Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by DiThi on Thursday December 14, 2017 @10:25AM (#15922956)

The reason for the existence of copyright is that authors can receive compensation for their work, to incentivize creation in a new world where copying costs almost nothing ("why would I work writing a book when anybody with a press can just copy me?"). Similar to patents. But it seems people forget this.

Disney won't _die_ if their early characters become public domain. If they're hurt it will be very slowly, with enough time for jobs to shift.

And it's not clear that copyright is necessary for creativity. In some ways it can hindrance sometimes. See the case of the fashion industry https://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashi...

I guess people somehow think that only the lowest quality versions of public domain works will be popular, when the opposite is frequently the case. Like it happened, for example, with Disney versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Which is rather ironic: Disney created an empire in big part thanks to public domain.

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Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by pbhjpbhj on Thursday December 14, 2017 @11:10AM (#15923358)

It's worse in some respects in UK, we lost the right to format shift, it was briefly legal and the media corps quashed it. We don't have Fair Use (but a much more restrictive Fair Dealing).

So iTunes having CD ripping ability is facilitating infringement according to UK law, I wish they'd try and prosecute that!

It's not enough to pay creators to view their work anymore. Copyright legislation lets works get locked up eg by DRM and formats falling out of use; this subverts the creators part of the contract of copyright, we only grant it on the basis that works enter the public domain in a timely manner ... without that copyright should be void.

Meanwhile big businesses like Google get a special exception on "orphaned works" ...

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