Why buy porn anymore? (page 8)

Author	Post
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:12PM You don't need permission from me, mate! LOL [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:13PM NewRomancer wrote: So narrow your search Flash... use "-torrent" or similar and similar strings to get you through the information you don't want and to the information you do want. Click to expand I'm glad to see you completely missed the point. I know I can flag terms not to be searched, which don't actually work that well in application. The point is that it is easier now to find the stolen material than the new. There is no way you can convince me that doesn't equal lost sales. [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:21PM ninja1 wrote: If it is truly unavailable and out of print, is it ever OK to grab it from whatever source has it? Or do you go without, in the name of morality and legality? Do we "owe" the vintage/classic copyright holders any consideration/loyalty when they withhold product from the market? Also, what search engine are you using? I can never get more than 1 or 2 relevant results in the best case whenever I attempt "hard to find" searches. Then the quality of results goes astray and offtarget immediately. Click to expand No it isn't okay to just grab it from whatever source has it. You don't know the reason why something is out of print. They may be searching for a new master. Trying to negotiate music rights. It might be leased by another company that hasn't gotten around to doing anything with it. Just because a company doesn't have a specific title on the market it doesn't mean that they are trying to withhold it from you. There are many reasons why something might not be immediately available. As for the search engine I use Google now and put terms inside "" marks. The search I was performing that caused me to make that post was for Adam Rifkin's Homo Erectus that I want to see. The DVD was originally scheduled for Sept 9 but it doesn't look like it's actually coming out that day since no one is listing it anymore. I wanted to find out if there was a new date. I believe I used "National Lampoon" "Homo Erectus" DVD as the search terms and after all the torrent sites that came up the Australian release comes up. [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:33PM licker wrote: This is one area where copyright law could be reformed to help it recover its credibility. Copyright should lapse irrevocably on any book, song, movie or computer program that has been out of publication for five years or more. Click to expand No. That's a horrible idea. The end result of this would be less stuff coming out. Why create and copyright something that you may lose the rights to immediately. Plus what about material that there isn't the ability to keep up with this demand. Say the company is having problems with the music rights. Everyone bitches when they change the music but under your idea most music will get changed to keep in with your new law. What about when there are only crummy prints or video source available. Just release it anyway flooding the market with subpar crap from companies that didn't used to? What about short stores. Publish one in Playboy in 2005 that means you have to republish it by 2010 or lose it? This is just the tip of all the problems with your logic. Then again, to cover themselves all companies could then set up a publish on demand where they will publish anything in their archives at the quality that exists to them for $1,000,000.00 each. No one will buy it but now it is technically in print so they don't lose the rights to it. Why has society decided that they have the right to have anything they want at their fingertips and everyone else must abide by it or lose their stuff. Face it. Sometimes there are going to be things that aren't currently in print. Some, many, will come back into print at some point. Others never will. Some of the ones that never will at some point will probably make it into the public domain. Of course you can spin this around. What if everyone had to use their items within a five year period or other people can take them. [Link]

Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 3:00PM licker wrote: I actually disapprove of all criminal penalties for copyright issues, and would prefer them to be limited to civil remedies. However, if you want to insist on criminal sanctions or statutory damages . . . Click to expand I don't want to insist on anything, as I disagree with your position entirely. But I did want to know what you insisted upon. [Link]
Gunzo Senior Member 1377 Posts 2/05	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 3:28PM @Flash: Ever since the birth of internet (featuring porn), the free stuff has always been most popular in search engines. I don't see what's special today with these links to torrent sites showing up on top, seems perfectly natural to me. For any retailer or company of porn, drowning in the shit of others is incredible easy... simply because porn is the biggest thing on the internet and will continue to be as long as we can predict. [Link]
ninja1 Senior Member 2939 Posts 1/08	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 3:35PM Flash wrote: No it isn't okay to just grab it from whatever source has it. You don't know the reason why something is out of print. They may be searching for a new master. Trying to negotiate music rights. It might be leased by another company that hasn't gotten around to doing anything with it. Just because a company doesn't have a specific title on the market it doesn't mean that they are trying to withhold it from you. There are many reasons why something might not be immediately available. Click to expand Thanks for the answer/explanation. My interest is old porn from the days of film loops in peep booths. With perfomers such as Johnny Hardin, King Paul, Lili Marlene. I fear much of that stuff is lost forever, and/or those who own it just don't give a fcuk. Do you know otherwise? Is there a reason I should be hopeful regarding product availibility? This year? Next year? 2010? 2050? [Link]
juha Senior Member 2752 Posts 3/05	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 8:01PM Clam Digger wrote: The issue of copyrights has been an ongoing problem for at least over a century. Charles Dickens was plagued by it here in America back in the day. Click to expand You're absolutely wrong. As I said before in this thread copyright is an achievement of the age of industrialisation. Without copyright we wouldn't have seen the acceleration of the development that we have seen in the last two hundred years. Charles Dickens isn't an example for ongoing problems of the presence. He is simply an example for the fact that the concept of copyright was established later in the USA than in Europe. Don't forget that the USA weren't the leading nation in industrial development in the mid 19th century. Copyright is one of the cornerstones of our wealth, our way of life, our society. [Link]
RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 9:13PM NewRomancer wrote: "The only people who are going to pay for porn now are people who believe in supporting the people who make it. Anyone who doesn't care is just going to take whatever they want and the studios will never see a dime from them." That isn't even remotely a new attitude! Anyone who has ever wanted a copy of anything for free could get it... It's not like the internet invented bootlegging. Click to expand Of course it didn't. But it made it a whole lot easier and more accessible to millions of people who otherwise simply wouldn't have bothered and would have just bought/rented the official product. It wasn't that big of a deal back in the day when few people were actually doing it. Now that nearly everyone does it, it just has to be having an impact. [Link]
arkdvd Member 103 Posts 1/06	Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 9:26PM Flash wrote: The search I was performing that caused me to make that post was for Adam Rifkin's Homo Erectus that I want to see. The DVD was originally scheduled for Sept 9 but it doesn't look like it's actually coming out that day since no one is listing it anymore. I wanted to find out if there was a new date. I believe I used "National Lampoon" "Homo Erectus" DVD as the search terms and after all the torrent sites that came up the Australian release comes up. Click to expand OFF TOPIC if you didn't find out already, the street date is november 11. email me any time you are looking for a DVD, old or new; i'd be happy to let you know. [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:05AM Thanks ArkDVD I hadn't found the new US date yet. [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:12AM ninja1 wrote: My interest is old porn from the days of film loops in peep booths. With perfomers such as Johnny Hardin, King Paul, Lili Marlene. I fear much of that stuff is lost forever, and/or those who own it just don't give a fcuk. Do you know otherwise? Is there a reason I should be hopeful regarding product availibility? This year? Next year? 2010? 2050? Click to expand Some have come out, I can't say who it stars and I doubt you'll ever find decent descriptions of the loops currently available. They are hard to search based on star because many of the boxes don't list any. The few that do only list stars that became big later like John Holmes. It looks like Blue Vanities has been releasing tons of old loops. I don't know their quality though. Alpha Blue Archives has released many loops but the quality from what I have seen is horrendous. After Hours Cinema has a series of loop releases. I don't know their quality but generally their feature titles are in good shape. Fallen Angel released a disc of loops many years ago that was in nice shape. Historic Erotica also appears to be releasing loops. I believe Something Weird Video has released several discs worth as well. I suspect that many are, as you fear, lost forever or lost in personal collections. I also suspect that, due to how the laws worked back then and how distribution worked, that finding who the original copyright holder is in many cases is damn near impossible and probably a good number of the old loops are in the public domain now. [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:14AM Gunzo wrote: @Flash: Ever since the birth of internet (featuring porn), the free stuff has always been most popular in search engines. I don't see what's special today with these links to torrent sites showing up on top, seems perfectly natural to me. Click to expand It doesn't seem natural that search engines would allow illegally distributed material to even show up, let alone on top. This is something that I think both the adult and mainstream sides should go after the search engines regarding. [Link]
killbillvol69 All-Star Member ^Lucy Pinder 18634 Posts 4/08	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:47AM Flash wrote: probably a good number of the old loops are in the public domain now. Click to expand I've wondered this before: how does something come to be "in the public domain"? [Link]

Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:02AM IIRC on the 28th year after initial copyright (or publication/broadcast etc) the copyright has to be renewed. If it isn't renewed the work goes into the public domain. [Link]
killbillvol69 All-Star Member ^Lucy Pinder 18634 Posts 4/08	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:11AM ^Wow. That's interesting. Why do you suppose the decision was made that it would be the 28th year, as opposed to the 27th, or the 29th? And is this the same in all countries? Oh, that leads me to another question: how do copyrights work across international borders? [Link]
juha Senior Member 2752 Posts 3/05	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:41AM Flash wrote: IIRC on the 28th year after initial copyright (or publication/broadcast etc) the copyright has to be renewed. If it isn't renewed the work goes into the public domain. Click to expand This was right till the mid 60s in the USA. But the law was changed several times since then. Now the copyright for a film lasts at least 75 years. [Link]
licker Senior Member Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic 1141 Posts 8/03	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:43AM killbillvol69 wrote: Oh, that leads me to another question: how do copyrights work across international borders? Click to expand Things that are public domain in some countries can still be copyright in other countries, because duration of copyright is defined differently in each nation. [Link]
juha Senior Member 2752 Posts 3/05	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:43AM killbillvol69 wrote: Oh, that leads me to another question: how do copyrights work across international borders? Click to expand Check out the "Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works" in wikipedia. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:55AM Laws in the United States regarding the terms of copyright and the circumstances under which copyrightable and/or copyrighted works fall into the public domain have changed over time. Here is a chart that sets forth this information in detail, although it doesn't explain the mechanics of the renewal scheme applicable to copyrighted works published before 1964. [Link]
killbillvol69 All-Star Member ^Lucy Pinder 18634 Posts 4/08	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:55AM ^Thanks juha! [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 2:01AM juha wrote: Now the copyright for a film lasts at least 75 years. Click to expand Generally speaking, the current rule in the United States for films (the legal authors of which are almost always corporations) is 95 years after the date of publication. See the link in my previous post for the specifics regarding films produced/published before 2002. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 2:05AM The current general rule for the copyright term of literary and musical works (whose legal authors are typically individuals) is the life of the author plus 70 years. * ------------------------------ [typo] Edited by - bob on 9/5/2008 2:07:31 AM [Link]
licker Senior Member Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic 1141 Posts 8/03	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 2:21AM Flash wrote: No. That's a horrible idea. The end result of this would be less stuff coming out. Why create and copyright something that you may lose the rights to immediately. Click to expand You could not lose the rights immediately. You could only lose the rights by refusing to sell copies for five years. Why would you do that? The special privileges granted by copyright law exist only for the purpose of encouraging the creation of works of art and literature for the public. If you are not selling copies to the public, you are not meeting that moral obligation which is inherent in the law. see: United States Constitution, article 1, section 8: "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."* Plus what about material that there isn't the ability to keep up with this demand. Say the company is having problems with the music rights. Everyone bitches when they change the music but under your idea most music will get changed to keep in with your new law. Click to expand I don't understand this question. Could you explain please? What about when there are only crummy prints or video source available. Just release it anyway flooding the market with subpar crap from companies that didn't used to? Click to expand Publish them, or don't. If they're that crummy, who cares either way? What about short stories. Publish one in Playboy in 2005 that means you have to republish it by 2010 or lose it? Click to expand Why not? Publish it online on a pay site if nobody else wants it. all companies could then set up a publish on demand where they will publish anything in their archives at the quality that exists to them for $1,000,000.00 each. No one will buy it but now it is technically in print so they don't lose the rights to it. Click to expand This was one of the "finicky legal details" I mentioned in my original post. I'm not a lawyer. You'd have to hire one to write the bill anyway. Plug this loophole then. Why has society decided that they have the right to have anything they want at their fingertips and everyone else must abide by it or lose their stuff. Click to expand It's not a sudden decision. It was part of the concept of intellectual property law from the beginning. That's why a patent application must have a full description of the patented invention, so anyone else can duplicate it. The purpose of copyright law is to benefit the community. The fact that it achieves that benefit by granting special rights to authors so they can make money is just a means to that end. Sometimes there are going to be things that aren't currently in print. Some, many, will come back into print at some point. Others never will. Some of the ones that never will at some point will probably make it into the public domain. Click to expand All copyright in those works is intended to become the property of the community eventually. That's why the laws specify an expiry date. Denying the works to the community by not publishing violates the whole concept of the law. Anyone doing that should lose the special privileges that the law gave them. Of course you can spin this around. What if everyone had to use their items within a five year period or other people can take them. Click to expand No you can't. For the gazillionth time, taking something away from its owner is not the same as copying it. That is not only common sense, but also law in every nation on Earth. [Link]

Gunzo Senior Member 1377 Posts 2/05	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 3:15AM Flash wrote: It doesn't seem natural that search engines would allow illegally distributed material to even show up, let alone on top. This is something that I think both the adult and mainstream sides should go after the search engines regarding. Click to expand If search engines would self-censor themselves, you think any porn would show up eventually? Now they can provide links to porn because they sort of hide behind the fact that it's an automated process scanning the entire web. They could be critisized by the community because the people buying stock in the company are probably very rich and have politic influence. Why not block off every blogger giving bad reviews on high budget movies? It obviously hurts the industry. Instead of seeing the movie at the theater they download it because they know it's crap not worth paying for. No, censorship is deadly ground and should be avoided. [Link]
RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 5:34AM Gunzo wrote: Flash wrote: It doesn't seem natural that search engines would allow illegally distributed material to even show up, let alone on top. Click to expand If search engines would self-censor themselves, you think any porn would show up eventually? Now they can provide links to porn because they sort of hide behind the fact that it's an automated process scanning the entire web. Click to expand He does have a point here. I think it would be a bad move to go after search engines as long as there are people who would love to keep porn or anything related to it from showing up on search engines at all. [Link]
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 8:01AM "But it made it a whole lot easier and more accessible to millions of people who otherwise simply wouldn't have bothered and would have just bought/rented the official product." In other words, the market, especially the availability of distribution, has changed and it falls to the businesses to change to take that into consideration. "If search engines would self-censor themselves" Nobody would use them, in favour of ones that didn't. [Link]
RandomPrecision Senior Member Enjoy! 8175 Posts 3/06	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 8:24AM NewRomancer wrote: In other words, the market, especially the availability of distribution, has changed and it falls to the businesses to change to take that into consideration. Click to expand Yeah. They'll change alright. They'll simply move on and find a more profitable business and you'll be left to sit and masturbate to your thoughts. That or some half assed amateur porn. Then again, you'll probably have mountains of stolen porn to jack off too and I guess if that doesn't bother you, you won't miss them. [Link]
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 8:50AM "They'll simply move on and find a more profitable business" Ya... that'll happen... (The same way cassette tapes killed the music industry... Oh... wait... that's right... that never happened, despite all the hew and cry to the contrary!) This is a picture of me not holding my breath that porn is going to go away any time soon. The only ones who will go away, are the ones who are unable or unwilling to adapt to the digital age.... One cannot 'put the genie back into the bottle'. The internet is a strong but emerging part of the equation, and it's very nature is such that no 'draconian' attempts to control it are ever going to work.... So, other methods must be adopted to encourage people to become and remain customers if you wish to sell your products, taking into account that someone somewhere is always going to be able to get a copy of your shit for free if they really want to and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop them. The evidence is there in bucketfuls that people are ready and willing to PAY for what they want.... But what they want has become VERY specific (partially because production has become so much easier, and partially because communication between consumer and producer is also much easier) and if they can't find it from one source, they will happily find it from another. [Link]
ninja1 Senior Member 2939 Posts 1/08	Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:27PM Flash wrote: Some have come out, I can't say who it stars and I doubt you'll ever find decent descriptions of the loops currently available. They are hard to search based on star because many of the boxes don't list any. Click to expand OK, thanks anyway for the suggestions. I know Blue Vanities has always listed every clip title and performer codes (i.e. 2wf - 1bm) from their very beginnings in the early VHS days. But they are still missing a lot of good stuff. And those other sources might have stuff that Blue Vanities doesn't, but do a lousy job of providing details. Maybe I'll try emailing them to try to squeeze more details out of them. [Link]
juha Senior Member 2752 Posts 3/05	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 3:55AM NewRomancer wrote: "But it made it a whole lot easier and more accessible to millions of people who otherwise simply wouldn't have bothered and would have just bought/rented the official product." In other words, the market, especially the availability of distribution, has changed and it falls to the businesses to change to take that into consideration. Click to expand English is only my second language. But as far as I know the words "theft" and "distribution" are not synonymously. [Link]
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:00AM No one here is trying to use them synonymously... [Link]
Sean Renaud Member 181 Posts 7/07	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:56AM Films are good for 75 years? That absurd. I actually think that the 5 year idea is a great one and that most of the ideas against it are absurd. A 2005 Playboy wouldn't need to be republished by 2010 to remain protected. Playboy has been continually published so it would remain protected until five years after Playboy goes out of print. For music you wouldn't need to change it, it would still need to be available. You put up a website and a paypal account and your copyright remains for as long as you've got access to a computer. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 3:38PM Sean Renaud wrote: Films are good for 75 years? That absurd. I actually think that the 5 year idea is a great one and that most of the ideas against it are absurd. Click to expand As I noted above, "films are good" for 95 years. Putting porn videos aside just for a moment, I don't think you have much grasp of the magnitude and mechanics of capital investment in motion pictures. The initial cycle for domestic and foreign distribution of a film in theaters, home video, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, subscription pay television (e.g.. HBO, Showtime, and Starz), network television, subscription pay television (second window), basic cable, and syndication far exceeds 5 years. Movies are a high-risk, high return business, so the relatively few "winners" pay for all the many losers (not just the multitude of films that bomb on release, but the enormous number of screenplays that studios pay to develop that never make it to the production stage). For some basic information on the financing and distribution of motion pictures, Kelly Charles Crabb's book [ invalid url ]. [ invalid url ] by Jason Squire (Fireside Books) is also a good resource. * Rome took a lot more time and money to build than it did to destroy. It pays to give that historical fact some attention. ----------------------- [Edited to fix links.] Edited by - bob on 9/7/2008 9:09:56 PM [Link]

licker Senior Member Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic 1141 Posts 8/03	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 10:27PM Bob wrote: The initial cycle for domestic and foreign distribution of a film in theaters, home video, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, subscription pay television (e.g.. HBO, Showtime, and Starz), network television, subscription pay television (second window), basic cable, and syndication far exceeds 5 years. Movies are a high-risk, high return business, so the relatively few "winners" pay for all the many losers Click to expand Bob, you are missing the point by a thousand miles. As long as the studio kept the movie available in at least one of those media, it would be "in publication" and their copyright would not expire before the statutory limit. Under my reforms, the only way they could lose their copyright privileges would be by refusing to sell the material. If they are refusing to sell it, they have nothing to lose by expiry of those privileges. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:29PM ^^^ I didn't miss your point. I was making a more general point about film distribution cycles and the longitudinal nature of return on investment. To address your specific programmatic point, I have to wonder how you came up with the magic number "5". Not just five years for computer software programs, but 5 years for everything. I'm not sure why it stands to reason, for instance, that if someone spends $100 million on a feature film, that everyone else should be able to get it for free if the owner decides to take it out of the distribution cycle for 5 years. That's quite a windfall for the rest of the world. The ethical justification escapes me as much as the economic one does. On the economic front, let's consider the case of the Walt Disney Company. Disney makes movies that they've been able to successfully market in a variety of ways for a very long period of time. An animated feature such as "Snow White" has been around for over 70 years. One of their distribution strategies is to re-release "Snow White" very rarely -- maybe once every 7 years -- and even then for a very short window of time. They do so in order to build up demand and accelerate theatrical and/or home revenues relative to the attendant advertising expenditures. This business model seems to work for them. Who are you to say that Disney's means of monetizing the copyright in "Snow White" is less acceptable than the one that you propose? [Link]
skronker Notable Legendary Icon Scopophiliac 9780 Posts 9/02	Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:56PM Well, shit, look at Blu-Ray. It will soon be possible for me to have owned the same movie on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-Ray ... as the art-film market jumps in (Criterion's first Blu-Rays come out soon). Same said for "Fashionistas," which I've owned on VHS and DVD ... (of course, I loaned them out and never saw them again :) I have a lot of complicated thoughts on this issue, and I don't feel I can really express them in this thread ... way too contentious. I don't see it as a black-and-white situation by a long shot. But that said, I've probably been spending $75/mo on porn websites. I can't do that anymore due to the crazy nature of freelancing. But when sites are as well set up as Killergram, or the Kink sites, you really do get a lot of mileage for $30/mo. I appreciate fast downloads and high quality. And I can watch 'em on the flat panel via DVI ... Win/win. [Link]
licker Senior Member Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic 1141 Posts 8/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 4:00AM Bob wrote: ^^^ The ethical justification escapes me as much as the economic one does. Click to expand The ethical justification is spelled out in my posts about the original intent and purpose of copyright law. Locking up a work of art and standing guard over it like a dog in the manger is a violation of the spirit of the law. It can also lead in some circumstances to the permanent loss of works of art that the community essentially has paid for. On the economic front, let's consider the case of the Walt Disney Company. Click to expand Good example. The Disney company has been blamed by some for the lobbying that resulted in the present indefensible 95 year duration of copyright. That and the DMCA are major reasons that the public regards copyright with such utter contempt today. One of their distribution strategies is to re-release "Snow White" very rarely -- maybe once every 7 years -- and even then for a very short window of time. They do so in order to build up demand and accelerate theatrical and/or home revenues relative to the attendant advertising expenditures. Click to expand Walt Disney died decades ago. The creative artists who made "Snow White" almost certainly died or retired decades ago. The movie repaid its investment many, many times over, also decades ago. There is no conceivable ethical excuse for a bunch of shareholders who contributed nothing at all to that movie to continue making an income from it. By any moral standard that makes any sense that movie should be in the public domain by now. It bothers me that laws were changed to cheat the United States out of those rights. Copyright is not some kind of imaginary property that can be owned. It is a special set of legal privileges designed to encourage creative work. Those privileges carry a set of responsibilities along with them, and the law ought to recognise that fact. [Link]
Gunzo Senior Member 1377 Posts 2/05	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 4:33AM Disney was a cool visionary guy, too bad he'll be spinning in his grave for the rest of his death. The same goes for the likes of Elvis and Bob Marley... their 'families' are packs of hyenas still living large on never-rotting left-overs. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 4:35AM licker wrote: . . . works of art that the community essentially has paid for. Click to expand This is a fundamental premise of yours that I don't share. Copyright is not some kind of imaginary property that can be owned. Click to expand All "ownership", whether it be someone's legal rights in a work of art or their right to keep the shirt on their back, is "imaginary" -- an intangible creation of law. Only "possession" is tangible. It is a special set of legal privileges designed to encourage creative work. Click to expand "Privileges" is not an accurate characterization in my view -- U.S. law pointedly refers to them as copyrights not copyprivileges. Reasonable minds may differ over the kinds of incentives necessary to encourage artistic creation a particular area of the arts in light of the prevailing costs of creation, manufacture, and distribution. But I still don't understand where your all-encompassing "5 years" comes from. Is it anything other than a plug number? Anyway, I suppose we're just going to disagree -- as usual. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 5:10AM licker wrote: Good example. The Disney company has been blamed by some for the lobbying that resulted in the present indefensible 95 year duration of copyright. Click to expand I should clarify one more thing: I'm not personally a fan of the Walt Disney Company. But I used the "Snow White" example to illustrate my feeling that your "5-year lapse" concept is purely arbitrary with respect (at least) to the motion picture business, even if the longest possible term of copyright for a film were to be cut in half. ------------------- [typos] Edited by - bob on 9/8/2008 5:11:29 AM [Link]
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 5:30AM Property is theft (Don't take this post too seriously... I was half in the bag and it seemed funny to me at the time... ) Edited by - NewRomancer on 9/9/2008 1:19:03 PM [Link]
licker Senior Member Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic 1141 Posts 8/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 10:34AM Bob wrote: But I still don't understand where your all-encompassing "5 years" comes from. Is it anything other than a plug number? Click to expand Sorry, I forgot to answer. You are right. It is a purely arbitrary number that I chose because it seems like a reasonable time span to me. Longer than five years increases the risk that the the work could be permanently lost. This is not fantasy. The BBC has lost many valuable works because it failed to retain master copies of material that was out of publication. It is now reduced to the expedient of begging for copies from anyone who may have "pirated" the original broadcasts. Your attitude to the author privileges created by copyright law seems inconsistent with your constitution, and inconsistent with the fact that such privileges did not exist before they were invented around the time the constitution was written. Before that, anyone could sing a song someone else had written, and that was considered the normal state of affairs. Can you justify your opposition to copyright reform with any arguments that are stronger than "the law should make it convenient for Hollywood producers to get richer" ? licker wrote: . . . works of art that the community essentially has paid for. Click to expand This is a fundamental premise of yours that I don't share. Click to expand So you are saying that if an author spends a year writing a book, and the community gives him half a million dollars for copies of that book, that the community has not paid the author for his work? Drawing a long bow aren't you? [Link]
Flash Golden Age Classic 11018 Posts 5/01	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 1:12PM No, they paid for their copy that the legally obtained. The work is still that of the author, publisher or whomever holds the copyright. And whomever that is can choose to keep the book out of print for 15 years if they want and then bring it back and make another million off of it if they can. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 1:15PM licker wrote: Can you justify your opposition to copyright reform with any arguments that are stronger than "the law should make it convenient for Hollywood producers to get richer"? Click to expand I'm not arguing against "copyright reform" in general, just the reforms you've proposed in this thread. For instance, I believe that copyright law in relation to computer software requires scrutiny and regulation -- most notably, the adhesive nature of End-User License Agreements, which are imposed upon the consumer after purchase. The view that the major movie studios and other production companies are, by and large, getting richer is a myth. The average profit margins for investors in the film industry are very low, much lower than for other major industries. Companies go broke or are bought up and then down-sized left and right due to the risky and volatile nature of the enterprise. licker wrote: So you are saying that if an author spends a year writing a book, and the community gives him half a million dollars for copies of that book, that the community has not paid the author for his work? Drawing a long bow aren't you? Click to expand Long bow? I don't think so. If the community hired a writer to write a book and paid him the negotiated amount regardless of whether they ultimately wanted to read what he wrote, that would be one thing. Under that scenario, the community bears the risk of failure. But that's not how it goes in the world of publishing (in contradistinction to the movie business, where most scripts are written "for hire" and the studio does bear the risk of failure). Back to the publishing world, how does the community "essentially pay for" the work of new authors whose books are never published or which sell poorly (or, for that matter, the time and money spent by publishers who edit, print, and ship those poorly selling books)? --------------------- [typos] Edited by - bob on 9/8/2008 2:32:00 PM [Link]
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 1:43PM "how does the community "essentially pay for" the work of authors whose books are never published or which sell poorly" Seems to me they get exactly what they're worth... If the public doesn't want what you have offered, you get from them what your 'creation' is worth. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:04PM ^^^ And what, in your view, is a creation worth if the public does want it -- maybe wants it badly? [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:06PM Let's be consistent now, New Romancer. Don't confuse the premises underlying your "for" and "against" arguments too much. [Link]
NewRomancer Deactivated User under THEIR avatar 738 Posts 7/08	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:15PM "what... is a creation worth if the public does want it" Any creation is worth exactly what someone (individually or collectively) will pay for it... "Let's be consistent now" Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. [Link]
Bob All-Star Member 5516 Posts 3/03	Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:16PM licker wrote: Longer than five years increases the risk that the the work could be permanently lost. This is not fantasy. The BBC has lost many valuable works because it failed to retain master copies of material that was out of publication. It is now reduced to the expedient of begging for copies from anyone who may have "pirated" the original broadcasts. Click to expand And where do you think the money comes from to maintain a library of original film negatives and restore those negatives when they degrade? Moreover, your suggested copyright reform isn't going to give the public possession of the original negatives whose loss you're understandably concerned with -- that is, unless you also plan to require the physical surrender of the "non-imaginary" original film materials. --------------- [typos] Edited by - bob on 9/8/2008 6:24:41 PM [Link]

Author

Post

NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:12PM

You don't need permission from me, mate!
LOL

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:13PM

I'm glad to see you completely missed the point. I know I can flag terms not to be searched, which don't actually work that well in application. The point is that it is easier now to find the stolen material than the new. There is no way you can convince me that doesn't equal lost sales.

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:21PM

No it isn't okay to just grab it from whatever source has it. You don't know the reason why something is out of print. They may be searching for a new master. Trying to negotiate music rights. It might be leased by another company that hasn't gotten around to doing anything with it. Just because a company doesn't have a specific title on the market it doesn't mean that they are trying to withhold it from you. There are many reasons why something might not be immediately available.
As for the search engine I use Google now and put terms inside "" marks. The search I was performing that caused me to make that post was for Adam Rifkin's Homo Erectus that I want to see. The DVD was originally scheduled for Sept 9 but it doesn't look like it's actually coming out that day since no one is listing it anymore. I wanted to find out if there was a new date. I believe I used "National Lampoon" "Homo Erectus" DVD as the search terms and after all the torrent sites that came up the Australian release comes up.

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 2:33PM

No. That's a horrible idea. The end result of this would be less stuff coming out. Why create and copyright something that you may lose the rights to immediately.
Plus what about material that there isn't the ability to keep up with this demand. Say the company is having problems with the music rights. Everyone bitches when they change the music but under your idea most music will get changed to keep in with your new law. What about when there are only crummy prints or video source available. Just release it anyway flooding the market with subpar crap from companies that didn't used to? What about short stores. Publish one in Playboy in 2005 that means you have to republish it by 2010 or lose it? This is just the tip of all the problems with your logic. Then again, to cover themselves all companies could then set up a publish on demand where they will publish anything in their archives at the quality that exists to them for $1,000,000.00 each. No one will buy it but now it is technically in print so they don't lose the rights to it.
Why has society decided that they have the right to have anything they want at their fingertips and everyone else must abide by it or lose their stuff. Face it. Sometimes there are going to be things that aren't currently in print. Some, many, will come back into print at some point. Others never will. Some of the ones that never will at some point will probably make it into the public domain.
Of course you can spin this around. What if everyone had to use their items within a five year period or other people can take them.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 3:00PM

I don't want to insist on anything, as I disagree with your position entirely. But I did want to know what you insisted upon.

[Link]

Gunzo
Senior Member

1377 Posts
2/05

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 3:28PM

@Flash:
Ever since the birth of internet (featuring porn), the free stuff has always been most popular in search engines. I don't see what's special today with these links to torrent sites showing up on top, seems perfectly natural to me.
For any retailer or company of porn, drowning in the shit of others is incredible easy... simply because porn is the biggest thing on the internet and will continue to be as long as we can predict.

[Link]

ninja1
Senior Member

2939 Posts
1/08

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 3:35PM

Thanks for the answer/explanation.
My interest is old porn from the days of film loops in peep booths. With perfomers such as Johnny Hardin, King Paul, Lili Marlene. I fear much of that stuff is lost forever, and/or those who own it just don't give a fcuk. Do you know otherwise? Is there a reason I should be hopeful regarding product availibility? This year? Next year? 2010? 2050?

[Link]

juha
Senior Member

2752 Posts
3/05

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 8:01PM

You're absolutely wrong.
As I said before in this thread copyright is an achievement of the age of industrialisation. Without copyright we wouldn't have seen the acceleration of the development that we have seen in the last two hundred years.
Charles Dickens isn't an example for ongoing problems of the presence.
He is simply an example for the fact that the concept of copyright was established later in the USA than in Europe.
Don't forget that the USA weren't the leading nation in industrial development in the mid 19th century.
Copyright is one of the cornerstones of our wealth, our way of life, our society.

[Link]

RandomPrecision
Senior Member

Enjoy!
8175 Posts
3/06

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 9:13PM

Of course it didn't. But it made it a whole lot easier and more accessible to millions of people who otherwise simply wouldn't have bothered and would have just bought/rented the official product.
It wasn't that big of a deal back in the day when few people were actually doing it. Now that nearly everyone does it, it just has to be having an impact.

[Link]

arkdvd
Member

103 Posts
1/06

Posted - Sep 4 2008 : 9:26PM

OFF TOPIC
if you didn't find out already, the street date is november 11.
email me any time you are looking for a DVD, old or new; i'd be happy to let you know.

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:05AM

Thanks ArkDVD I hadn't found the new US date yet.

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:12AM

Some have come out, I can't say who it stars and I doubt you'll ever find decent descriptions of the loops currently available. They are hard to search based on star because many of the boxes don't list any. The few that do only list stars that became big later like John Holmes. It looks like Blue Vanities has been releasing tons of old loops. I don't know their quality though. Alpha Blue Archives has released many loops but the quality from what I have seen is horrendous. After Hours Cinema has a series of loop releases. I don't know their quality but generally their feature titles are in good shape. Fallen Angel released a disc of loops many years ago that was in nice shape. Historic Erotica also appears to be releasing loops. I believe Something Weird Video has released several discs worth as well.
I suspect that many are, as you fear, lost forever or lost in personal collections. I also suspect that, due to how the laws worked back then and how distribution worked, that finding who the original copyright holder is in many cases is damn near impossible and probably a good number of the old loops are in the public domain now.

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:14AM

It doesn't seem natural that search engines would allow illegally distributed material to even show up, let alone on top. This is something that I think both the adult and mainstream sides should go after the search engines regarding.

[Link]

killbillvol69

All-Star Member

^Lucy Pinder
18634 Posts
4/08

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:47AM

I've wondered this before: how does something come to be "in the public domain"?

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:02AM

IIRC on the 28th year after initial copyright (or publication/broadcast etc) the copyright has to be renewed. If it isn't renewed the work goes into the public domain.

[Link]

killbillvol69

All-Star Member

^Lucy Pinder
18634 Posts
4/08

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:11AM

^Wow. That's interesting. Why do you suppose the decision was made that it would be the 28th year, as opposed to the 27th, or the 29th? And is this the same in all countries?
Oh, that leads me to another question: how do copyrights work across international borders?

[Link]

juha
Senior Member

2752 Posts
3/05

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:41AM

This was right till the mid 60s in the USA.
But the law was changed several times since then.
Now the copyright for a film lasts at least 75 years.

[Link]

licker
Senior Member

Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic
1141 Posts
8/03

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:43AM

Things that are public domain in some countries can still be copyright in other countries, because duration of copyright is defined differently in each nation.

[Link]

juha
Senior Member

2752 Posts
3/05

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:43AM

Check out the "Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works" in wikipedia.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:55AM

Laws in the United States regarding the terms of copyright and the circumstances under which copyrightable and/or copyrighted works fall into the public domain have changed over time.
Here is a chart that sets forth this information in detail, although it doesn't explain the mechanics of the renewal scheme applicable to copyrighted works published before 1964.

[Link]

killbillvol69

All-Star Member

^Lucy Pinder
18634 Posts
4/08

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 1:55AM

^Thanks juha!

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 2:01AM

Generally speaking, the current rule in the United States for films (the legal authors of which are almost always corporations) is 95 years after the date of publication.
See the link in my previous post for the specifics regarding films produced/published before 2002.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 2:05AM

The current general rule for the copyright term of literary and musical works (whose legal authors are typically individuals) is the life of the author plus 70 years.
*
------------------------------
[typo]
Edited by - bob on 9/5/2008 2:07:31 AM

[Link]

licker
Senior Member

Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic
1141 Posts
8/03

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 2:21AM

You could not lose the rights immediately. You could only lose the rights by refusing to sell copies for five years. Why would you do that? The special privileges granted by copyright law exist only for the purpose of encouraging the creation of works of art and literature for the public. If you are not selling copies to the public, you are not meeting that moral obligation which is inherent in the law.
see: United States Constitution, article 1, section 8: "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."

I don't understand this question. Could you explain please?

Publish them, or don't. If they're that crummy, who cares either way?

Why not? Publish it online on a pay site if nobody else wants it.

This was one of the "finicky legal details" I mentioned in my original post. I'm not a lawyer. You'd have to hire one to write the bill anyway. Plug this loophole then.

It's not a sudden decision. It was part of the concept of intellectual property law from the beginning. That's why a patent application must have a full description of the patented invention, so anyone else can duplicate it. The purpose of copyright law is to benefit the community. The fact that it achieves that benefit by granting special rights to authors so they can make money is just a means to that end.

All copyright in those works is intended to become the property of the community eventually. That's why the laws specify an expiry date. Denying the works to the community by not publishing violates the whole concept of the law. Anyone doing that should lose the special privileges that the law gave them.

No you can't. For the gazillionth time, taking something away from its owner is not the same as copying it. That is not only common sense, but also law in every nation on Earth.

[Link]

Gunzo
Senior Member

1377 Posts
2/05

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 3:15AM

If search engines would self-censor themselves, you think any porn would show up eventually? Now they can provide links to porn because they sort of hide behind the fact that it's an automated process scanning the entire web. They could be critisized by the community because the people buying stock in the company are probably very rich and have politic influence.
Why not block off every blogger giving bad reviews on high budget movies? It obviously hurts the industry. Instead of seeing the movie at the theater they download it because they know it's crap not worth paying for. No, censorship is deadly ground and should be avoided.

[Link]

RandomPrecision
Senior Member

Enjoy!
8175 Posts
3/06

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 5:34AM

He does have a point here. I think it would be a bad move to go after search engines as long as there are people who would love to keep porn or anything related to it from showing up on search engines at all.

[Link]

NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 8:01AM

"But it made it a whole lot easier and more accessible to millions of people who otherwise simply wouldn't have bothered and would have just bought/rented the official product."
In other words, the market, especially the availability of distribution, has changed and it falls to the businesses to change to take that into consideration.
"If search engines would self-censor themselves"
Nobody would use them, in favour of ones that didn't.

[Link]

RandomPrecision
Senior Member

Enjoy!
8175 Posts
3/06

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 8:24AM

Yeah. They'll change alright. They'll simply move on and find a more profitable business and you'll be left to sit and masturbate to your thoughts. That or some half assed amateur porn.
Then again, you'll probably have mountains of stolen porn to jack off too and I guess if that doesn't bother you, you won't miss them.

[Link]

NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 8:50AM

"They'll simply move on and find a more profitable business"
Ya... that'll happen... (The same way cassette tapes killed the music industry... Oh... wait... that's right... that never happened, despite all the hew and cry to the contrary!)
This is a picture of me not holding my breath that porn is going to go away any time soon.
The only ones who will go away, are the ones who are unable or unwilling to adapt to the digital age....
One cannot 'put the genie back into the bottle'. The internet is a strong but emerging part of the equation, and it's very nature is such that no 'draconian' attempts to control it are ever going to work.... So, other methods must be adopted to encourage people to become and remain customers if you wish to sell your products, taking into account that someone somewhere is always going to be able to get a copy of your shit for free if they really want to and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop them.
The evidence is there in bucketfuls that people are ready and willing to PAY for what they want.... But what they want has become VERY specific (partially because production has become so much easier, and partially because communication between consumer and producer is also much easier) and if they can't find it from one source, they will happily find it from another.

[Link]

ninja1
Senior Member

2939 Posts
1/08

Posted - Sep 5 2008 : 12:27PM

OK, thanks anyway for the suggestions.
I know Blue Vanities has always listed every clip title and performer codes (i.e. 2wf - 1bm) from their very beginnings in the early VHS days. But they are still missing a lot of good stuff. And those other sources might have stuff that Blue Vanities doesn't, but do a lousy job of providing details. Maybe I'll try emailing them to try to squeeze more details out of them.

[Link]

juha
Senior Member

2752 Posts
3/05

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 3:55AM

English is only my second language.
But as far as I know the words "theft" and "distribution" are not synonymously.

[Link]

NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:00AM

No one here is trying to use them synonymously...

[Link]

Sean Renaud
Member

181 Posts
7/07

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:56AM

Films are good for 75 years? That absurd. I actually think that the 5 year idea is a great one and that most of the ideas against it are absurd. A 2005 Playboy wouldn't need to be republished by 2010 to remain protected. Playboy has been continually published so it would remain protected until five years after Playboy goes out of print.
For music you wouldn't need to change it, it would still need to be available. You put up a website and a paypal account and your copyright remains for as long as you've got access to a computer.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 3:38PM

As I noted above, "films are good" for 95 years.
Putting porn videos aside just for a moment, I don't think you have much grasp of the magnitude and mechanics of capital investment in motion pictures. The initial cycle for domestic and foreign distribution of a film in theaters, home video, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, subscription pay television (e.g.. HBO, Showtime, and Starz), network television, subscription pay television (second window), basic cable, and syndication far exceeds 5 years. Movies are a high-risk, high return business, so the relatively few "winners" pay for all the many losers (not just the multitude of films that bomb on release, but the enormous number of screenplays that studios pay to develop that never make it to the production stage).
For some basic information on the financing and distribution of motion pictures, Kelly Charles Crabb's book [ invalid url ].
[ invalid url ] by Jason Squire (Fireside Books) is also a good resource.
*
Rome took a lot more time and money to build than it did to destroy. It pays to give that historical fact some attention.
-----------------------
[Edited to fix links.]
Edited by - bob on 9/7/2008 9:09:56 PM

[Link]

licker
Senior Member

Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic
1141 Posts
8/03

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 10:27PM

Bob, you are missing the point by a thousand miles.
As long as the studio kept the movie available in at least one of those media, it would be "in publication" and their copyright would not expire before the statutory limit.
Under my reforms, the only way they could lose their copyright privileges would be by refusing to sell the material. If they are refusing to sell it, they have nothing to lose by expiry of those privileges.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:29PM

^^^
I didn't miss your point. I was making a more general point about film distribution cycles and the longitudinal nature of return on investment.
To address your specific programmatic point, I have to wonder how you came up with the magic number "5". Not just five years for computer software programs, but 5 years for everything. I'm not sure why it stands to reason, for instance, that if someone spends $100 million on a feature film, that everyone else should be able to get it for free if the owner decides to take it out of the distribution cycle for 5 years. That's quite a windfall for the rest of the world. The ethical justification escapes me as much as the economic one does.
On the economic front, let's consider the case of the Walt Disney Company. Disney makes movies that they've been able to successfully market in a variety of ways for a very long period of time. An animated feature such as "Snow White" has been around for over 70 years. One of their distribution strategies is to re-release "Snow White" very rarely -- maybe once every 7 years -- and even then for a very short window of time. They do so in order to build up demand and accelerate theatrical and/or home revenues relative to the attendant advertising expenditures. This business model seems to work for them. Who are you to say that Disney's means of monetizing the copyright in "Snow White" is less acceptable than the one that you propose?

[Link]

skronker
Notable Legendary Icon

Scopophiliac
9780 Posts
9/02

Posted - Sep 7 2008 : 11:56PM

Well, shit, look at Blu-Ray. It will soon be possible for me to have owned the same movie on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-Ray ... as the art-film market jumps in (Criterion's first Blu-Rays come out soon). Same said for "Fashionistas," which I've owned on VHS and DVD ... (of course, I loaned them out and never saw them again :)
I have a lot of complicated thoughts on this issue, and I don't feel I can really express them in this thread ... way too contentious. I don't see it as a black-and-white situation by a long shot. But that said, I've probably been spending $75/mo on porn websites. I can't do that anymore due to the crazy nature of freelancing. But when sites are as well set up as Killergram, or the Kink sites, you really do get a lot of mileage for $30/mo. I appreciate fast downloads and high quality. And I can watch 'em on the flat panel via DVI ... Win/win.

[Link]

licker
Senior Member

Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic
1141 Posts
8/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 4:00AM

The ethical justification is spelled out in my posts about the original intent and purpose of copyright law. Locking up a work of art and standing guard over it like a dog in the manger is a violation of the spirit of the law. It can also lead in some circumstances to the permanent loss of works of art that the community essentially has paid for.

Good example. The Disney company has been blamed by some for the lobbying that resulted in the present indefensible 95 year duration of copyright. That and the DMCA are major reasons that the public regards copyright with such utter contempt today.

Walt Disney died decades ago. The creative artists who made "Snow White" almost certainly died or retired decades ago. The movie repaid its investment many, many times over, also decades ago. There is no conceivable ethical excuse for a bunch of shareholders who contributed nothing at all to that movie to continue making an income from it. By any moral standard that makes any sense that movie should be in the public domain by now. It bothers me that laws were changed to cheat the United States out of those rights.
Copyright is not some kind of imaginary property that can be owned. It is a special set of legal privileges designed to encourage creative work. Those privileges carry a set of responsibilities along with them, and the law ought to recognise that fact.

[Link]

Gunzo
Senior Member

1377 Posts
2/05

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 4:33AM

Disney was a cool visionary guy, too bad he'll be spinning in his grave for the rest of his death. The same goes for the likes of Elvis and Bob Marley... their 'families' are packs of hyenas still living large on never-rotting left-overs.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 4:35AM

This is a fundamental premise of yours that I don't share.

All "ownership", whether it be someone's legal rights in a work of art or their right to keep the shirt on their back, is "imaginary" -- an intangible creation of law. Only "possession" is tangible.

"Privileges" is not an accurate characterization in my view -- U.S. law pointedly refers to them as copyrights not copyprivileges.
Reasonable minds may differ over the kinds of incentives necessary to encourage artistic creation a particular area of the arts in light of the prevailing costs of creation, manufacture, and distribution. But I still don't understand where your all-encompassing "5 years" comes from. Is it anything other than a plug number?
Anyway, I suppose we're just going to disagree -- as usual.

[Link]

Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 5:10AM

I should clarify one more thing:
I'm not personally a fan of the Walt Disney Company. But I used the "Snow White" example to illustrate my feeling that your "5-year lapse" concept is purely arbitrary with respect (at least) to the motion picture business, even if the longest possible term of copyright for a film were to be cut in half.
-------------------
[typos]
Edited by - bob on 9/8/2008 5:11:29 AM

[Link]

NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 5:30AM

Property is theft
(Don't take this post too seriously... I was half in the bag and it seemed funny to me at the time... )

Edited by - NewRomancer on 9/9/2008 1:19:03 PM

[Link]

licker
Senior Member

Heretic, Iconoclast, Skeptic
1141 Posts
8/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 10:34AM

Sorry, I forgot to answer. You are right. It is a purely arbitrary number that I chose because it seems like a reasonable time span to me. Longer than five years increases the risk that the the work could be permanently lost. This is not fantasy. The BBC has lost many valuable works because it failed to retain master copies of material that was out of publication. It is now reduced to the expedient of begging for copies from anyone who may have "pirated" the original broadcasts.
Your attitude to the author privileges created by copyright law seems inconsistent with your constitution, and inconsistent with the fact that such privileges did not exist before they were invented around the time the constitution was written. Before that, anyone could sing a song someone else had written, and that was considered the normal state of affairs.
Can you justify your opposition to copyright reform with any arguments that are stronger than "the law should make it convenient for Hollywood producers to get richer" ?

So you are saying that if an author spends a year writing a book, and the community gives him half a million dollars for copies of that book, that the community has not paid the author for his work? Drawing a long bow aren't you?

[Link]

Flash

Golden Age Classic

11018 Posts
5/01

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 1:12PM

No, they paid for their copy that the legally obtained. The work is still that of the author, publisher or whomever holds the copyright. And whomever that is can choose to keep the book out of print for 15 years if they want and then bring it back and make another million off of it if they can.

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Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 1:15PM

I'm not arguing against "copyright reform" in general, just the reforms you've proposed in this thread. For instance, I believe that copyright law in relation to computer software requires scrutiny and regulation -- most notably, the adhesive nature of End-User License Agreements, which are imposed upon the consumer after purchase.
The view that the major movie studios and other production companies are, by and large, getting richer is a myth. The average profit margins for investors in the film industry are very low, much lower than for other major industries. Companies go broke or are bought up and then down-sized left and right due to the risky and volatile nature of the enterprise.

Long bow? I don't think so.
If the community hired a writer to write a book and paid him the negotiated amount regardless of whether they ultimately wanted to read what he wrote, that would be one thing. Under that scenario, the community bears the risk of failure. But that's not how it goes in the world of publishing (in contradistinction to the movie business, where most scripts are written "for hire" and the studio does bear the risk of failure). Back to the publishing world, how does the community "essentially pay for" the work of new authors whose books are never published or which sell poorly (or, for that matter, the time and money spent by publishers who edit, print, and ship those poorly selling books)?
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[typos]
Edited by - bob on 9/8/2008 2:32:00 PM

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NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 1:43PM

"how does the community "essentially pay for" the work of authors whose books are never published or which sell poorly"
Seems to me they get exactly what they're worth... If the public doesn't want what you have offered, you get from them what your 'creation' is worth.

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Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:04PM

^^^
And what, in your view, is a creation worth if the public does want it -- maybe wants it badly?

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Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:06PM

Let's be consistent now, New Romancer. Don't confuse the premises underlying your "for" and "against" arguments too much.

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NewRomancer
Deactivated User

under THEIR avatar
738 Posts
7/08

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:15PM

"what... is a creation worth if the public does want it"
Any creation is worth exactly what someone (individually or collectively) will pay for it...
"Let's be consistent now"
Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

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Bob

All-Star Member

5516 Posts
3/03

Posted - Sep 8 2008 : 2:16PM

And where do you think the money comes from to maintain a library of original film negatives and restore those negatives when they degrade?
Moreover, your suggested copyright reform isn't going to give the public possession of the original negatives whose loss you're understandably concerned with -- that is, unless you also plan to require the physical surrender of the "non-imaginary" original film materials.
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[typos]
Edited by - bob on 9/8/2008 6:24:41 PM

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