The Mickey Mouse Protection Act

The oligarchy which controls the world hates to ever let something good slip from their sticky little fingers. In the past, copyright and patent laws were intended to encourage scientists and writers to produce more to ensure the public would see more advancements in science and the arts. The artistic and scientific works were always intended to, one day, fall into the public domain, thus contributing to the common good of the peoples of the world.

TPTB could not accept that. Throught their control of the political powers on Washington, they have, time and time again, thwarted every opportunity for those scientific and literary goods from ever becoming part of the common good.

Plutocracy Hypocrisy

Intellectual property laws prevent things from falling into the public domain; that is, they offer private ownership of what would otherwise be a public good. Chaucer had never heard of such a concept and probably would have found it risible if he had, but centuries later it became a common notion that providing the creator of some intellectual good with an exclusive right to reproduce his work for a limited period would probably increase his monetary profit and thereby give him an incentive to produce more artistic work. Prior to this notion, of course, some of history’s greatest literature was somehow produced without any restrictions on copying whatsoever, but that was the original idea: give people an incentive to produce more. As is expressed in the American Constitution of 1787, Congress has the power

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The whole point, though, was simply to ensure that science would see more advancements and arts would see more creation. In other words, it was to protect the public domain. The exclusive right to copying was for a limited time precisely because those works which that right encouraged would then fall into the public domain and be available for the enrichment and use of everyone thereafter. The first American copyright and patent act, for example, granted such rights for fourteen years, with an optional additional period of fourteen years. After that, the works would become common goods, available for everyone.

Now, of course, that justification and arrangement is nothing but a cruel joke; intellectual property law doesn’t exist for the enrichment of the public domain, but for the enrichment of content owners and publishers. Not for content producers, who typically sell their rights to a rich corporation in order to secure its wide distribution (for which they often have little other choice), and who typically see only a fraction of the income generated by their work. Since the Mickey Mouse Protection Act of 1998, copyright now extends for the entire life of the author plus seventy years; for all practical purposes, works published during our lifetimes will never enter the public domain, and our grandchildren will likely be the first to see it do so, even assuming that Congress does not, under pressure from the plutocracy, extend the term of protection yet again.

The Distributist Review

reply to post by FortAnthem


im not seeing a problem with this for the simple fact no one handed them their idea or abiilty to come up with it.

why should someone do all the work and then people just ridie the coattails of his success.

i think the moral of all this is the to keep people from stealing and passing stuff as their own.

and on those levels nope i dont find anything wrong with it.

if you really want to get down to it you people owe the lives you lead and 99% of the advancements in technology to the us military industrial complex almost every convenience that you are now using is because of them.

flame me if you want,

reply to post by neo96


The original Copyright Act of 1790 set copyright terms at 14 years and an additional 14 years if the creator/author is still alive and requests it.
Copyright Act of 1790

The Copyright act of 1976 gives a copyright until the creator/authors death plus 50 years, no matter when it was originally copyrighted.
Copyright Act of 1976

The newest copyright act extends that another 20 years. Unless you're an undying corporation, how can you possibly make money after you're dead? Or even spend it??? I wonder if dead people have to pay income taxes? lol

I think the original copyright act was plenty sufficient. By contrast a US patent only lasts 20 years. I think this is just another money/power grab by greedy corporations trying to gain even more profits and slow down human progress.

Austrian economists have proven that intellectual property laws cause a great deal of harm to the public.

They effectively grant monopoly rights to producers and retard competition in the markets. This damage FAR outweighs the gains from the new research it encourages. The new research would happen anyways, except the companies would work to keep the products secret rather than handing public blueprints to the fed.

Further, intellectual property rights on infinitely reproducible material without cost, such as digital music or digital print media, brings direct harm to the public.

These points are expanded on greatly in this lecture by a patent attorney.
video.google.com...#

reply to post by mnemeth1


I'm suprised the Austrians came out against this stuff. I thought they were all about corporate and personal property rights and would be for copyright protections to protect the owner's property rights.

I'm suprised I didn't get more replies like that other guy who said that the people who made it had a right to the fruits of their labors. There may be some truth to that but FOR 70 YEARS AFTER THEY'RE DEAD!
I don't think so.

This is what happens when immortal corporations are awarded legal personhood. They can never die, they claim or buy the rights to something and after the copyrights wear off, they pay off the politicians to extend the copyright even further, long after the material should have entered the public domain.

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

im not seeing a problem with this for the simple fact no one handed them their idea or abiilty to come up with it.

why should someone do all the work and then people just ridie the coattails of his success.

i think the moral of all this is the to keep people from stealing and passing stuff as their own.

and on those levels nope i dont find anything wrong with it.

if you really want to get down to it you people owe the lives you lead and 99% of the advancements in technology to the us military industrial complex almost every convenience that you are now using is because of them.

flame me if you want,

edit on 22-9-2010 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

so...if my LEGAL birthname was ronald macdonald, i could not open any type of burger joint. if i wanted to build a business making jet engines, i could not make anything similar to those already built. there has to be limitations, like letting disney own winnie-the-pooh rights from 1926 to today...really? a corporation? for an entity to have control for 83 years??

a reply to: neo96

The problem with copyright in general is that it is immoral and the problem with the current implementation of copyright is that in addition to being immoral it is also anti-pragmatic.

First the moral issues. The moral problems are with the fact that copyright infringes on our right to property. For example, when I copy something to my hard drive then I rearrange the bits on my own hard drive and nothing else. Since it is my own hard drive I have the right to do this. Saying that I may not rearrange my own bits on my own hard drive in whatever form I want infringes upon my right to property since it means my hard drive is not fully my own property anymore.

In addition I do not infringe anyone's property when I copy their work to my hard drive. Do I steal their ideas? Nope. It is still in their head as far as I am concerned. Do I steal their work? Nope, I do not even need to touch it. It is still on their hard drive or wherever they stored it as far as I am concerned. Are they not able to use their idea if I copy it? Nope, they can still use it just fine as far as I am concerned.

Sure the lack of copyright might mean that some business models that would otherwise be viable are nonviable. But it is not my responsibility to make other peoples business models viable. The lack of copyright just means people will have to find a business model that does not depend on other people surrendering their right to property in order to make their business model viable. If you make something and sell it and everyone ends up copying it for free then that is your own fault for relying on a crappy business model. Do you also want a law forcing people to pay street musicians in order to make that business model viable? You do known that some people might just listen to it without paying therefore "stealing" the street musician's music, right?

As for the pragmatic implications:
I agree that maybe some copyright might improve the incentive people have to create content. However right now copyright's duration is so long that even content creators suffer under it. The benefit to society as a whole if copyright got shortened could be so great that that benefit would outweigh the disadvantages of a shorter copyright even for content creators. How much can content creators profit from their work after they died? Yet copyright goes on 70 years after that. They would probably be better off if they could use 70 years of innovations in their life instead.

In addition their creative effort and thus the quality of the content that they create also suffer under copyright. Take for example Disney, who's biggest hits are based on content in the public domain. If copyright would have lasted as long as it did now then it is possible that Disney would not have been able to create their biggest hits.

Disney is especially aggravating since they became big thanks to the public domain but now that it is time to return the favor they hypocritically lobby in order to not have to do that. In addition copyright is supposedly meant to incentivize content creators to create more, so by lobbying to keep Mickey Mouse in copyright they are basically saying that we need to incentivize a dead man to create fiction that has already been created.

originally posted by: FortAnthem
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

I'm suprised the Austrians came out against this stuff. I thought they were all about corporate and personal property rights and would be for copyright protections to protect the owner's property rights.

Intellectual property is not property. Just like you cannot own the color blue, you cannot own a certain configuration of bits/paint/etc. Property are physical things which are lost when stolen. Property is not abstract.

Copyright infringes on our right to property because it forbids us to put our own bits on our own devices in certain configurations. Therefore copyright tells us that our bits are not really completely ours because we must limits their usage in order to make other people inherently broken business practices viable.

So if people are really for property rights then they are opposed to intellectual "property" rights. Unless of course they got tricked by the misnomer "intellectual property" or something similar.