Comment by oharapj
6 days ago
I fear you're failing to understand the distinction between having a perspective that something is wrong with the current system, and having all the legal answers about how to successfully encode such distinction into law. OP's comment was that that people shouldn't want there to be a legal difference.
You're also failing to understand that I am not even making a claim that there should be a difference, I'm merely pointing out that your dismissal of the artists that wish to prevent Tin-Tin from being gentrified is shallow and essentially amounts to 'that's the way things are'.
When people ask 'why is x wrong' the answer isn't usually 'because it's against the law'. This is a boring statement and sheds no real light.
Gentrified is one thing, while rule 34 is another, while. the misuse...
"One of the guys had brought a comic book porn magazine of the ******."
The current system protects the rights of the owner for a while, and the opportunity for nefarious use by trolls, while it prevents the innovation for other beneficial uses like the association with benevolent organizations.
This is not a hard problem, its a very hard problem, for which the current frameworks used to be merely inadequate, are not woefully inadequate, to the point of being very damaging to the intent of the artist, and to the artistic process.
This is not a very hard problem. It's not even a problem. We've got a framework for protecting the rights of content creators as to their content, and we have it that after some time those works enter the public domain because that is actually quite valuable for society.
Pornography might be a problem, specifically as to this case or even generally -- many think reasonably think it is. Pornography does generally get less protection than other contents/speech, so you could limit the sorts of pornographic contents that are ok, and you could ban pornographic parodies of historical persons and characters that have entered the public domain. You could even see an outright ban on all pornography, which would completely solve that part of the "problem" that you see. But distasteful use of works that have entered the public domain is absolutely not a problem in and of itself because we have long ago decided that all works eventually entering the public domain is a very desirable outcome.
> I fear you're failing to understand the distinction between having a perspective that something is wrong with the current system
The problem with that perspective is that the concept of copyright originates from and only exists within that system. Copyright itself is a legal contrivance. If you want to propose some other way of doing things, you need to argue from first principles and articulate the normative assumptions that you are starting from.
> I'm merely pointing out that your dismissal of the artists that wish to prevent Tin-Tin from being gentrified is shallow and essentially amounts to 'that's the way things are'.
And I'd like to merely point out that entire concept of a cartoon being 'gentrified' is something that you and/or the people you're attributing these opinions to have just made up out of thin air, and what you're actually implicitly arguing for is creating a new type of copyright that restricts what other people are allowed to do, without offering any justification for that additional system of restrictions in any meaningful way.
Copyright, at least in the US, stems from a pragmatic desire to "promote the progress of science and useful arts", and not out of some normative notion that ideas ought to be treated like rivalrous property simply because some people have emotional attachments to them. If that latter proposition is what you're bringing into the discussion, you need to explicitly argue your case for it, and not just sneak it in like it's something everyone already understands and accepts.
I am not making this up from thin air, I actually cited a post on another server, that has an actual example. I would hesitate to post a Rule 34 example, as it would appeal to prurient interests, but I will just so I can show effective counter examples.
The original intent of the copyright law is now of little interest and little use in the onslaught of A.I.. A.I. Cannot survive without a relaxing of the copyright laws:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/08/ai-tools-...
Copyright law may have been created early on to promote progress, through profits, but now, in the wake of both the SCO Group lawsuits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Novell,_Inc.
I would disagree with your use of the term "Gentrification." As gentrification implies "Gentrification is a process that occurs when a community's values and profits are raised, often displacing long-time residents. The term was coined in 1964 by British sociologist Ruth Glass." raising the values... where as A.I. may just result in the perversion of the values and destroy the profits.
>The problem with that perspective is that the concept of copyright originates from and only exists within that system. Copyright itself is a legal contrivance. If you want to propose some other way of doing things, you need to argue from first principles and articulate the normative assumptions that you are starting from.
That's great, I'll keep that in mind next time I'm building a legal case for the artists in the attached article. Until then, I'll keep an open mind and not dismiss opinions about what should be the case on the basis of 'that's not the law'
I will say that the idea that certain works that have artistic and cultural significance shouldn't be plundered and watered down for corporate gain isn't overly complicated and fits entirely within the framework of "promoting the progress of science and useful arts". Preservation of existing successful ideas and mythology is important, and existing ideas and mythology can absolutely be ruined by new works produced by uncaring entities
Should this actually be the law? Maybe its implementation would be impossible/too messy/hurt more than it helps. I don't know. Is it good that people have opinions that go against the status quo, and should we dismiss those opinions by saying 'that's not the status quo'! Yes and absolutely not