Dylan Horrocks on the real meaning of copyright

It's not quite as seasonal as the real meaning of Christmas, but ace New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks has an excellent article on the real meaning (and dangers) of copyright online now.

Followup to Colleen Doran's editorial on piracy and copyright

The Post's excellent tech columnist Rob Pegoraro explains what the bill that Doran editorialized in favor of actually is:

Congress's latest awful tech-policy idea: the Net-censorship bill
By Rob Pegoraro

Essentially it's a bill to force Internet providers to block traffic to sites accused of piracy, including aggragators of links to scans - like TCJ.Com's Journalista and multiple other comics sites that point out when something rare has gone online.

Colleen Doran on piracy at local blog

I'm posting this because it's in a local publication although I don't remotely agree with her conclusion about copyright. Or about DC's Vertigo's financial problems either.

The "real" victims of online piracy
By Colleen Doran
The Hill's Congress Blog 11/17/10

In my opinion, the carriage makers that survived started making cars, not by continuing to make horse carriages. Technology's changed the world and no matter how Draconian you'd like to make copyright law, it isn't going to matter.  As Rob Pegora says in the Post today, apropos of the Beatles and mp3s, "This is a point that often gets overlooked in entertainment circles: The market continues to function even if the logical and rightful supplier of a product refuses to participate. The ease of duplicating and transmitting digital data ensures that somebody else will fill that vacancy.You can mope about the massive copyright infringement that results from this dynamic, but the best way for artists to reverse it is to get into the market themselves."

That's what's happened with comic book publishers and digital comics. As I like to point out, if the current copyright law was retroactive from when it passed, the Spanish-American War would still be in copyright.  Anyone remember that war? No. Because it happened in 1898. On the other hand, Disney, the chief financier of the law, wouldn't have been able to make any of their movies based on Grimm's fairy tales like Snow White or Cinderella because those original tales would have been in copyright when the films were made in the 1940s.

Mark Waid says copyright is too long at Harvey Awards speech

Apparently there's something in the air lately. Here's The Beat's report on Mark Waid's speech about copyright. Here's me on the topic a few days ago. In the comments on The Beat, I agree with Stuart Moore's reasoned take. Note Dean Haspiel's remark about building his brand as well.

Daryl Cagle vs the Intelligence Community's copyright scofflaws

I mentioned a Washington Post story about a General who used a Daryl Cagle cartoon in his briefing. Cagle takes offense at editorializes, "The Director of National Intelligence Steals and Alters My Cartoon? What the Hell?" which seems to be a bit over the top, as do the comments. Remember that post on copyright a couple of days ago?

Copyright is too long, and other people agree with me

Although it's not specifically mentioned anywhere, most people would assume the contents of this blog are copyrighted, and due to the US Constitution and Congress they'd be right. Since the 1970s, Americans don't need to register their publication with the Library of Congress and use the funky little C symbol. However, I've been asked to waive copyright on some things appearing here, most recently photos of the great Malaysian cartoonist Lat for Wiki Commons, and I've been glad to do so.

However, as these two articles point out, copyright is not an inalienable right but a legal one, and at this point, it's largely warped in the direction of protecting large corporations' intellectual property. Read them both:

A Republic of Letters
By ROBERT DARNTON
New York Times Book Review August 22, 2010
Lewis Hyde draws on the founding fathers for arguments against the privatization of knowledge.

Copycats vs. Copyrights; Does it make sense to legally protect the fashion industry from knockoffs?
Ezra Klein
Washington Post August 22 2010

Fortunately the Fair Use provision should let me exempt out Mr. Klein's salient point for this blog post:

And companies love copyright. They love it so much they persuaded Congress to pass the Sonny Bono Act, which extended individual copyright protections to the life of the author, plus another 70 years; and corporate copyrights to 120 years from creation, or 95 years from publication, whichever is earlier. That’s an absurdly long time, and it belies the original point of patents: does anyone seriously believe that a 40-year-old with a money-making idea is going to hold back because someone can mimic it 20 years after he dies? At a certain point, copyrights stop protecting innovation and begin protecting profits.

Should this blog post be copyrighted at least through 2080? No. The original Constitutional provision of 14 years with a 14 year renewal should be returned to. Let's see some Tea Partyers take up that original construction argument.

I hereby abandon my copyright on this blog post about copyright, not that I imagine anyone will really care.

Nina Paley interview done by local blogger online now

Caroline Small's interview with Nina Paley is up at tcj.com, with part 2 now up as well. Caro, as I've never called her, joined HU last month, and one can frequently find her lurking around cartoonist events in DC, although she always claims she's there for her cousin. Well, now the truth is out.