Songs for Saturday: Copying Is Not Theft

[mdlbear]

This wonderful little video came in by way of Google+ this morning, and I figured I'd share it: Copying Is Not Theft - YouTube

It comes from QuestionCopyright.org | A Clearinghouse For New Ideas About Copyright. Here's another: Credit is Due (The Attribution Song) | QuestionCopyright.org. Just because copying isn't theft, it doesn't mean that it isn't sometimes wrong. Credit is always due, and sometimes payment is, too. (Though I personally believe that the term of a copyright should be exactly the same as that of a patent, namely 20 years.)

And All Creative Work Is Derivative isn't really a song, but it's a brilliant piece of choreography. Using statues.

You can find the whole collection of ""Minute Memes" here at QuestionCopyright.org.

Comments

[mdlbear]

I don't like this at all -- it means that cultural icons like the Mouse would be permanently off limits.

Part of the original idea behind copyright, and it still applies to patents, is that works move rather quickly into the public domain, after the original creator has had a chance to exploit them during their few most profitable years. Once in the public domain, other people can build on them.

[elf]

While I don't like The Mouse being perpetually off-limits, I have my doubts that Disney would pay $66,100 per cartoon to keep them out of the public reach for the current length of copyright, much less another $50k for every 25 year block after that.

Every movie. Every individual cartoon. Every book. Every themed set of valentine cards. Every figurine. Each individual work would have to be renewed and paid for. I suspect that a lot of the backlist would immediately be released into the public domain, because even Disney doesn't have pockets deep enough to pay tens of thousands of dollars per artistic work just to prevent other people from copying or making derivatives.

The ones they still want to exploit, they'll keep--and while copyright law was built with the notion that they're not allowed to do so indefinitely, that principle was already shot to hell in Eldred v. Ashcroft. I'd rather deal with something that said, "you want it forever? Pay for it forever"--with the notion that it's "limited" because no company has infinite money (no less sensible than the current ruling, IMHO)--and allows the content that's not considered financially exploitable to be released.

The Mouse is already covered by trademark, and can't be used in ways that would result in public confusion about what's official-and-authorized. That's a different part of IP law entirely. (I think a lot of the problems are caused by corporations trying to extend trademark laws to cover all copyrights.)