Not just that, you only get protection (in a specific country) if you make it reasonably simply available in said country.

I live in the balkans (but still.. part of EU, we have credit cards, internet, everything), and many many media (movies, music,...) are unavailable to buy here... not on netflix, no hulu here, not on any other streaming provider, not released on dvd, not available to buy any other way here...

...but somehow, if I download that movie/episode from a torrent site, i'm somehow causing them financial loss with my download...

Even in America, I've had to pirate TV shows from England because they simply weren't available here, won't air here, and aren't sold anywhere, even in England.

I can't watch Big Fat Quiz of Everything legally at all. My options are to break copyright to pirate it after it airs, not watch it at all, or to move to England. I choose the first. I'd gladly pay for it if given the option, but I have no moral qualms with illegally downloading something I can't even pay for in the first place.

This illustrates the sheer inefficiency of the market in this case.

While distribution is basically free (pirates do it at a very low cost), having a payment system set up for these "unusual" purchases costs more than the revenue is worth.

The best part is that the second hand market satisfies the legal criteria of ownership, but doesn't reward the creators in the slightest.

I've bought a number of media second hand to make sure I own them, and it's remarkable how there just is no way to pay any original producer for things in a lot of cases. I can download a movie easily, but there's no way for me to pay anyone for having done so - meanwhile if I buy a physical copy of that movie from someone else...the creator doesn't make any money from me at all, but it's all completely legal.

This is not entirely true: Selling on the second hand market reduces the cost for the original buyer, allowing them to buy more media than they would/could without the second hand market.

That's assuming second hand prices below the original price. Inflated prices for rare works (which could be easily republished as digital media by the creators) are a different story.

it doesn't even have to be. Vimeo makes it insanely easy to sell content like this.

It's just, they don't even want to share the tiny bit of commission, or risk that you explore different content on these neutral platforms.

Some of my favourite local comedians sell all their stuff on Vimeo. Its like USD 3 for a show, and they have apps on most common devices.

Naturally I consider those more rentals than purchases that can be removed at any point in time, but thats a different topic

The big guys (Disney, big discography labels, ...) can afford to open a branch in every country. The small guys that made an independent film are screwed.

You don't need a branch in every country, they just need to remove the:

    if($country eq "Slovenia") { print "This video is not available in your country!\n"; exit; }

from the current store.

There is tax rules to comply with too, but I am sure a third party will be happy to make a solution.

... and immediately get bankrupt by copyright litigation.

A lot of distribution of media is set in the previous century, where distribution rights are negotiated on a per country basis.

It sucks, and I wholly support copyright reform to address these issues, but making Disney etc into Pirate Bay isn't the way to solve the problem.

He was talking about independent studios though.

Ah, you're right.

This whole thread is about copyright reform, and what should be done to make it better... and that includes this.

With stupidly long copyright protection I can see this being justified by "protecting those profits we're trying to make 2 decades from now"

yes naturally of course you are. Its your responsibility to take a plane to a country where they do sell this, you buy it there, you buy all the region locked devices to play the media also in the region and bring it back home, where you consume the content. Only watch it yourself, if your friends want to watch they need to come on the trip too and buy the same stuff themselves.

How is that not obvious, that's clearly what the hollywood executives expect you to do, to comply.

/s naturally

Are you comfortable with invalidating copyleft licenses like GPL?

The GPL was a best effort, given the state of US copyright. There is no dissenting Open Source group who lobbies for the existing state of copyright because they consider the GPL as more important. Another version of the license can be written.

I'm a total GPL fanboy, but that would not only invalidate GPL, but make it legal to disassemble, modify, and redistribute all proprietary software less than 10 years old.

I don't think it's a great thing, or a horrible one; the positive and negative ramifications are difficult to even estimate. The software world that we live in would be vastly different in very many ways.

I imagine they'd have to be reimplemented under the new legal framework. Attaching addresses to IP isn't so different from attaching predicates like "must be open".

It just shouldn't converge on takedowns is all I'm saying. No legal paths to censorship.

GPL found a way to utilize an evil law to do some good. What we need is to first scrap the evil law, then pass a FOSS protection act. (Besides, a 10 year copyrighted is so long that GPL would still be mostly enforced.)

Open source licenses exist to try and prevent attack on open-source by groups privatizing otherwise freely distributed code. It's an arms race. In a world where copyright's expire on reasonable timeframes, the value of copyleft licenses is vastly reduced since useful code becomes freely available within a reasonable timeframe.

Why do you say the code would become freely available? With no copyleft, you could fork any project and keep the code closed forever.

but the copyright to that code would expire in another X number of years.

So it's equivalent to having GPL on that private fork, but on the timeframe of copyright expiry.

No. The GPL says you must provide the source when asked. In the new situation they would just never distribute it.

This is news to me. Do you have more information about that?

Information about the fact that more original work is prevented by copyright than protected by it? Only anecdotes about people I know who gave up on their dreams because they can't afford a lawyer to fight for their right to do art.

Information about the bullet points? That's my first draft of an alternative formulation.

Ah, I misread the bullet points as pointing out problems.

I was surprised to see WKRP in Cincinnati in the TV listings. It was my understanding that all the old music in those shows made them impossible to broadcast anymore, because (1) the copyright owners wanted too much money, and (2) for some of the music, it was impossible to find the owners.

Maybe they got past that, at least for some of the episodes.

Maybe they replaced the music? That's what they did in order to be able to release the series Daria on DVD. Included in the package was an apology letter explaining why they had to replace all the music.

They might have also secured some of the rights and just dropped the episodes containing songs where they couldn't. That's what Disney did when they put The Muppet Show on Disney+. A few episodes are missing because even with Disney's money they couldn't get the rights to all the songs.

I haven't watched it yet. I doubt they replaced the music, since it IS about a radio station.

That's exactly what they did for the first DVD releases in the mid-2000s. Made it a bit jarring for some of the iconic scenes.

I believe the Shout Factory releases a few years back restored the majority of it though.

OK, you made me look at that channel again. I thought WKRP was on at 5:30 (remember the days when you could only watch a show when it was "on"?) but it turns out it was 9:30 today.

I only heard a few seconds of Another One Bites the Dust and I'm not sure if it was the Queen version or not.

The closing music was custom, I think. So maybe they are just using the non-problematic episodes.

So fun to visit the backwaters of the TV world. They had a commercial for a product that helps you GAIN weight!

https://www.cb1weightgainer.com/

Where do you see WKRP listed?

I don't have an online guide handy, but I do have a digital antenna (something I've written about before). (If you have line-of-sight with the tower, you can still watch major sports events for free. It's not dead.)

However, I think I saw WKRP in the "broadcast TV" popup on my TV. You can tell that they're going out on the web to get it, because at first it says "no information available" and then it populates the channels. It was on Channel 1 in the Bay Area, which shows almost all ancient shows.

You actually meant your local TV listings! I thought there was a TV listings section in the article, lol. I was confused as to how WKRP could've been in the public domain.

> your local TV listings

yes. Those still exist; still free.

And who determines that amount to pay?

Surely all use cases can't be the same amount. If I write a song and Disney uses it in a Marvel movie presumably, I should be paid more than if some local high school kid uses a 10 second sample of the song during their garage bands production.

What if a bunch of neo-nazis want to use my song in their propaganda video? Shouldn't I be able to stop them? Their use would be a detriment to not only the commercial value of my work but potentially to myself as well.

> Surely all use cases can't be the same amount.

but why not?

If copyright licenses on works could be had for cheap, everyone benefits. Sure, disney benefits a lot, since they can make use of the work more efficienty in large productions, but the result of _their_ work could also be had for cheap (such as someone else taking the disney movie and remixing it for low cost).

> Shouldn't I be able to stop them?

no you shouldn't, if said neo-nazi propaganda wasn't illegal to begin with.

Well if Disney made the same amount of money as the high school kid, and relied on your song to the same degree, then presumably they would pay the same.

As for what percentage of the derived-work revenue needs to be paid to you, just let the deriver pick something that they think is fair. It'll be part of the metadata on that work so everybody can see how much of what's being paid is being passed along.

Then we create a culture of amplifying works that are fair to their dependencies. As for those that are doing and bare minimum, we name and shame (and sabotage?).

I’ve always thought the patent system should work the same way. If you don’t produce a product from or reasonably license the invention, you lose the right to hold the patent.