any more.<p>Copyright should have ended when the balance between encouraging his creation and encouraging others to create based on his works was reached. i.e. About 5 years after he made the piece.<p>Fuck the copyright parasites whining about this.
  • comrade12343 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • jacquesm3 hours ago
    The Mondrian estate... don&#x27;t get me started on that one.
    • benj11122 minutes ago
      Surely the issue is estates (in this sense) in general. Did anyone in the estate actually know the guy whose legacy they&#x27;re supposed to be protecting?<p>How does paying money to Mondrian&#x27;s great great great great grandchildren enhance society?