Comment by LocalH
3 days ago
Piracy is preservation.
Always has been.
Rightsholders must not be allowed to control how works are preserved, else they can very easily steal from the eventual public domain in ways that mere piracy can never be considered stealing.
I think it's insane that the concept of a legal deposit [0] is so rarely extended to films or other media. Even more insane is that US courts have found it to be unconstitutional. A primary school's student newspaper needs to send two copies to the national library, while a movie can be played in every cinema in the nation and...nothing?? Let alone video games and other, more complicated media...
Everyone likes to shit on patents, but patents are designed well. You invent a thing and in exchange for publishing it openly, you get time-limited exclusive rights to it. Why the hell is copyright not like that?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit
> Everyone likes to shit on patents, but patents are designed well.
I think the critique of patents has more to do with the patent officers often being ignorant of blatant, widespread prior art, or having a bizarre idea of how the relevant legal principles should apply in a particular problem domain.
It's sufficient but not necessary. It would be better if there was an entity like the library of congress who would keep it safe, but private until copyright expired after which it would become public. Right now piracy leads to way more of free entertainment than preservation.
In practice, it's necessary. While escrow should absolutely be a requirement to receive the benefits of copyright protection you'd also need to make sure that the escrowed artifact is actually complete and in a usable form and covers every version of the work. That means a lot more than dumping it onto the library of congress so even with that requirement we would benefit from independent archival.
well maybe but they don't do a very good job at it
popular stuff that you could watch anywhere, you can pirate of course
but anything more obscure is impossible to find, or was there at one point but is now long gone
Whose "they"? Private sites do a phenomenal job at preserving a large amount of rare content.
what's the point if no one can see it
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Do you not believe that the eventual purpose of limited copyright terms is to incentivize creation of works and enrich the public domain?
I am absolutely not trolling. Historically, pirated works become more accessible than non-pirated works. Especially in the realm of computer software and video games.
Rightsholders are more often than not horrible stewards of their own legacy. The best way to preserve works is to spread them far and wide. Universal was doing a great job managing their masters, until it all went up in flame.
Thanks for responding thoughtfully. I think we agree that the point of limited copyright is to encourage creation of works. I would say that creating and selling the works is already a substantial benefit to the public who opt to buy or license them (and in the case of physical copies at least, resell or swap them). I see only a moderate social value in forcing them to eventually become public domain (I have never waited with bated breath for a particular text to be added to Project Gutenberg), but I'm certainly not opposed to such limits.
> The best way to preserve works is to spread them far and wide.
I disagree. We are in an age of cheap and abundant digital storage; preserving works for the public good could be adequately covered by introducing a requirement that copyright holders archive their digital works in a government archive, to be unlocked when copyright expires. (Due to the extreme time limit, there would not even be any incentive to abuse such a service for regular file storage.) I would be happy for a few of my tax dollars to go towards keeping the lights on in a government data centre holding all this. Unlike piracy, this approach has the advantage of not violating the rights of the copyright holder.
In practice, it's undeniable that essentially all piracy is done thoughtlessly, for the immediate gain of the pirate, and because they technically can, so the idea that it is being done to better society seems extremely convenient to say the least. Even in cases where piracy winds up financially benefiting the creator due to the increased public awareness of their creation, it should be the creator's decision how much of this to allow, in the same way that I should have the right to throw a perfectly good apple I just bought in the bin if I want to.
You must think you're really clever.
In the time it took you to write that comment, you could have pirated something. Something that the original creator will doubtless now steal from future generations.
Let that be upon your head.
Piracy = Piracy. Stop doing mental gymnastics to justify stealing. If you rip a movie and put it up on the internet, it's not preservation, it's piracy.
Even if you disagree with copyright infringement, it's not the same as stealing.
Patently false, just look as far as Netflix taking down exclusive shows and movies from their catalog. You would literally not be able to watch them anymore if not for folks putting them up online.
Copyright infringement is not stealing. It falls under no theft laws.
It may be a crime in certain situations (most notably, non-commercial infringement is almost never a crime unless done prior to a work's initial publication, but rather a civil issue).