The Copyright Police Are Coming! - Comments Page 2

Boy, is this a very, very 'touchy' topic!!!

An interesting point about Copyright.

"As soon as a work is created and is in a tangible form (such as writing or taping) the work automatically has federal copyright protection. On any distributed and/or published work a notice should be affixed stating the word copyright, or copy or "c" in a circle, with the name of the creator, and the date of copyright (which is the year of first publication)."

Interesting...Copyright is automatically given, no filing or proving that you in fact did this work or taping.

Just to add insight to this discussion, I have copied and pasted a couple of sentences from
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Copyright. Read the whole article, to get better insight to this issue.

Copied -- "Under the original provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright protection of an authored work extended through the life of the author and to fifty years after the author's death. However, in a major piece of legislation, Congress extended copyright terms in 1998 in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Pub. L. No. 105-298, 112 Stat. 2827 (17 U.S.C.A. §§ 101 et seq.). Title I defines the terms of the copyright extension, while Title II provides a "music licensing exemption for food service or drinking establishments." This portion of the law is also known as the Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998.

The duration of copyright law under the 1998 act was extended for all copyrighted materials. Works created on January 1, 1978, or after are protected from the time the work was "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." The term is for life of the creator plus 70 years. If the creator is a corporation, then the term is 95 years from publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever is shorter."

In the beginning of Copyright, it was mainly for authors, so that no one could plagiarize any of their writings. Since, that time Copyright has been extended to a whole magnitude of creative works, including music, movies, computer programs, computer graphics, so on and so forth, mainly for the same reason, plagiarism. Why plagiarism? Think back to all of the lawsuits in the Entertainment industry involving who wrote or created what, in music or movies!

Why, I 'copied' the above, was to illustrate the length of time, that a Copyright is in existence. In my personal opinion, the time frame is way too long. I am sorry, but, I honestly feel that when a person dies, that held the Copyright, their works should become part of Public Domain.

One important point, when a book is published, the author only gets their royalties from the 'first' sale of the book. When an author's book is re-printed, they do NOT get royalties, on those sales, only the first sale of their book. When a book is 'sold' to a Used Book Store, the author doesn't get any royalties, either. Notice, that the sale of used books, used CDs, used movies VHS/DVDs and used Video Games are allowed, without any of the authors or creators or publishers or producers getting any royalties! So, I ask why is there any Copyright Police, in the first place???!!!

We can thank Congress, for this mess. I have NO problems with Copyrights, but must they last for 70 years after an author or creator dies???!!!

I must apologize, I made a misstatement in my comment.

I stated that when an author's book is re-printed that they do not get any royalties, they do. But, it is not the same amount, as when it was first published, it is a percentage of that amount and the percentage goes lower, every time the book is re-printed. I think, the same goes for music CDS and movies VHS/DVDs, the royalties are based on how many times their creation has been re-produced.

Now, that would account for all the complaints about paying full price, for a product that is basically years old. Which probably explains why Microsoft and the like, charge the same or more every time they introduce a new Operating System. Darn!

Bottom line, I still think that for the individual creator, that Copyright should end when they die. Corporation Copyright should only have a 20 years shelf life, like medicines do. Drug companies only have a 20 year shelf life, after that the drug can become 'generic'. Which means that a 'generic' drug costs less, than the Brand Name.

I don't share files, movies, or music on the internet. But I do download movies and some software from some sites that do share them. Personally, I have no problem with it and this whole thing is driven by money. If someone can download a movie or album or computer software for their own personal use for free, more power to them. I'm sick of corporate greed and trying to make sure they squeeze every last dime out of the general public. Put it this way, if the average American can download a movie for free as opposed to buying it for 25 or 30 bucks or going to the movies for the same price or more, which choice should he make? Thats a no brainer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is it? If you could find a way to get cable TV for free "for your own personal use" would you do it?

Look, the problem is simple- It's a problem of greed, and there isn't even an appropriate, legal means to protest it that will have any real impact.

I don't think anyone will argue that "artists" (could be film makers, musicians, actors, the people doing the work to make the media...) should be entitled to compensation for their work, but that's not what we're talking about here. The people that have really produced something of value only get a small percentage of the money collected and the rest goes to the parasites exploiting both them and the consumers.

There's a lot of decent people out there that wouldn't come close to considering any other crime and would even go out of their way to be "fair" (returning lost items, pointing out mistakes on a bill...) that would either consider or have illegally downloaded media. They're frustrated to the point that they are willing to consider something that they would never do under reasonable circumstances. It's difficult, a hassle, way more expensive then it needs to be, and someone is already reaching into their pocket and charging them way too much for related services.

In my case, I send $150/month to Comcast (which was originally supposed to be $60 for basic internet and some TV that keeps going up and I can't even get high def content that displays correctly on any modern TV for that $), and $200/month on my cel phone bill (again, much of that is for data/media), and for all that I still get 20 minutes or more out of every hour of commercials and everything on the net is inundated with them. I pay for everything I see and use many times over with both my time and money.

For all that I can't get any kind of reasonable level of service- it's unreliable, if something is wrong you can't get it fixed easily (my wife is sitting about 10feet away from me right now ranting about being unable to reach someone to fix a screw up billing something that we paid for 3 weeks ago), I can't pay for just what I use (most of my cable usage is a very few channels, only a couple of hours here and there and again, fully 1/3 of that is commercials wasting my time). You can go to Redbox and get more for cheaper than you can using an on demand service, and you're still overpaying for what you get.

Quit wasting our time and money, quit ripping the consumer off and I'll bet that most of the problem will go away.

Yes Editor, I would. I know some who do. Cable and satellite companies force us to buy channel packages that contain mostly garbage that the majority of people do not watch, yet you have to purchase them to get the channels you really want. Again, it's all about money. As for the copyright issue, I will continue to download movies, music and software for my own use. To be fair, if an individual is selling this material to the public, then I have no problem with them being prosecuted for it. But for those of us who use this material for our own use without trying to make money off of it, leave us alone. If the worst thing we are doing is taking a few bucks out of some millionaires pocket, that's no crime in my eyes...

This can easily be defeated by hiding one's ISP, or is it?

I am a DJ and as such I am constantly updating my music library. I, basically, use Frostwire to do this. I used to use Limewire before it ran into legal problems. The similarity between the two has made me think that they connected. Having said that, after reading your article on copywritten material, my question is does Frostwire provide a LEGAL access to FREE downloads or will it go the way of Limewire? I would not be adverse to paying for a service but I must be real in dealing with the economic cost of maintaining a current play list. So I need to know if my current source of music is putting me in a position of illegal activity.

As a former recording artist myself I know that the royalties I received were very miniscule in comparison to other people involved in the recording process and the selling of the product. Thus I have to agree with some of the comments that the artists, themselves, are not getting hurt by music being downloaded on-line. I was part of the scenario. I am not suggesting that the artist's work should not be compensated. The reality is that bulk of that compensation should be on the shoulders of the company the artists record for. After all, that is who is making the biggest gains off the artists.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I did some research on Frostwire, and it appears there is no difference, as far as the legal aspects are concerned. You're still downloading pirated content.

A question about recording royalties... If (as is typical) a contract clearly spelled out the percentage of net profit the artist would receive, and placed the cost & risk of manufacturing, distribution and promotion on the shoulders of the recording company, do you really think it's fair to say they are ripping off the artists?

What prevents artists from taking on the burden of manufacturing, distribution and promotion on their own? Nothing, especially in the digital age, except a little bit of money and lots of hard work. But I don't think too many artists are raking in money using this strategy. So maybe the recording companies are not as "evil" as people like to think.

One problem that I do not see addressed, many TV shows are also downloadable. Since I do not get cable, and TV shows only hold the shows for so long on their web site, it is hard to see back aired shows. This is free if you get cable, but if one cannot afford it, and love certain shows, the only way to watch is through downloading from a P2P. Maybe the TV shows can be found somewhere else?