that greedy gannets would be all over your, erm, "work"
It's not making anything (nor will it ever, unlike the sparky's craft), maybe you should try to give it away...total loss leader as it were
Hmm, charming chap aren't you? :lol:
You've actually got worse and learned nothing in the interim. Fortunately there aren't many like you around, and now and again I can tolerate your absurdity.
Hmm, charming chap aren't you? :lol:
You've actually got worse and learned nothing in the interim. Fortunately there aren't many like you around, and now and again I can tolerate your absurdity.
Just show some and prove him wrong. What is it? Paintings, sculptures, software, or something else?
Just show some and prove him wrong. What is it? Paintings, sculptures, software, or something else?
Awww, that's kind of taking things waaay off topic now. :( Basically, I do all the above and more in various degrees. Don't worry, I know Weesam is wrong anyway as it's already been proven elsewhere. I have no interest to show him. It's obviously not for him. He's not interested unless its gonna be something for free, then he can just take the piss without any financial loss. That's his world.
He is so taken with an illusion that everyone does this sort of thing to make lots of money. He loves getting stuff for nothing, and believes he is entitled to that from every quarter. He has very much missed the point of why authors want to hold on to their copyrights. He needs to do a lot more living yet.
No more about my stuff, personally. People who know me are aware of all the things I'm involved in. They're not money-spinners, but they're mine. Okay, so other people have bought into it, and they deserve a say, but that was my choice to make. I will keep control for as long as I draw breath, and hopefully, with decent laws such as we have now, the integrity of my vision will remain true for a good few years beyond my passing.
We do keep going over this copyright malarkey a lot. As it stands, the law is adequate.
The copyright laws are immoral, and wouldn't be tolerated in any country that wasn't run just for the rich.
Why should you get paid for something you did twenty-years ago, when most other professions get paid for doing it once?
If the laws were made by moral people, instead of the rich and biased, then things would be very different.
The only people who complain are those who don't have their own ideas.
That's a pathetic attitude. The fact is, the people who complain about the copyright laws are the ones who have thought about them and can see their flaws and inequalities. If the people who complained about them had no ideas, then they wouldn't be complaining about them. I don't complain about any sport injustices as I don't have ideas about them, there might be lots of inequalities and injustices in the way pole vaulters are treated, for example, but I don't know of them, so you won't hear me complaining about them. I do know, however, that the copyright laws are wrong (as are so many other laws), that politicians shouldn't be allowed to have a second job (as 1. it introduces conflicts of interest, and 2. they should give their full professional time and concentration to doing their duties as desired by the electorate), and that people in power should be made to answer for their crimes and breaches of the rules, the same as (much) poorer people would have to do.
The copyright laws are immoral, and wouldn't be tolerated in any country that wasn't run just for the rich.
Why should you get paid for something you did twenty-years ago, when most other professions get paid for doing it once?
If the laws were made by moral people, instead of the rich and biased, then things would be very different.
That's a pathetic attitude. The fact is, the people who complain about the copyright laws are the ones who have thought about them and can see their flaws and inequalities. If the people who complained about them had no ideas, then they wouldn't be complaining about them. I don't complain about any sport injustices as I don't have ideas about them, there might be lots of inequalities and injustices in the way pole vaulters are treated, for example, but I don't know of them, so you won't hear me complaining about them. I do know, however, that the copyright laws are wrong (as are so many other laws), that politicians shouldn't be allowed to have a second job (as 1. it introduces conflicts of interest, and 2. they should give their full professional time and concentration to doing their duties as desired by the electorate), and that people in power should be made to answer for their crimes and breaches of the rules, the same as (much) poorer people would have to do.
Don't see what the issue is. It's not like this stuff isn't easily available to download, copyright laws or not. As for how long something should remain in copyright, well as far as I'm concerned, if someone is alive, and they wrote it, it's theirs, end of story. I have no idea why someone would object to that principle.
Why should you get paid for something you did twenty-years ago, when most other professions get paid for doing it once?
Not getting at you specifically ewgf, so forgive me if it reads like it, but the point is being completely missed here. One electrician can go around multiple houses and earn a living from those who wish to employ their services individually as they are all separate, if a rewiring or something comes up twenty years later they may even get repeat business at the same address and charge again.
However, an author's situation is the reverse, they can't write as many books as different houses an electrician can wire in his working life, therefore the one, or such, piece of work that he writes can't be sold or equated in the same way, if all the people the sparky visited also wanted the book the author wrote, logically speaking the only way to achieve that would each have to pay an amount for it to get a copy instead, it's not like they can pay the author to come to their house and read it to them, or maybe they could but they'd be charged per hour for the privilege, but I digress.. So being the fact that the only opportunity for this author to make a living (ie; food, shelter, clothes to varying standards) is by selling a copy of his work, some protection has to be enforced to allow recompense for the time and effort that went into creating it, the work itself, plus the manufacturing of the product itself so as to encourage these types of works for the greater good, people like movies, music, books and games right? If no-one can make a living from them then people wouldn't bother. It's all great when you're 18 and still living with your mum and dad to sit up all night writing or whatever, but how about feeding a family? Why should someone who can write a book, or game, or song that is enjoyed immensely by many people be denied a financial reward from it? Or also protection from others who would steal that work and make money from it for themselves? "Sorry David Gilmore, 10 million liked your first album but you made ten quid, not enough? Then go get yourself a real job (you hippy bum).. etc.. Oh and by the way, twenty years later, we'll license a track from it to be the theme tune to a bond movie and make millions, and give you nothing". :roll:
Whether a person who creates a work sells two copies over a twenty year period or a million over a six month period, the owner of the works has to be able to have the say on what happens, whether it be a company or an individual, it makes no difference.
Personally I think people would do better to get off the anti-copyright stance and maybe look for a better solution to the problem to do with retro software, the irony of the 'there's no demand for this anymore (apart from ours of course), and it's not commercially viable, (because we want it for free)' argument is about as transparent as it gets. Maybe you do have good intentions and you don't want to deny copyright holders of any potential reimbursement, however negligible you may think it is, but this line of argument goes very much against it.
Not everyone is Disney, and even then, trying to be 'anti-commercial' and hurting Disney in this way is literally killing independents. The best way is to not buy and not download and support those you want to by only buying what you really want, even if it is from Disney.. The other "I'm against greedy corporations, so I expect everything for free" line is getting old and worn out too, at least a greedy corporation can claim to have produced something to be greedy about in the first place..
Because on Royalties, if it was one payment, the amount made wouldn't even buy you breakfast.
Another scenario, you create a musical masterpiece, nobody buys it because the pop marketing machine wanted some X-factor contestant at number one and drowned you out, 20 years later it gets used in a movie and everyone starts buying it.
I think what people want with copyright is something that's fair. We consider it fair to download 30 year old games that you can't buy anymore (or at least in any way that the original authors and/or copyright holders would get any money for it). But we'd consider it unfair for someone to sell us a copy of them.
Writing that into law is difficult, I suspect.
One other important thing about copyright, is it has to be asserted to have legal value. I think the main reason they deny games is not to stop us getting them for free, but to demonstrate that they are still asserting their copyright over their intellectual property, so if someone did come along and start trying to make money off it they can't claim the holders have not been asserting their rights.
Basically as a rights holder, you can't turn a blind eye to one group of people and then have a go at another. You can of course make legal agreements with anyone you like, so rights holders could give WoS explicit permission to distribute their games and still maintain their copyrights.
Copyright doesn't work, but there are no alternatives that work well either.
So what we have is a situation where (almost) everyone ignores copyright law unless someone is taking the piss (ie trying to make money from someone else's work). And that does work.
Reading through this thread, I can't help but feel there are still a lot of misconceptions around copyrights. I'll provide some more arguments, to enrich discussion of the subject before we run out of arguments, and proceed to personal insults... ;)
1st, there's this idea that creators have some natural / 'god-given' right to control what happens to the fruits of their labor. There is no such thing. There was a time before copyrights, people would just look at what others were doing, copy paintings / music / technology etc as they saw fit, and society didn't fall apart. You don't want others using what you came up with, period? Then don't publish it!
Then there's this idea that creators have some natural / 'god-given' right to profit from whatever they publish. There is no such thing either. Before copyrights, painters / writers / musicians etc would produce things as work-for-hire (mostly paid by rich patrons), or just for the fun of it. And again: society didn't fall apart.
Or this idea that creators must be paid, or nothing creative would be done. That's provably false: a lot of creative work originates from before copyrights ever entered the picture. And up to this day, many creators that aren't paid for it, continue to produce works anyway.
Related to that, the idea that the world as a whole has profited from the existence of copyrights. That is unknown, since times before copyrights were much different from today. Countries where strong copyright existed, were different from countries where copyright wasn't used. And for the same time + same place, we can't compare since copyrights do exist, so they blur the picture when investigating what-if scenarios. In other words, any 1:1 comparison between schemes, followed by do-the-math, simply isn't possible.
Some research has been done though, which (not surprisingly!) suggests that society would benefit from abandoning some copyrights, and/or shorter duration.
Copyrights are a government-granted monopoly, introduced with specific intentions, under the excuse of a net benefit to the public. It's easy to prove those original intentions are not met, at which point you can:
Redefine those intentions ("line the pockets of already-rich middlemen")
Adjust laws such that they do achieve their original intentions
Abandon existing laws because they don't work
Consider & try alternative schemes
Let's not forget that copyrights were introduced to benefit society overall. With society = mostly 'consumers' and relatively few creators, that translates to: for the public's benefit first, creators' interests 2nd. I can understand the point of view of creative folks, but going against this rule means that (as a creator) you put your own interests before that of society as a whole. Nothing stops you from taking that p.o.v., but in doing so you lose the moral high ground.
I think what people want with copyright is something that's fair.
That's the gist of it. Most people -including me- will agree that some copyrights may be a necessary evil, compensating creators for their work (in one way or another) is the right thing to do, and thus as consumer you should cough up some $$ from time to time to kick some creators' butt. :grin:
We consider it fair to download 30 year old games that you can't buy anymore (or at least in any way that the original authors and/or copyright holders would get any money for it). But we'd consider it unfair for someone to sell us a copy of them.
Commercial or not may not be the most important aspect. For example in the case of software, what consumers care about is availability, and support. A viable scheme may be that copyrights can last long, but only as long as creator provides support / bugfixes etc. If creator loses interest, abandons a piece of software or generally shows he/she doesn't care anymore, then imho it should be fair game for others. Even if that turns out to be profitable. A kind of "use it or lose it" for creators. But that's just one of many options.
For books / movies / music etc there's a similar "out of print" concept.
Copyright doesn't work, but there are no alternatives that work well either.
That's just not true. A number of alternatives exist, but either haven't been tried (at least, not large scale) or are simply impossible due to existing copyright schemes getting in the way. More creativity / flexibility on the part of lawmakers and content providers would be welcome, but I guess that's too much to expect from these folks... :-P
I have no interest to show him. It's obviously not for him.
nor anybody else by the accounts of it
Retro - very good points.
There are alternatives to perpetual payment
One is to ignore it all together ( which many people do )
There are sharealikes, creative commons, freeware
One could make a product that people actually want to pay for ( a brand ) and own; rather than copy
While I believe all works should enter the public domain after the death of the author all should be allowed to protect their work, both physical and intellectual, while alive.
Copyright also protects artistic vision and preserves the quality of the origianl work. Try finding a good copy of George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' to see what total lack of copyright encourages.
I'm sure I was told once that if you mail yourself something you've created i.e. music demo tape etc, in a jiffy bag, then don't open it, that legally entitles you to some kind of copyright ownership? heard this a few times iirc, not sure if it's true
I'm sure I was told once that if you mail yourself something you've created i.e. music demo tape etc, in a jiffy bag, then don't open it, that legally entitles you to some kind of copyright ownership? heard this a few times iirc, not sure if it's true
You already do. All that does is helps you prove it if someone rips you off and publishes it first.
It's not exactly hard to fake though. Presumably you'd be better off sending it to your solicitor and having them date it and hold it for you.
I'm sure I was told once that if you mail yourself something you've created i.e. music demo tape etc, in a jiffy bag, then don't open it, that legally entitles you to some kind of copyright ownership? heard this a few times iirc, not sure if it's true
what that does, if you have posted it, and it is dated, it can be used as evidence that you created the works prior to that date.
Very weak evidence though, you could easily tamper with the envelope, and what is inside it; which is why stuff is better if it is properly registered.
As Weesam says, it's quite weak legally speaking. You'd be better off giving it to a bank for safe-keeping, as then there's little chance it's been tampered with and there will be logs of access to the box it's stored in.
Free speech only protects you from governmental prosecution, not from non-governmental bodies. And it doesn't exist at all in the UK, though there is quite a broad allowance in practice.
Hmm, charming chap aren't you? :lol:
You've actually got worse and learned nothing in the interim. Fortunately there aren't many like you around, and now and again I can tolerate your absurdity.
We all know you wrote Stonkers ;)
Every time I read that the oldest person in the world has died, I have to do a quick check to see it isn't ME..........
An MP cannot be arrested or charged with slander, contempt of court, breaching official secrets etc; nor be arrested for ANY statement made in Parliamentary Proceedings.
Britain has, for good or bad (I'd say, on the whole, good) the same sort of attitude towards Freedom Of Speech as it does to copyright (which are entwined). The creator is somewhat protected, but generally, as long as the copier doesn't take is pi55, the state doesn't care; nor does anybody else.
what that does, if you have posted it, and it is dated, it can be used as evidence that you created the works prior to that date.
Very weak evidence though, you could easily tamper with the envelope, and what is inside it; which is why stuff is properly registered.
That's kind of the point of publication, I think. A movie premiere that starts with "and Disney presents: Jungle Book" + 1000 viewers = 1000 witnesses that Disney was the one who came up first with that Jungle Book movie. Well the movie that is, not Jungle Book the story. :grin: But you get the point... Same thing with scientific papers, books, etc. The simple act of publication, makes the audience 'register' that you created it.
Other than that, keep it under wraps / lock & key, or as said: register it at some officially sanctioned 3rd party.
Same thing with scientific papers, books, etc. The simple act of publication, makes the audience 'register' that you created it.
What that does is provide proof that you published something on that date.
Doesn't say that you created it, or that it was your idea; somebody could provide subsequent evidence that they created it prior!
Its why copyright lawyers love big corporations going at it in court. It ends up as a "he said, she said" argument for years! Apple, for example, are perpetully in court!
Comments
Hmm, charming chap aren't you? :lol:
You've actually got worse and learned nothing in the interim. Fortunately there aren't many like you around, and now and again I can tolerate your absurdity.
Just show some and prove him wrong. What is it? Paintings, sculptures, software, or something else?
No irony, freedom of speech does not extend to name-calling and insulting. Which is the usual way these threads end up descending in to.
Awww, that's kind of taking things waaay off topic now. :( Basically, I do all the above and more in various degrees. Don't worry, I know Weesam is wrong anyway as it's already been proven elsewhere. I have no interest to show him. It's obviously not for him. He's not interested unless its gonna be something for free, then he can just take the piss without any financial loss. That's his world.
He is so taken with an illusion that everyone does this sort of thing to make lots of money. He loves getting stuff for nothing, and believes he is entitled to that from every quarter. He has very much missed the point of why authors want to hold on to their copyrights. He needs to do a lot more living yet.
No more about my stuff, personally. People who know me are aware of all the things I'm involved in. They're not money-spinners, but they're mine. Okay, so other people have bought into it, and they deserve a say, but that was my choice to make. I will keep control for as long as I draw breath, and hopefully, with decent laws such as we have now, the integrity of my vision will remain true for a good few years beyond my passing.
The copyright laws are immoral, and wouldn't be tolerated in any country that wasn't run just for the rich.
Why should you get paid for something you did twenty-years ago, when most other professions get paid for doing it once?
If the laws were made by moral people, instead of the rich and biased, then things would be very different.
That's a pathetic attitude. The fact is, the people who complain about the copyright laws are the ones who have thought about them and can see their flaws and inequalities. If the people who complained about them had no ideas, then they wouldn't be complaining about them. I don't complain about any sport injustices as I don't have ideas about them, there might be lots of inequalities and injustices in the way pole vaulters are treated, for example, but I don't know of them, so you won't hear me complaining about them. I do know, however, that the copyright laws are wrong (as are so many other laws), that politicians shouldn't be allowed to have a second job (as 1. it introduces conflicts of interest, and 2. they should give their full professional time and concentration to doing their duties as desired by the electorate), and that people in power should be made to answer for their crimes and breaches of the rules, the same as (much) poorer people would have to do.
Not getting at you specifically ewgf, so forgive me if it reads like it, but the point is being completely missed here. One electrician can go around multiple houses and earn a living from those who wish to employ their services individually as they are all separate, if a rewiring or something comes up twenty years later they may even get repeat business at the same address and charge again.
However, an author's situation is the reverse, they can't write as many books as different houses an electrician can wire in his working life, therefore the one, or such, piece of work that he writes can't be sold or equated in the same way, if all the people the sparky visited also wanted the book the author wrote, logically speaking the only way to achieve that would each have to pay an amount for it to get a copy instead, it's not like they can pay the author to come to their house and read it to them, or maybe they could but they'd be charged per hour for the privilege, but I digress.. So being the fact that the only opportunity for this author to make a living (ie; food, shelter, clothes to varying standards) is by selling a copy of his work, some protection has to be enforced to allow recompense for the time and effort that went into creating it, the work itself, plus the manufacturing of the product itself so as to encourage these types of works for the greater good, people like movies, music, books and games right? If no-one can make a living from them then people wouldn't bother. It's all great when you're 18 and still living with your mum and dad to sit up all night writing or whatever, but how about feeding a family? Why should someone who can write a book, or game, or song that is enjoyed immensely by many people be denied a financial reward from it? Or also protection from others who would steal that work and make money from it for themselves? "Sorry David Gilmore, 10 million liked your first album but you made ten quid, not enough? Then go get yourself a real job (you hippy bum).. etc.. Oh and by the way, twenty years later, we'll license a track from it to be the theme tune to a bond movie and make millions, and give you nothing". :roll:
Whether a person who creates a work sells two copies over a twenty year period or a million over a six month period, the owner of the works has to be able to have the say on what happens, whether it be a company or an individual, it makes no difference.
Personally I think people would do better to get off the anti-copyright stance and maybe look for a better solution to the problem to do with retro software, the irony of the 'there's no demand for this anymore (apart from ours of course), and it's not commercially viable, (because we want it for free)' argument is about as transparent as it gets. Maybe you do have good intentions and you don't want to deny copyright holders of any potential reimbursement, however negligible you may think it is, but this line of argument goes very much against it.
Not everyone is Disney, and even then, trying to be 'anti-commercial' and hurting Disney in this way is literally killing independents. The best way is to not buy and not download and support those you want to by only buying what you really want, even if it is from Disney.. The other "I'm against greedy corporations, so I expect everything for free" line is getting old and worn out too, at least a greedy corporation can claim to have produced something to be greedy about in the first place..
Because on Royalties, if it was one payment, the amount made wouldn't even buy you breakfast.
Another scenario, you create a musical masterpiece, nobody buys it because the pop marketing machine wanted some X-factor contestant at number one and drowned you out, 20 years later it gets used in a movie and everyone starts buying it.
I think what people want with copyright is something that's fair. We consider it fair to download 30 year old games that you can't buy anymore (or at least in any way that the original authors and/or copyright holders would get any money for it). But we'd consider it unfair for someone to sell us a copy of them.
Writing that into law is difficult, I suspect.
One other important thing about copyright, is it has to be asserted to have legal value. I think the main reason they deny games is not to stop us getting them for free, but to demonstrate that they are still asserting their copyright over their intellectual property, so if someone did come along and start trying to make money off it they can't claim the holders have not been asserting their rights.
Basically as a rights holder, you can't turn a blind eye to one group of people and then have a go at another. You can of course make legal agreements with anyone you like, so rights holders could give WoS explicit permission to distribute their games and still maintain their copyrights.
So what we have is a situation where (almost) everyone ignores copyright law unless someone is taking the piss (ie trying to make money from someone else's work). And that does work.
1st, there's this idea that creators have some natural / 'god-given' right to control what happens to the fruits of their labor. There is no such thing. There was a time before copyrights, people would just look at what others were doing, copy paintings / music / technology etc as they saw fit, and society didn't fall apart. You don't want others using what you came up with, period? Then don't publish it!
Then there's this idea that creators have some natural / 'god-given' right to profit from whatever they publish. There is no such thing either. Before copyrights, painters / writers / musicians etc would produce things as work-for-hire (mostly paid by rich patrons), or just for the fun of it. And again: society didn't fall apart.
Or this idea that creators must be paid, or nothing creative would be done. That's provably false: a lot of creative work originates from before copyrights ever entered the picture. And up to this day, many creators that aren't paid for it, continue to produce works anyway.
Related to that, the idea that the world as a whole has profited from the existence of copyrights. That is unknown, since times before copyrights were much different from today. Countries where strong copyright existed, were different from countries where copyright wasn't used. And for the same time + same place, we can't compare since copyrights do exist, so they blur the picture when investigating what-if scenarios. In other words, any 1:1 comparison between schemes, followed by do-the-math, simply isn't possible.
Some research has been done though, which (not surprisingly!) suggests that society would benefit from abandoning some copyrights, and/or shorter duration.
Copyrights are a government-granted monopoly, introduced with specific intentions, under the excuse of a net benefit to the public. It's easy to prove those original intentions are not met, at which point you can:
Let's not forget that copyrights were introduced to benefit society overall. With society = mostly 'consumers' and relatively few creators, that translates to: for the public's benefit first, creators' interests 2nd. I can understand the point of view of creative folks, but going against this rule means that (as a creator) you put your own interests before that of society as a whole. Nothing stops you from taking that p.o.v., but in doing so you lose the moral high ground.
Now, as for practical matters: That's the gist of it. Most people -including me- will agree that some copyrights may be a necessary evil, compensating creators for their work (in one way or another) is the right thing to do, and thus as consumer you should cough up some $$ from time to time to kick some creators' butt. :grin:
Commercial or not may not be the most important aspect. For example in the case of software, what consumers care about is availability, and support. A viable scheme may be that copyrights can last long, but only as long as creator provides support / bugfixes etc. If creator loses interest, abandons a piece of software or generally shows he/she doesn't care anymore, then imho it should be fair game for others. Even if that turns out to be profitable. A kind of "use it or lose it" for creators. But that's just one of many options.
For books / movies / music etc there's a similar "out of print" concept.
That's just not true. A number of alternatives exist, but either haven't been tried (at least, not large scale) or are simply impossible due to existing copyright schemes getting in the way. More creativity / flexibility on the part of lawmakers and content providers would be welcome, but I guess that's too much to expect from these folks... :-P
wrong.
Private internet forums can have rules where free speech is not allowed: ie rules of engagement
Don't pretending that something is what it is not
nor anybody else by the accounts of it
Retro - very good points.
There are alternatives to perpetual payment
One is to ignore it all together ( which many people do )
There are sharealikes, creative commons, freeware
One could make a product that people actually want to pay for ( a brand ) and own; rather than copy
D.
Copyright also protects artistic vision and preserves the quality of the origianl work. Try finding a good copy of George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' to see what total lack of copyright encourages.
Or off it for that matter? Certainly not if you're posting from the UK.
Besides that it's only as tenuous and man made as your right to a monopoly on copying creative works or having access to drinking water.
You already do. All that does is helps you prove it if someone rips you off and publishes it first.
It's not exactly hard to fake though. Presumably you'd be better off sending it to your solicitor and having them date it and hold it for you.
beats me
:lol:
maybe you could try to find a decent copy of Shakespeare's work -- oh hold on, you can.
what that does, if you have posted it, and it is dated, it can be used as evidence that you created the works prior to that date.
Very weak evidence though, you could easily tamper with the envelope, and what is inside it; which is why stuff is better if it is properly registered.
Free speech only protects you from governmental prosecution, not from non-governmental bodies. And it doesn't exist at all in the UK, though there is quite a broad allowance in practice.
D.
We all know you wrote Stonkers ;)
well, it exisits in Parliament, if you are an MP.
An MP cannot be arrested or charged with slander, contempt of court, breaching official secrets etc; nor be arrested for ANY statement made in Parliamentary Proceedings.
Britain has, for good or bad (I'd say, on the whole, good) the same sort of attitude towards Freedom Of Speech as it does to copyright (which are entwined). The creator is somewhat protected, but generally, as long as the copier doesn't take is pi55, the state doesn't care; nor does anybody else.
Other than that, keep it under wraps / lock & key, or as said: register it at some officially sanctioned 3rd party.
What that does is provide proof that you published something on that date.
Doesn't say that you created it, or that it was your idea; somebody could provide subsequent evidence that they created it prior!
Its why copyright lawyers love big corporations going at it in court. It ends up as a "he said, she said" argument for years! Apple, for example, are perpetully in court!