I wonder if copyright extensions are exhibit A for the negative impact of money on politics. Copyright holders have a motivation to lobby for extensions but no big players have a motivation to lobby against them. Hence, both US parties are weirdly on board with continually extending the reach of copyright and IP laws in general. If there were no invisible hand constantly guiding politicians toward extending copyright, surely at least some politicians would have different views on it. It doesn’t help that it’s an issue that is so opaque to the general population, so there’s no popular opposition to it either. I love the EFF but when it comes to money and lobbying power they are much less influential over elected officials than the combined powers of most of the entertainment industries plus much of the tech industry.
Another way to look at it is that with copyright, there is an important constituency who wants to make it stronger (not just Hollywood companies, but the hundreds of thousands of voters they employ), and essentially nothing on the other side. How many jobs does EFF create and how many votes do they represent?
The idea that it’s about money also is hard to reconcile with the relatively weak lobbying power of tech companies. Tech companies are vastly richer than Hollywood and have been for a long time. Facebook earns five times the profits of NBC Universal but employes just half the people.
Your idea also fails to explain things like FOSTA/SESTA. How much money do victims of sex trafficking have? Why couldn’t the tech industry, with its blinding amounts of cash, stop it?
Just want to add that money has always been in politics. This trope that it was only a prob after the CU decision is (apparently effective) misdirection, IMO.
The game of politics is about securing interests/power, period.
this isn't because the EFF is disorganized or incompetent. it's because of money. if a billion-dollar cartel supported the EFF, lawmakers would suddenly turn their heads.
Agreed 100%. The likes of the EFF are at a huge natural disadvantage because nobody stands to profit from rationally curtailing copyright. Groups like the EFF are literally just trying to do the ethically right thing for everyone (at least in their eyes and mine), and it costs them money to do so, money that comes almost entirely from donations (I think). Whereas those pushing for copyright extensions not only have their own revenue stream, they actually stand to profit from the results of their lobbying.
The EFF has to spend money they don’t have to fight for their beliefs, but the copyright extension people likely make a net profit over time fighting for their own interests. It’s like a negative sum game- the net result is worse for almost everyone to a greater degree than it benefits a few. If money played no role in politicians’ decision making, those decisions would be much more rational and responsible. For all I know, maybe most of them would still support copyright extensions, but it would at least be because in their judgement it was the right thing for the American people. The ridiculous amount of money in American politics muddies the waters and forces all participants into moral hazards and perpetual conflicts of interest.
I'm assuming you mean nearly everybody would profit in a non-financial sense, or that more wealth would be created in the aggregate but not so much individually, and if that's what you mean, I generally agree.
IMO, it would be better for the group to curtail copyright somewhat in the US. But here I meant "profit" in the depressingly literal, "a specific individual or group, that can afford an IP attorney, who makes money on whatever they consider to be their IP" sense.
For better or worse, the system in the US currently favors those with the desire and resources to hire great IP attorneys, who are themselves motivated to always argue for stricter IP laws, whose firms have the resources to make huge campaign contributions.
There is no one spending equal amounts of money to push things in the opposite direction, therefore as long as there's money in politics there will always be an invisible hand guiding things in favor of "individuals or groups who stand to profit from something" over all other criteria.
> both US parties are weirdly on board with continually extending the reach of copyright and IP laws
I don't think it is weird considering that US is a mass-exporter of Intellectual Property. Hollywood is big global business. It is good for the US economy if other countries respect the copyright laws and are willing to pay for movie-tickets.
US is also a massive software exporter. I don't have the numbers but we know US has Oracle and IBM and Microsoft.
Think about Intel and AMD, without copyright their processors could be copied by anybody and pirated and sold much cheaper.
What's the best length for copyright protection is a different discussion, I agree that "Monopolizing works for most of a century after the life of the author is bad policy." But I don't think it is weird that countries which benefit from it would support longer terms and better IP protections in general.
I’m not arguing against IP laws in general, I just feel that in many ways they’ve become weighted far too much in favor of IP holders, as a result of IP holders having all the money and thus power in Washington. I’m not anti-patent or anti-copyright as a rule. They are legal fictions (an actual term, not a disparaging one) which were created in order to benefit everyone. The fact that they directly benefitted IP holders was not the intention, just a side effect. The goal was to spur creation, which everyone would benefit from, not to protect anyone’s revenue stream.
The rhetoric seems to have shifted to treating IP as a fundamental right. No longer is it a legal fiction to benefit everyone, which had a side effect of allowing a few to reap more profits. Now politicians talk about it as if patent protections, etc. exist solely to protect the IP holders and their revenue, which for some reason is treated as an inalienable right, and not as a compromise for the greater good for everyone. At least that’s my impression as an observer.
The goal has always been to protect revenue streams - originally, it was the one of printers of music sheets. Most artists have always worked on patrons’ commissions and continue to do so; most musicians made money when performing, and continue to do so; most engineers made money when building things, and continue to do so. Copyright fundamentally benefits a tiny minority of middlemen and investors in the distribution chain, and that’s always been true. It’s one of the distortions of mass-market, where the real money-makers are subjects that have the resources and connections to operate at scale - like in retail.
I have a hard time imagining software companies benefitting from copyright extension. The vast majority of software is obsolete literally decades before copyright expires, in most cases the source code will be lost or otherwise unavailable even if the copyright expires, and the CPUs able to run the software will no longer be manufactured.
A movie or song might become a classic, but software just gets old.
> I don't think it is weird considering that US is a mass-exporter of Intellectual Property.
I wonder what would US trade deficit look like if we remove IP related trade from the statistics? My gut feeling would be that the deficit would look quite a lot worse, but is there some "official" measure on this?
I think your second reason is actually the primary reason. As long as people are hyperfocused on abortion, no politician loses votes on issues like this.
For those missing context, both copyright extension and FOSTA 'reign in the internet' are Hollywood.
When the US dropped TPP, Canada took up leadership of the process as CPTPP. TPP was called two treaties in one, though not often in the US press. Canada kept the free trade part, and "postponed" the Hollywood copyright, pharma patents, and corporate ISDS. But what's the point of being a hegemon if you can't provide one-stop shopping for arm-twisted world-wide regulatory capture?
I emailed my (Democrat) California senators on copyright extension, and they were in favor.
I don't see how it actually promotes the creation of new works, and I definitely don't think laws should have effect retroactively. (Isn't that a basic premise of the rule of law?!)
But when it has bipartisan support, I'm not sure what else to do, other than try to support more like-minded challengers when those senators are up for reelection.
If the US can't get it together, I guess "harmonization" is inevitable.
Law student here. We use the term "ex post facto" for laws that have a retroactive effect.
Article 1 of the US. constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, but the supreme court has traditionally interpreted this to only apply to criminal law.
Civil laws can and have been applied retroactively.
That's a good question, and a tricky one to answer.
Criminal law is based on the concept of crime and punishment. Depending on the crime, the punishments can be very severe (e.g. loss of liberty or life).
Permitting ex post facto criminal laws would allow legislatures to arbitrarily criminalize actions that were perfectly legal at the time they were committed.
Given the potential severity of criminal punishments, this just lends itself to abuses of power. Because of this, most countries explicitly disallow retroactive criminal legislation in their constitutions.
Civil law pertains to rights and duties. In this context, there are legitimate occasions where retroactivity may be useful.
Sure, retroactive civil laws can still be used to target specific entities or persons. However, the potential negative outcomes are milder (at most, the loss of movable or immovable assets).
Because of this, there is no universal consensus on retroactive civil laws. Most countries allow them; many other countries frown on them; a few ban them outright.
The relevant Supreme Court case is Calder v. Bull. As for why that might make sense as a rule, some being reasons cited in the case and others my own thoughts:
First, there are textual arguments. For example, why does the Constitution prohibit states from impairing the obligations of existing contracts if the general prohibition on ex post facto laws would do?
Further, in the normal course of governing, one must sometimes rearrange the rights of others. For example, to pass bankruptcy laws, one must abridge the rights of creditors. Changes to property laws necessarily alter preexisting rights, e.g. to keep people off your land or to sell it or to build a particular thing on it. Civil law is all about rights.
Which leads to the special nature of criminal law in expressing moral condemnation and imposing often-severe punishment (as opposed to the civil law requiring payment of damages). There is an element of moral humility in requiring the prohibitions to be stated ahead of time. Reasonable, thoughtful, and well-intentioned people disagree enormously on morality, but if we spell out the prohibitions ahead of time, we at least put everyone on notice as to what is expected.
Also consider that contract and tort law, being judge-made law, have an inherently retrospective component whenever new issues come before the courts, or whenever a doctrine is altered or reversed. It would be odd to tolerate this in some parts of civil law (those that are mostly judge-made) but not in others (those that are statutory).
All of which is not to say that retrospective civil laws are always right. It would definitely be immoral for Congress to pass a law tripling the tax bill for your income from ten years ago. But the Constitution is not a general prohibition against bad laws. Perhaps in this case, the ex post facto clause could be read to prohibit such practices as well, but at some point you have to rely on the legislature to get it right.
I think we have there a long time. Respect the artist, the middleman less so. Go see that band you pirate live, or send em a fiver. Buy a some merch. Find out what prifit goes to whom. To vote with your dollar means you have to intelligently spend, not just withhold.
I was wondering about that the other day. See, I just discovered Moshe Koussevitzky a few months ago (Wikipedia says "a lyric tenor with a spectacular and perhaps unparalleled upper register among cantors. Koussevitzky is regarded as among the greatest Cantors of the 20th century.") and I bought a track of his and I was wondering about just that: he died in 1966, who the heck gets that money now?
"Copyright" is a broad term but broadly, I agree - with the internet's instant transmission of information it seems absurd to block things based on country or persecute pirates, etc
If copyright was justifiable before the internet was available, back when copying was difficult and costly, I don't see how the internet changes that...unless you believe that the reason for copyright back then was to prevent people wasting time and money on copying when it would be cheaper and quicker for them to use that time to earn money to buy a copy?
It's infuriating how notorious the USA is inserting copyright BS in every single "free trade agreement". Is it really necessary to always glue a piece of shit like that to a good thing like a free trade agreement being introduced? Can't we just agree to trade freely?
