Copyright Discussion and Debate

Abhorsen

Local Degenerate
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Osaul
That varies WILDLY by State in the US, as in the US property law is entirely controlled by the States. Further, Adverse Possession isn't automatic, it has to be litigated through the courts and it's entirely possible for someone who was "on the land long enough" to lose such a case.
Yeah, but it is pretty prevalent in the US, and a pretty big exception to your claim that improving land won't make it yours. Note I largely agree with you, you just are wrong on this point.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I'm not sure how to prove a self evidence fact of the world.
Hint: if it was self-evident, then all reasonable men would agree with it. Not only do I disagree with it, but so do a large faction of literary academics like Kembrew McLeod as well as people before the rise of Hobbesian Individualism. That's a sign that it isn't self-evident.

Except that... that is what copyright laws are premised on, controlling the expression of ideas by society. Do you reject that society, rather than direct individual control, is an acceptable avenue of asserting control? For someone raging against enlightenment idealism, you appear to be leaning into enlightenment individualism quite heavily here. We accept societal restrictions on personal actions for all manner of things because we believe that it leads to better societal results.
No, it is not "society" that controls the expression of ideas under intellectual property law. If intellectual property is property, then it is the IP holder that is the controller of these expressions, and he delegates the state to uphold his right as a part of the common good. But more on that later.

Now, I understand that there may be some ambiguity to how the word "control" is being used here, so let me be clear: "control" as I am using it is similar to the control one could have if one has intellect and will. In other words, I control things if I can use them as an extension of my will. Human beings are the sort of creatures that can do this because they have free will. An animal cannot do this because they have no free will, only brute appetite dictated by physical law. My thoughts, my actions, and the products of human thought and action are all things I control this way.

Now, because thoughts are immaterial things, we can't buy and sell them like we can material things. Furthermore, there are my thoughts about something and there are your thoughts about a story. The only thing that unites them is that they are about the same concept, namely the story. But the story itself isn't a thought. It's a universal, an idea. So you don't have ownership over my thoughts about a story just because you came to think about that story first anymore than you could claim ownership of all particular apples just because you grew the first apple tree in history (say).

To understand where this is going wrong, let us establish the purpose of the state. The state could only enforce something if it's in the interest of the common good, because that is the only good in which we all share. As an Aristotelian, I hold that the only candidate for the common good would be the common virtuous social order. Upholding that is the purpose of the state. Now, the state does control what I do with my property and my body because it has this right. And defending property rights on behalf of individual property owners is a part of this because part of upholding a virtuous social order is defending justice. But the state is not the determiner of who gets what. That's a job for natural law, which is prior to the state ontologically speaking.

1. Creation of 'original property.'
Nice question-begging. That Mickey Mouse is "original" is exactly what we're arguing over. I say it isn't, and I have good reason to say it isn't. You say it is because "Mickey Mouse didn't exist before Disney came up with him." Well, yes, but Walt Disney didn't create the Mouse in a vacuum. Mickey Mouse is a combination of differing concepts Disney connected together, and this does not suffice to show him to be the owner.

To show what's wrong with the "creation" argument, I'll quote Stephan Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property:

One problem with the creation-based approach is that it almost invariably protects only certain types of creations— unless, that is, every single useful idea one comes up with is subject to ownership (more on this below). But the distinction between the protectable and the unprotectable is necessarily arbitrary. For example, philosophical or mathematical or scientific truths cannot be protected under current law on the grounds that commerce and social intercourse would grind to a halt were every new phrase, philosophical truth, and the like considered the exclusive property of its creator. For this reason, patents can be obtained only for so-called “practical applications” of ideas, but not for more abstract or theoretical ideas. Rand agrees with this disparate treatment, in attempting to distinguish between an unpatentable discovery and a patentable invention. She argues that a “scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known” is not created by the discoverer.

But the distinction between creation and discovery is not clearcut or rigorous. Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights. No one creates matter; they just manipulate and grapple with it according to physical laws. In this sense, no one really creates anything. They merely rearrange matter into new arrangements and patterns. An engineer who invents a new mousetrap has rearranged existing parts to provide a function not previously performed. Others who learn of this new arrangement can now also make an improved mousetrap. Yet the mousetrap merely follows laws of nature. The inventor did not invent the matter out of which the mousetrap is made, nor the facts and laws exploited to make it work.

In other words, if Disney can own Mickey, why can't Einstein own E=MC^2? I hold there's no distinction to be made between the two, yet IP advocates never consider having Einstein own E=MC^2. Now given the inherent intertextuality of cultural works, I hold that everything written is like Mickey Mouse, and I see no evidence against this basic empirical observation. Therefore, your argument fails.

2. The existence of debased derivative works is not evidence of a lack of great art.
Strawman argument. I never said that "the existence of debased derivative works is not evidence of a lack of great art, and neither does the culture industry theory's original formulation. In fact, let me quote the Wikipedia:
The term culture industry (German: Kulturindustrie) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity. Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances. The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer especially perceived mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more technically and intellectually difficult high arts. In contrast, true psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by Herbert Marcuse. (See Eros and Civilization, 1955).
Now, I wouldn't endorse everything that the critical theorists say about the Culture Industry. Contra Marx, I see commodification as the outcome of a modern, degenerate view of property rights as opposed to the outcome of property rights as such. Thus, my view of the culture industry, which is based on Marxist commodification, differs as well. But notice how the mechanism that endangers high arts isn't the production of more cheap crap, but the systematic way high arts and other intellectually stimulating activities become disincentivized by consumerism (aka the "cultivation of false psychological needs").

You're increasingly coming across as someone who is so absorbed in reading up on particular philosophers and philosophies, that you're actually blind to the world around you.
This coming from the guy who doesn't even pay attention to my arguments.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
This coming from the guy who doesn't even pay attention to my arguments.

I've paid attention to your arguments. They're crap, and I've yet to see you effectively counter a single point made by anyone arguing with you. The thing is, you're so far down the rabbit hole, that you can't see the disconnect from your patterns of thought, and the thoughts of others.

You're quoting critical theorists in support of your own position, and asserting that others are making arguments based on specific philosophers, even though we point-blank say that no, we aren't arguing based on those philosophers.

This is a classic case of someone not trying to just assert their own position, but assert what the opposition's argument is, and why it is therefore wrong.

Of course if you get to define both sides of the argument, you can define your own position as right.

I'm wondering if it's worth even bothering try to argue with you anymore, as your counter-arguments keep looking like this:
Hint: if it was self-evident, then all reasonable men would agree with it. Not only do I disagree with it, but so do a large faction of literary academics like Kembrew McLeod as well as people before the rise of Hobbesian Individualism. That's a sign that it isn't self-evident.

Referencing philosophers and something akin to 'majority opinion' as a naked appeal to authority, rather than addressing the meat of the argument.

I'll make one more stab at it anyways. Let's make this really simple.

If Freddie Mercury had not written Bohemian Rhapsody, and Queen performed it, would the song have existed?
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Hint: if it was self-evident, then all reasonable men would agree with it. Not only do I disagree with it, but so do a large faction of literary academics like Kembrew McLeod as well as people before the rise of Hobbesian Individualism. That's a sign that it isn't self-evident.
You keep citing literary academics.

As someone who's, yanno, actually got a DEGREE from said literary academics, let me tell you a little, terribly kept secret: they're a bunch of marxist who have a strict ideological and irrational objection to ALL property rights and engage in explicit intellectual efforts to justify those irrational objections and propagandize them. Literary academics since the 1980s, at least, have been one of the single most propaganda laden and pushing fields of study in the academy. Your constant reliance on them does you no service as I find almost all their reasoning to be specious at best, and blatantly propaganda at worse. Also, it's an appeal to authority logical fallacy, especially since I've made it abundantly clear I reject the academic's authority on all things literature and creative.

Nice question-begging. That Mickey Mouse is "original" is exactly what we're arguing over. I say it isn't, and I have good reason to say it isn't. You say it is because "Mickey Mouse didn't exist before Disney came up with him." Well, yes, but Walt Disney didn't create the Mouse in a vacuum. Mickey Mouse is a combination of differing concepts Disney connected together, and this does not suffice to show him to be the owner.

To show what's wrong with the "creation" argument, I'll quote Stephan Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property:
OK, so. This is a HUGE disconnect that you have yet to bridge, and it's one you've very much failed to do so. To most of us, that Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse is a self evident fact. You object and say he didn't because... why exactly? You have two main arguments I can see... the weaker of which amounts to appeals to authority, and the second of which is the argument that all creative works are intertextual and thus cannot be original.

That said, I think you're getting caught up to much on the idea of being "original". In a sense, very few ideas are original, but copyright, while it uses the term "original", doesn't really mean "original" in the sense you seem to think it means. Rather, the core thing copyright focuses on is "uniqueness", that a collection of ideas is a unique collection. This is an area where you have utterly failed to show that intertextuality invalidates, as while most works do not contain any truly original ideas, the way those works are put together is, in fact, unique.

This even holds true if we somehow presume your idea of authors merely being "deliverers" of ideas. If each human is unique and in possession of their will, then the way they express and communicate ideas is going to be unique to them. Thus, their expressions of ideas are unique, that is original, to that expression.

In order to encourage more unique expressions and to make it so that people who are well practiced with, or very skilled with, expressing ideas are adequately rewarded for their efforts, copyright is put in place that grants them control over their unique expression of an idea in order to enable them to benefit from their skill and effort at expressing those ideas.
In other words, if Disney can own Mickey, why can't Einstein own E=MC^2? I hold there's no distinction to be made between the two, yet IP advocates never consider having Einstein own E=MC^2. Now given the inherent intertextuality of cultural works, I hold that everything written is like Mickey Mouse, and I see no evidence against this basic empirical observation. Therefore, your argument fails.
Because E=MC^2 isn't an idea, it's an expression of physical reality. No matter who ends up expressing the idea, in the end the potential energy of something is going to be equal to the mass of it multiplied by the speed of light multiplied by the speed of light. Basically, the difference between Mickey Mouse and E=MC^2 is that uniqueness of expression that we call "originality". Formulations of physical reality will never end up as unique because they are merely descriptive and anyone who seeks to describe physical reality will end up describing it the same way, especially once you get down to the mathematical constants.

Ideas and stories, things that are purely conceptual in nature, are not the same. Two people will not tell a story in the same way, each will do so uniquely in their own way, based upon their own methods of thinking.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
I've paid attention to your arguments. They're crap, and I've yet to see you effectively counter a single point made by anyone arguing with you.
You can always tell when someone is being a meta-sophist when they accuse you of not addressing their arguments while not pointing out which parts they're not addressing.

If Freddie Mercury had not written Bohemian Rhapsody, and Queen performed it, would the song have existed?
I think it's obvious that my answer would be "yes." Ideas are discovered and received, not created by individuals. This was the view of art at around the time of the Renaissance. This was the view of the ancient poets, who called upon the Muses for inspiration. Ideas come from the mind of God or come from the artist following a tradition. This is my viewpoint, as I've expressed several times. Of course, you'd know if you actually paid attention to my arguments.

I have no interest in talking to you about this subject, LordsFire. Unlike @S'task, you don't even make the attempt to respond to me. Instead, you complain about how I argue. Your entire line of attack, to say I don't pay attention to reality when I cite history and real life, to say that I don't pay attention to your arguments when I address them the fullest, all the while ignoring my responses to your arguments and point out all the ways in which you ignore MY arguments... to say I find it irksome would be an understatement. So I'm not going to respond to you anymore.

You keep citing literary academics.

As someone who's, yanno, actually got a DEGREE from said literary academics, let me tell you a little, terribly kept secret: they're a bunch of marxist who have a strict ideological and irrational objection to ALL property rights and engage in explicit intellectual efforts to justify those irrational objections and propagandize them. Literary academics since the 1980s, at least, have been one of the single most propaganda laden and pushing fields of study in the academy. Your constant reliance on them does you no service as I find almost all their reasoning to be specious at best, and blatantly propaganda at worse. Also, it's an appeal to authority logical fallacy, especially since I've made it abundantly clear I reject the academic's authority on all things literature and creative.
This is actually a textbook example of the ad hominem fallacy. Rather than telling me what false, Marxist assumptions I'm making, you simply say "they're Marxist, therefore they're wrong."

I'm a philosophical eclectic. I take whatever arguments I think work and try my best to incorporate them into my understanding of reality. So if a Marxist has a good point about something, then they have a good point about something. And I think Kembrew McLeod makes some good points about the things she talks about in her book. Quite frankly, I find your reasoning to be as "specious" as any Marxist or Critical Theorist, if not moreso.

To most of us, that Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse is a self evident fact. You object and say he didn't because... why exactly? You have two main arguments I can see... the weaker of which amounts to appeals to authority, and the second of which is the argument that all creative works are intertextual and thus cannot be original.
Classic move of the meta-sophist: declare that their opponent is being "fallacious" in their reasoning when, in fact, no such fallacy is being made.

That said, I think you're getting caught up to much on the idea of being "original". In a sense, very few ideas are original, but copyright, while it uses the term "original", doesn't really mean "original" in the sense you seem to think it means. Rather, the core thing copyright focuses on is "uniqueness", that a collection of ideas is a unique collection. This is an area where you have utterly failed to show that intertextuality invalidates, as while most works do not contain any truly original ideas, the way those works are put together is, in fact, unique.

This even holds true if we somehow presume your idea of authors merely being "deliverers" of ideas. If each human is unique and in possession of their will, then the way they express and communicate ideas is going to be unique to them. Thus, their expressions of ideas are unique, that is original, to that expression.

In order to encourage more unique expressions and to make it so that people who are well practiced with, or very skilled with, expressing ideas are adequately rewarded for their efforts, copyright is put in place that grants them control over their unique expression of an idea in order to enable them to benefit from their skill and effort at expressing those ideas.
If you wish to make the ownership of expressions of ideas the basis of copyright and not the ideas themselves, then, essentially, people could legally earn a profit from making Mickey Mouse fanfiction. The idea of Mickey Mouse would be different for each individual, after all.

Now, this is granting your point, which I don't agree with. Unique "expressions" of ideas are either immaterial or material things. If they are immaterial, then I cannot control them, so I cannot own them. If they are material, then I can only say that MY expression of an idea is owned, and if someone just so happened to create something that looked like your work, it'd be his expression. The "uniqueness" of the expression doesn't make it yours, it's the fact that it was your expression makes it yours.

Because E=MC^2 isn't an idea, it's an expression of physical reality.
How are you defining ideas here? Because for me, ideas are nothing but abstractions of physical reality or the relations between these abstractions. Walt Disney created the idea of Mickey Mouse by combining different abstractions of reality inside his head. Similarly, Einstein came up with E=MC^2 through what is essentially the same process. I think you seem to have this confusion in your mind where you don't think universals are... well, universal.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Ideas are discovered and received, not created by individuals.

See, and this is what I was looking for. This is the foundation of your entire argument, a naked assertion.

You have asserted that ideas are discovered and received, not created, and then said 'other people believe this too' to try to back your position up.

That's not an argument.

The reason we say you're not responding to our arguments, is we are trying to demonstrate to you how people do in fact create original ideas, or at least sufficiently original to distinguish as such, and you just reply 'no they don't.'

People don't agree with your assertion, so they don't agree with the argument that you build on top of it. And no, we don't care how many names or schools of thought you reference, we care about the ability to actually demonstrate the validity of your assertion.

Which you have not even begun to accomplish.
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
I think it's obvious that my answer would be "yes." Ideas are discovered and received, not created by individuals. This was the view of art at around the time of the Renaissance. This was the view of the ancient poets, who called upon the Muses for inspiration. Ideas come from the mind of God or come from the artist following a tradition. This is my viewpoint, as I've expressed several times. Of course, you'd know if you actually paid attention to my arguments.
We have paid attention to this argument. Here's the thing, you've done nothing to argue that this is actually the case, instead you treat it as a self evidence fact and support it by appeals to authority, which is all this paragraph is.

Here's the thing, Lordsfire is a fairly prolific fanfiction author. And while I'm not as prolific, I am someone who writes original fictional and poetry while ALSO hold a degree IN English Creative Writing. While this does not make us as authoritative to the general population as the literary academics you constantly lean upon, it DOES actually make us something called a "subject matter expert". You are arguing the philosophy of creativity with two people who ARE creative experts by most standards.

This had led to this core disconnect, you keep asserting that creativity and ideas are one way that conform to your philosophical ideas. However, I am arguing against that position not from philosophy but via lived experience. My experience of creativity and the creation process does not reflect what your philosophy says it is. You have never built a coherent argument to support your idea besides constantly falling back on appeals to authority, which isn't an actual argument. Especially, as you know, there are OTHER literary authorities and philosophers who disagree with your position. You therefore reject them, but still act as if we should treat the philosophers and authorities who agree with you as authoritative. This is a blatant double standard, as such, I challenge you to write a full, coherent argument showcasing that all creative ideas are purely intertextual constructs that exist independently of authorial expression.

If you wish to make the ownership of expressions of ideas the basis of copyright and not the ideas themselves, then, essentially, people could legally earn a profit from making Mickey Mouse fanfiction. The idea of Mickey Mouse would be different for each individual, after all.
Copyright ALREADY IS based on the expression of ideas. Since all written or produced works are just expressions of ideas. What copyright does is prevent someone from making profit from an expression that they did not originate. That is the core idea of copyright.

Now, you want to argue about how copyright handles derivative works? That's an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT discussion that while covered under copyright law, do not really have the same ideological components as copyright, and has dramatically changed over time. In fact, it's an area I'd say DOES deserved to be looked at and rolled back, as it is much more about protecting corporations than individual creators. It is also an area where in the past things were less restrictive and did little harm.

But you've not been arguing about copyright and derivative works, you've been arguing that copyright in total is invalid.

How are you defining ideas here? Because for me, ideas are nothing but abstractions of physical reality or the relations between these abstractions. Walt Disney created the idea of Mickey Mouse by combining different abstractions of reality inside his head. Similarly, Einstein came up with E=MC^2 through what is essentially the same process. I think you seem to have this confusion in your mind where you don't think universals are... well, universal.
I would say an idea is nothing more than "organized human thought". In a sense, yes, "E=MC^2" is an idea, but it's not a creative idea. Remember, copyright is all about protecting creative works, not all ideas.

Creative ideas I would define as ideas that are not merely descriptive of reality and may have a transformative aspect to reality and are meant to communicate more than basic linguistic concepts. E=MC^2 is an equation, it is JUST a description of reality as we understand it and it does not transform reality in any way.

And no, the mental processes to create Mickey Mouse are not the same as those used to study the world and use math. This isn't even an abstract thing, mathematics actually utilize entirely different regions of the brain than language. Meanwhile, creativity utilizes multiple different regions of the brain, but these are not the same ones.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
People don't agree with your assertion, so they don't agree with the argument that you build on top of it. And no, we don't care how many names or schools of thought you reference, we care about the ability to actually demonstrate the validity of your assertion.

Which you have not even begun to accomplish.
:unsure:

First, the historical part. The idea that an author is the source and originator of ideas came from a very particular kind of thought that emerged in the seventeenth century. As late as the Renaissance period, people believed that authors 1) were craftsmen who followed a tradition and adhered to a standard and 2) were mere vehicles for ideas that came either from this tradition or from some divinity. The seventeenth century individualist view of authorship espoused by Thomas Hobbes claimed that authors were the originators of their ideas and was only able to do so by simply disregarding all of what was previously thought. These ideas merged with the idea of the "genius" that emerged in the nineteenth century, forming the view we have today: that authors are the creators of "original" ideas that come from their own genius, and, following the labor theory of property, come to "own" these ideas. This is a view of ideas that, to my knowledge, has no basis in reality. Culture is inherently intertextual; that is to say, different pieces of culture are connected to each other in such a way that it becomes impossible to tell what is "original" and what isn't.

In actual reality, however, separating what are "original" ideas and what aren't is a lot harder than one thinks. And that's why enforcement of copyright will inevitably be arbitrary in nature. Copyright law, as a concept, originally emerged as a way to control the flow of information caused by the advent of the printing press. Royalists used copyright as a way of privileging their favored publishers. Not much is different today. The only difference is that the mass corporation and mass media are the determiners of copyright law. Modern-day corporations oftentimes take folk music or fairy tales, commoditize them, and sell them to the public as if they are their creations. Rarely do the "original owners" get fair compensation because they come from a culture that didn't believe in intellectual property. Again, no society believed in intellectual property until the 17th century West.
This, to me, looks like an argument. The argument being something like this:
1. There are two views of how art comes to be: Hobbesian-Romanticist idea (wherein artistic works are the product of an original authorial genius) and the consensus of pretty much the entire world up until Hobbes (which emphasizes divine inspiration and tradition).
2. The Hobbesian-Romanticist idea is false.
3. The consensus idea is true.

This is an argument. You could have chosen disagree about whether it works - over whether intertextuality disproves the Hobbesian-Romanticist idea or not. You could've looked at Hobbes' original argument in The Leviathan. You could've tried to attack these premises. You could have tried to be an honest, reasonable actor in this debate.

But no. Instead, you resort to accusation after accusation, sophistry after sophistry, lie after lie. It's disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I'm not talking to you own up to hastiness, apologize, and promise not to do such things in the future. Otherwise, I have no reason to tolerate such nonsense.

I'll read and respond to @S'task's post tomorrow. I'm too heated right now to do so.
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
This, to me, looks like an argument. The argument being something like this:
1. There are two views of how art comes to be: Hobbesian-Romanticist idea (wherein artistic works are the product of an original authorial genius) and the consensus of pretty much the entire world up until Hobbes (which emphasizes divine inspiration and tradition).
2. The Hobbesian-Romanticist idea is false.
3. The consensus idea is true.
No, this isn't an argument, in fact, it's a combination of a "False dilemma" and a "strawman argument". You have set in place only two possible options for there to be about creative works, your preferred idea, and the idea you claim ALL OTHERS MUST HOLD, then you form an argument against the position you claim your opponents hold, claim your argument disproves that position, and declare yourself the victor.

And in that entire time you have not actually engaged with your opponent's ACTUAL arguments.

Further, your argument rests on another assertion that nobody but you holds:
...different pieces of culture are connected to each other in such a way that it becomes impossible to tell what is "original" and what isn't.

In actual reality, however, separating what are "original" ideas and what aren't is a lot harder than one thinks.

This is a core premise that we have ALSO taken issue with, and you have yet to provide any coherent argument FOR save for constant appeals to authority.

All that said, take a break to cool down. This should be a friendly discussion and debate, don't let it get overly personal.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
@S'task, why are you like this?

I've said over and over what I meant. If you still are saying crap like this:

You have never built a coherent argument to support your idea besides constantly falling back on appeals to authority, which isn't an actual argument.

Then there's no way I can argue with you. I don't think you are an honest actor if you think you can honestly say that.

I'm going to respectfully bow out. I don't think we're ever going to come to an understanding. I'll keep misinterpreting what you say and you'll do the same to me. There's no communication here.
 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
Copyright laws exist in principle to protect creators from having their works taken without credit or compensation-Edgar Allen Poe was subject to exploitation by his publishers in this regard.

Now yes they can be used to homogenize cultural production.

When it comes to inspiration-I don't think we need to argue two extremes here. Not the "Eureka" Athena out of Zeus's head sort of inspiration and not simply copying from others.

Its a dynamic process-from inspiration and individual creativity.

Let's take a relatively mediocre fantasy series-The Inheritance Cycle. Now it basically has SW plot while otherwise plagiarizing Lord of the Rings and I think Pendragon and some other stuff(there are differences-the elves are borderline atheist for example), predator esque concepts like the Ra'zac and the in universe magic system(which was relatively original).

Now there is a lot of inspiration here to use the term loosely and generously, but also original ideas(however scattered) and things coming directly from the mind of a fifteen year old writer.

The SW plot, fantasy setting and races, as well as the peculiarities of magic all combine to make the IP of the Inheritance Cycle. No author has a blank mind in which ideas spring fully formed.

Even regarding say divine inspiration-its obvious the human authors of the bible had their own styles, modes, and peculiarities of writing. The Holy Spirit ensured these ideas which were expressed through the filter of human understanding and language came across regardless.

In theory-I suppose you could maximize true "originality" if you put someone from the time of birth in a sterile unstimulating environment(even a mental ward would have too many colors and shapes), and thus whatever they wrote down-would come from their head. So let's imagine a thought experiment of some sci fi/fantasy dimension with no distinction, just a single color(or no color), shape or anything mentally stimulating. From there-thoughts will be far more original.

But wait! Even our dimensionally imprisoned author is going to get stimuli from the external environment-even if all that environment is an endless expanse of white light or complete darkness. It will probably be some insane ramblings, or they might not be able to write much at all except their own experiences of boredom and confusion-which is itself inspiration.

TLDR: Its a dynamic and dialectic process-the author and his inspirations and original ideas interact and change.

That's just my take on the issue of inspiration and originality.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
My take is this Copyright and Patents should not last longer than 60 years or the lifespan of the original creator. No passing down your copyright to your descendants or close family. After 60 years it is all public use.
I will never understand people who argue that children should be able to continue to profit off of the creations of their parents. No profession outside of the artistic sphere has such an expectation; a carpenter, for example, just either saves their money in preparation for when they're gone, or expects their children to make their own way in life. Their kids aren't going to live off of the royalties for a table they built in 1960, that's insane; and yet, some people think it makes sense when it's instead for a book they wrote sixty years ago.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
I will never understand people who argue that children should be able to continue to profit off of the creations of their parents. No profession outside of the artistic sphere has such an expectation; a carpenter, for example, just either saves their money in preparation for when they're gone, or expects their children to make their own way in life. Their kids aren't going to live off of the royalties for a table they built in 1960, that's insane; and yet, some people think it makes sense when it's instead for a book they wrote sixty years ago.

Speaking as a writer, I agree that it's reasonable for a franchise to become public domain after the death of the original creator.

In a more reasonable legal environment, I'd be fine with a five or ten years follow-on thereafter, but we don't live in one, so a clear line really needs to be drawn.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I will never understand people who argue that children should be able to continue to profit off of the creations of their parents. No profession outside of the artistic sphere has such an expectation; a carpenter, for example, just either saves their money in preparation for when they're gone, or expects their children to make their own way in life. Their kids aren't going to live off of the royalties for a table they built in 1960, that's insane; and yet, some people think it makes sense when it's instead for a book they wrote sixty years ago.
There's two reasons. First there's the length of labor. A carpenter can churn out a table in an afternoon, a couple days at the outside. A novel takes months at the fastest, often a year or more. Jim Butcher was considered a machine for putting out two novels a year for several years straight but even he couldn't maintain it.

Second the table gets an immediate payoff when sold for a solid chunk of cash relative to the effort. Novels pay royalties, a few cents per copy of the book sold. The book can continue to be sold for year and the cents keep rolling in but outside of rare situations they don't generate a huge chunk of cash all at once. Publishers can't afford to pay an author half a year's living wage down on a book, especially since they can't always tell what will sell (Harry Potter was rejected).

For this reason creative works tend to need to have lengthy payouts compared to tables.

Having thought it over I feel like the best option is unlimited copyright, but with exponentially increasing licensing fees over time. This would cause orphaned and abandoned works to rapidly enter the public domain since the fees wouldn't be paid, while super-valuable works like Star Wars could remain in copyright producing money (and also generate significant tax revenue).

So f'rex a work might get the first decade for free, and then the next decade for a fee of 10 dollars. Years 21-30 cost 100 dollars, 31-40 is 1000 dollars, and so forth. Micky Mouse celebrating his 90th anniversary last year would cost a sizeable 10,000,000 in licensing fees, something Disney would probably be willing to pay for such an important figure but very few other characters would be worth it and thus the Public Domain would swell while corporations could still keep their most treasured creations to themselves.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
For most creative works though, thats not really true: like, most movies make something like 90% of their income in the first month of release. Most TV episodes get most of their value on release day.

I mean, evvery comic book writer wants to write watchmen and have their comic book published every year. Unfortuately, theres only really 1 watchmen, and maybe, what, 10 other comics that get anything close in longetivity?

You listen to any comic writer, and it's clear they make their money by drawing or writing a lot of comics, not on much in the way of royalties. There are very few creatives who can afford not to churn out work at a high rate.

It's actually very much like being a carpenter. Most artists get by by constantly producing art and writings for barely making it money, while maybe 10 super carpenters has such high reputation and skill they do one work a year and sell it for a million dollars.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
For most creative works though, thats not really true: like, most movies make something like 90% of their income in the first month of release. Most TV episodes get most of their value on release day.

I mean, evvery comic book writer wants to write watchmen and have their comic book published every year. Unfortuately, theres only really 1 watchmen, and maybe, what, 10 other comics that get anything close in longetivity?

You listen to any comic writer, and it's clear they make their money by drawing or writing a lot of comics, not on much in the way of royalties. There are very few creatives who can afford not to churn out work at a high rate.

It's actually very much like being a carpenter. Most artists get by by constantly producing art and writings for barely making it money, while maybe 10 super carpenters has such high reputation and skill they do one work a year and sell it for a million dollars.

This varies both by industry, and by means of distribution within it. Star Trek the Next Generation, for example, went 'direct to syndication,' which was seen as a huge risk when it came out, but was spectacularly successful.

Also, movies make most of their box office income in the first month of release. Other forms of income vary wildly, and some make more on TV/DVD than in theater.

This also doesn't get into the fact that a lot of industry giants, Disney being the particularly famous hallmark, make enormous amounts of money through merchandising, and that's an expected primary part of their business model. It's arguably the primary reason that Disney has been almost the sole party continually lobbying for copyright expiration extensions.
 
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