At 75 years past the death of the creator it’s possible you cannot use anything that came out throughout your entire life. Nothing you grew up with, nothing that inspired you, nothing that speaks to the life you lived.
It’s even possible that your children and your grandchildren will not be able to use anything you knew. Definitely not anything they knew.
We’re in real danger of cultural death with these rules restricting our expression.
Thankfully current artists have the option of open licenses for their works.
If I could, I would flip a switch right now where I am only exposed to things with open licenses for the rest of my life.
I’m happy to forget about everything Disney ever made. They can go put it in the vault forever and protect it with all the lawyers and guards in the world. I will never ask them to release it and they can feel safe that no one will be able to “steal” it.
> it’s possible you cannot use anything that came out throughout your entire life. Nothing you grew up with, nothing that inspired you, nothing that speaks to the life you live.
What do you mean by “use”? You can’t sell someone else’s creation just because you like it, that’s true. You can’t copy it and send it to others or post it online. But why should you be able to do those things? Why are you implying that legal restrictions on stealing them for your own profit, or redistributing things for free alike, is akin to not being able to enjoy culture?
You are allowed to view/watch/listen/consume legally obtained copies, and be inspired by them. You & teachers/schools are allowed to made educational copies for school. You are allowed to pay homage to things you grew up with, artistically, and share snippets and some kinds of remix under Fair Use. You can copy styles legally without copying content, if you want. You are allowed to have and hold any culture you want. You are allowed to create new work and give it to anyone you want.
This seems like FUD. Copyrights have been longer than the average lifespan for more than 100 years and we still have plenty of culture - spread of culture has even been accelerating in many ways. Strong arguments do exist for reducing and/or weakening copyrights, but pretending that copyrights prevent the spread of arts and culture isn’t accurate. (And might be willfully blind to the intended and actual ways that copyrights successfully promote cultural development and incentivize new creative works.)
Talk to the people who have created games based on existing characters: they made their own original work because they loved it, put in hundreds of hours, released it for free, and had their work taken off the internet with a cease and desist.
We see examples like that all the time. When was the last time someone was able to make their own popular movie from existing characters without facing some type of legal action? And I’m not talking about the “30% different loophole” where creators have to figure out the balance between recognizable and alienating.
Can you share some specific examples? Using someone else’s existing characters is probably stealing/infringing. That is not 100% original work. I haven’t heard about this being a big problem, most people know you can’t borrow characters from big studio productions without facing legal action, so they don’t attempt it.
Edit to mention up higher that when using someone else’s characters is trademark infringement, that is completely different and doesn’t support your arguments about copyright at all.
Nintendo is infamous for this, not only games specifically but mostly any "works" that relate to their content at all, including YouTube videos and also mods to long extinct games.
Correct. The cases you’re citing are people who are taking Nintendo’s work and redistributing it. YouTube channels have been challenged when people include music from their games, which is copyright infringement. Mods to long extinct games are still distributions of Nintendo’s work, they are not original work. These are all examples of trying to use Nintendo’s IP and redistribute it without Nintendo’s permission. As much as we might not like it, and whether or not Nintendo is actively marketing it, what’s missing here is a valid argument for why people should be able to borrow Nintendo’s work.
BTW your example may be wading in to Trademark territory, which is not the same thing a copyright and doesn’t apply to this discussion.
Nintendo's work isn't a physical, limited good in their possession. It's not like a car or a handbag.
This type of property is protected by law. This isnt the natural state of things, once upon a time you could just retell a story you heard. We as a society have decided to give Nintendo a temporary monopoly. Why do we do this? Different people give different arguments, but for me the reason is that I like Nintendo games, and I want Nintento to keep making them, and they're more likely to make it if we give them an additional edge to make money making games.
With that perspective, I would argue that you should be able to use their work, as long as it isn't likely to stop them from producing more content. Mods to long extinct games seem like a clear example where this is the case.
I'm not saying this is how the law is, I'm saying I think the law as it stands restricts people way to much for the purposes it serves to the people.
Copyright law today isn’t about physical goods, it’s now about giving the author of a work the right to control who can copy it. We as a society have decided to give all authors of all works a temporary monopoly, and the reasons for it are well documented.
I’m not sure I understand why wishing Nintendo to continue doing business supports the idea that you should be able to remix their work, which implicitly means you want people to be able to profit from their designs without necessarily adding value. There’s nothing at all stopping people from making new games, why do they want to mod Nintendo’s games without licensing them? Why should that be legal? And if it is legal, how do you continue to protect Nintendo when some of the “mods” will be people making straight copies, changing something trivial like the background color on the box, and selling it for full price while giving Nintendo none of the money? If you respond with, well put a standard for how much it must be changed in place, then consider why your standard should be any different than Fair Use.
You're saying "why should we allow people to remix?". I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this makes me think you're saying "We should forbid people from using works created by someone else, unless we have a good reason to allow it".
This isn't a perspective I argue from, because I disagree with it.
I think we should allow anyone to copy anything they want, unless we have a good reason to prevent that. So if you're going to stop people from remixing, I think you should be able to build an argument for that that doesn't start with assuming all the rights are owned.
I don't even like using the word "rights" for copyrights, as I really don't feel like it's in the same category as free speech of fair trial. But if I use other words the whole argument gets very confused.
Should Nintendo have the exclusive rights to games they make for 5 years? I think that argument is easy to make. Personally I'm a fan of slightly longer, maybe 20 years.
Should Nintendo have the exclusive rights to games they make for 100 years? I think that's excessive, and instead of serving to encourage create it encourages rent-seeking (Also, at this time scale a lot of material gets lost before it can be meaningfully archived).
Should someone be allowed to distribute a complete copy of a Nintendo game (still under copyright) with (possibly minor) modifications? I don't think so, I think this makes it much harder for Nintendo to make a profit for the limited time they're given.
Doing so in 20 years? Yes, Nintendo's had plenty of time to profit.
I think I agree largely with your opinion. It sounds like you agree mostly with mine, but I’m asking hard questions to try to extract some legitimate justification for remixes that copy significant value from the source material. A big problem with wanting to copy and remix is the unspoken desire to save time or money or to make money. IMO that’s not a great justification. Your position, like mine, starts from acknowledging the need for some protection time for creators, so I don’t think I need to defend that, do I? All we need to do is agree on a reasonable term, right? And Nintendo is not a good starting place to think about the term. The law needs to work well enough for people who don’t own a Mario franchise. It needs to work for photographers and painters and writers too. The law also needs to assume copies are not in good faith. The problem isn’t game developers who want to pay homage to Mario, the problem is unscrupulous people who want to make a quick buck without adding value. They are the reason the law exists, and the law needs to start with the assumption that will happen again.
> most people know you can’t borrow characters from big studio productions without facing legal action, so they don’t attempt it.
This fear is exactly my point. It even gets much thornier and much more chilling when the law isn’t as clear (since people proactively avoid things they think might result in legal action).
>We’re in real danger of cultural death with these rules restricting our expression.<
Isn't it sort of the opposite? Without these rules we'd be stuck drowning in an even larger and blander sea of retellings and reimaginings. The only time I see this considered noble or akin to staving off death is when the culture being preserved is already stagnating anyway.
> Without these rules we'd be stuck drowning in an even larger and blander sea of retellings and reimaginings
This experiment has been run in the form of open source software. The point of the GPL license, and other open source licenses, is to remove the restrictions of copyright from a work, and encourage people to reuse it, copy it, share it, modify it, etc.
Has open source software ended up as a "larger and blander" sea of software "retellings" compared to proprietary software? Was the Xi Editor (RIP https://raphlinus.github.io/xi/2020/06/27/xi-retrospective.h...) a bland remix of ed? Even moreso than proprietary editors like sublime text?
Has there been no progress in Haskell, an open source language, due to the lack of copyright's limitations? Is all non-bland (spicy?) innovation in software done under copyright, and licensed out to other developers so they may enjoy some type system or language?
Open source software to me seems like a very clear counter example to your fear.
> Has open source software ended up as a "larger and blander" sea of software "retellings" compared to proprietary software?
By all means, yes! There are so many open source clones of proprietary software, lots of stuff that is solved, but fun to rewrite, so people do it. How many pointless gnome themes are there? How many web servers, media players, databases?
That’s survivor bias. The number of bland, irrelevant forks on GitHub far outnumbers the few relevant projects, it’s just that we, as software developers, have found ways to ignore those as we sift through options.
Right in this very moment there are hundreds if not thousands of musicians making music absolutely terrified that they will accidentally use prior works they can’t get permission for (or can’t afford).
Some are terrified they’ll use “the wrong sample” (is there a list of wrong samples? no), some are even terrified they’ll accidentally “create” a chord progression that someone else already has the rights to.
In these cases, that artist can end up getting a little popularity and maybe even a little income, then end up in debt with the song pulled from the internet, never to be played by them again.
Speaking as a part-time musician that knows a lot of musicians, I don’t know anyone who’s worried about accidentally using prior works… that sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless you’re talking about DJs & sampling & remixing specifically? In that case all samples are infringing, there doesn’t need to be a list of wrong samples, because all creative authors automatically have copy rights of their works, in the US. Sampling and remixing is somewhat tolerated as long as you steer completely clear of copying the whole song, and I’ve heard precedent tends to favor cases where people sample from multiple source and not just one other song.
Can you share some example cases of the debt you’re talking about? I’m not aware of any major problem along the lines you’re describing for people who are creating new music and not intentionally infringing a little bit.
I apologize because this will come off as dismissive, but I don’t mean it that way:
I’m specifically talking about musicians who make their living through music and who have enough exposure (say, through album sales) to have the attention of the rival record companies.
I say that because in the case of musicians who are “off the radar” the rules don’t really apply. Heck, it’s rare for a musician to get in trouble for playing an exact copy of a popular song at a small venue, but even then I think they all know that they could never release that song on Spotify or YouTube or anywhere else that’s “official” and that’s a demonstration of the kind of fear I’m talking about.
Can you share some specific examples? Which musicians? The ‘rival record companies’ comment hints that you’re talking about something different than copyright problems. But you’re also bringing up many vague fears and not citing examples. People can be scared of a lot of things, that doesn’t mean it’s reality. I’m trying to get a sense of what exactly you’re referring to because it sounds like you are tip-toeing around cases where people are actually infringing and trying to get away with it. Sampling is tolerated sometimes, but not legal. If you go down that road, you can’t necessarily expect to not be challenged.
Then there was sampling in the 80s which built the market for doing it on purpose. Of course your music has to be noticed and be making money before it really matters. Probably why most pop music today is devoid of melody and is just beats and sound effects.
Oh I agree it has happened, I just don’t believe that having it happen accidentally is a very big problem that musicians are sitting around worrying about, which is what @joshspankit claimed. This doesn’t happen very often, right? I’m ignoring sampling here, that’s copying on purpose, as you say, so far more likely to end in conflict.
Thanks for the example! I do wonder if Harrison would have had the same trouble today, those songs are pretty different despite the similarities. It’s not that surprising that among very simple three-chord diatonic major-key pop songs, a few would have a similar structure. The Harrison case might be just as much about opportunist money making as it is about copyright.
Is pop music devoid of melody these days? The term to me suggests Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, Harry Styles, etc… I mean pop is (more or less) always vocals, which has melody (almost) by definition. I can’t think of much pop that can be summarized as just beats and sound effects… what artists are you thinking of?
I don't know if they are worrying about it as a whole, would need some sort of large study I guess. We do know that young people mostly don't worry about things like this, because they don't yet know they should. But probably there is still someone at a record company rejecting potentially costly pieces via software?
> What artists are you thinking of?
Radio stuff from mumble rap to Eilish. I'm sure there is some melody behind the vocals, right? At some point the musicians have to play something. But it is often ambient, obscured, and difficult to discern without repeated listens. Unlike earlier styles where the melody is central and you are hit over the head with it, Yaz or Van Halen come to mind.
Probably all the good sounding pop music chord sequences have been claimed at this point after almost a century of never-ending copyright. Though it is just a guess of mine, would be an interesting project if someone had the time and knowledge to map it out.
Right but in these scenarios the similarities to a prior work are the cause of the problem they might face. It's stifling to the musician sure but not in a way that's preventing anything actually unheard before.
Where's the limit? Perhaps we should award copyright over specific notes. After all we've all heard them before.
Music has so many variables that even direct covers often end up conveying something entirely original or unique. The chilling effect of Copyright results in humanity missing out on a huge number of valuable cultural contributions.
Those considerations were precisely why the phrase "even blander" was chosen and it's not clear to me from your post why expanding the number of people who can capitalize on the same storytelling ip would lead to greater variety rather than more homogeneity.
At 75 years past the death of the creator it’s possible you cannot use anything that came out throughout your entire life. Nothing you grew up with, nothing that inspired you, nothing that speaks to the life you lived.
It’s even possible that your children and your grandchildren will not be able to use anything you knew. Definitely not anything they knew.
We’re in real danger of cultural death with these rules restricting our expression.
Thankfully current artists have the option of open licenses for their works.
If I could, I would flip a switch right now where I am only exposed to things with open licenses for the rest of my life.
I’m happy to forget about everything Disney ever made. They can go put it in the vault forever and protect it with all the lawyers and guards in the world. I will never ask them to release it and they can feel safe that no one will be able to “steal” it.