On 5/21/07, marbux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 5/21/07, Bob Crandell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, 2007-05-20 at 17:48 -1000, marbux wrote: > I don't have a problem with copyrights if they are limited to 5 years or > less and are not renewable. This gives the inventor some time to re > coop the cost of inventing and then gives everybody else a shot at it. > > You're right, patents, just say no. > Yes, copyrights would bother me a lot less if they were limited to a very short term. But I do think that regardless, we need to go back into an opt-in copyright system rather than the opt-out system we suddenly acquired 20 years ago.
How would you propose that this opt-in system be implemented? Surely not through some sort of registry process. Not only could that be made sufficiently difficult to effectively exclude small organizations and individuals, but as the patent system has proven, there would be far too few available resources to keep it maintained and valid. I still think I favor the opt-out system, but the only workable opt-in system I could imagine is one where a work simply had to have a copyright notice attached to it to be copyrighted. It seems to me that a system like that is only semantic nuance away from the current opt out system. I suppose that at least disambiguates an unmarked work, but then how to handle "pre revolution" works that are unmarked? It seems that this would create a whole new class of abuses wherein a work could remove a mark from a work and re-use it without the authors consent. When challenged, the infringer could then claim that his copy was obtained without a mark and theuthor must have made a mistake. In that case, the author would have little recourse. In formulating my thoughts on this I almost convinced myself that you are correct, but it still seems to me that the current opt out system gives balances the rights of the authors vs. the public appropriately by defaulting to the rights of the author. At least, they would if the terms were reasonable at 5, maybe 10 years, ando/or were only assignable to "natural citizens" (ie - not corporations ( I think I'm using that correctly...)) The opt-out approach creates far more
problems than it cures. E.g., try to find a web content editor click-through contributor license for a wiki that addresses the problem of republication via mirrors and RDF/XML syndication, and RSS syndication if there is a requirement of attribution. As though Wikipedia might feasibly syndicate the names of all people who contributed to any given page. In the Creative Commons set of licenses, we're back to the ground zero Non-attribution 1.0 license. So everyone kinds of shrugs and ignores copyrights. And the opt-out approach creates those kinds of rats' nests all over the place.
It does create these sorts of ambiguities, but I think that these problems _could_ be sufficiently addressed on the front end (by the click-thrus you mention) if the issue were given sufficient thought. It still seems to me that the opt-out system is the least of several evils, and goes the furthest to protect authors without undue strain on anyone. -- -Regards- -Quentin Hartman-
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