Zardnaar
Deity
Arts always been hard to make money from.
Would be even harder of people can outright steal it. One can also self publish.
Should Intellectual Property exist?
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Arts always been hard to make money from.
Would be even harder of people can outright steal it. One can also self publish.
Lexicus
Deity
Yeah I mean imagine writing a song and then the record label owns it. No one would ever make any music!
Star Trek has been all over the map regarding fan activity. Peter David once related how some legal suits from Paramount raided a Star Trek convention and confiscated every fanzine they could find in the dealers' room. It didn't matter to them that once upon a time Gene Roddenberry gave his blessing to some fans to write and publish the first Star Trek 'zine called Spockanalia. All they saw were a bunch of people stealing Star Trek's copyright, in spite of the fact that fan publications are required to state that the authors/editors/publishers don't own the rights to Star Trek.
This is ironic, given the fact that when they decided to go all out for publishing paperback novels (James Blish's books showed that there were people willing to buy Star Trek paperbacks, whether prose adaptations of the episodes or original novels), they needed a lot of novels in a hurry. So how Bantam and Pocket Books did it in the early days was to use fanfiction. They'd edit it for clarity and tighten up the plot, deal with any OOC qualities, and publish it, whether as a short story or novel.
I have the original fanfic version of Sonni Cooper's Black Fire, as well as the published novel. I've read multiple versions of Shirley Maiewski's "Mind-Sifter", whether its final professional-sale version in an anthology, the original fan version published in a 'zine, the version published online on a fanfic site, or the fan film version produced by James Cawley (there were actually two different ones; they scrapped the first one in which Cawley played Kirk and hired a different guy to play Kirk in the final version, while Cawley had a cameo in it). Sadly the finished fan film doesn't begin to do justice to the story itself. After decades since reading it for the first time and seeing the final filmed version, I was disappointed.
The whole Axanar debacle... holy crap, people at TrekBBS are STILL talking about it. They had to promote someone to the moderating staff just to keep a watch over the Axanar threads, since they have tens of thousands of posts, and things get extremely heated at times.
What one man's greed did was to spoil the fun of a lot of other people who played within the rules. Star Trek Continues wasn't shut down immediately, since they still had a couple of episodes in various stages of production and they'd already raised the money for them. So CBS allowed them to finish, but not make any more unless they complied with the new rules (so confining that there wouldn't have been any point). STC's last episode was therefore a condensed version of the three planned episodes they didn't get to make. The goal had always been to take their version from the end of "Turnabout Intruder" (TOS' last episode) up to the point just before TMP (The Motion Picture).
So STC finished, sorta, but it's a shame they didn't get to do the episodes they'd planned. I'm glad that Phase II/New Voyages (Cawley's company) managed to get their major episodes done. It was especially poignant to watch the one featuring Nichelle Nichols' last appearance as Uhura anywhere before she died. I also enjoyed the ones featuring Sulu and Chekov.
Of course one of the things CBS objected to was the hiring of some of the original actors. They thought fan films should not have professional actors in them. That's actually bizarre, since both James Cawley and Vic Mignogna are professional actors, though not in the usual sense. Cawley's regular job was being an Elvis impersonator, and Mignogna is a voice actor for animated productions.
George Lucas, on the other hand, took a more reasonable approach. It's not like he was producing new Star Wars stuff every month, and by allowing the fans to make their own films and write their own stories, it would give them something to do in between movie releases, and kept the name Star Wars active in the fans' minds, rather than it fading into disinterest between movie releases.
I recently saw a video about Shakespeare, and this is why, when he was doing his plays, he never let anyone but the prompter have a complete copy of the script. Even the major characters only had their own speeches plus a few words from the previous speaker to know when to jump in and do their lines.
That's what fanfic authors do. I've been working on the same project for five years. It's a good thing that the only money involved in this is the money I paid for the computer game(s) that inspire me in this project. If anyone was paying me to actually finish it in anything like a reasonable time frame, they'd have gotten what I'd finished in November 2018, and that's so much less than what it is now, after I've had time to expand everything and try multiple versions.
Isaac Asimov mentioned in his autobiography about some shady publishers who bought authors' stories and then did nothing with them - just sat on them, knowing full well that according to the contract, the author who wrote the story can't turn around and sell that story elsewhere.
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
Copying is not theft. All work is derivative. You cannot "own" a thought.
Interesting tangent: what is theft then, assuming all work is derivative?
Or does this hinge on something being material magically imbues it with value? And if so, is that work also not derivative?
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
All life is derivative; I don't think you want to go down that path. The question as I see it is: When an idea takes form (usually physical in the sense that it can be understood by others) can/should that "object" be owned by whomever "birthed" it?
Remorseless1
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Why figure out how to make cold fusion work and then not be able to recoup my expenses because everyone else is using my system? There's a lot wrong about how the US government handles large corporations, but a quick fix is to change patent law.
As much as the Communists and the Anarchists rail about the evil capitalist system, capitalist societies are more innovative and richer. Why? Cash is one heck of an incentive.
As much as the Communists and the Anarchists rail about the evil capitalist system, capitalist societies are more innovative and richer. Why? Cash is one heck of an incentive.
They don't like incentives. How individual people respond to incentives creates social classes.
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
Copyright is what allows corporations to patent life right now in the form of GMOs. Yes, they help feed the world. However, since the 2000's, the Supreme Court of the United States affirms that it's OK to patent genetically modified DNA. Good path to go down? We're already there.
Physical objects can be stolen. Ideas can only be copied. I'm not for stealing the original movie reels, but doing a ctrl-c ctrl-v is not theft. It's copying.
So if I ctrl C your bank account or SS number to use for myself it is OK? It is a question of the rights of ownership. If you get rid of ownership, the rights question disappears. If ownership is allowed, then the question changes to what does it mean to "own" something and can one "sell" that ownership.
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
Dollars are (theoretically) backed by something. If people just copy money, they are attempting to manufacture representative tokens for real goods that don't exist. The problem isn't the copying, it's the fact they're copying tokens that (theoretically) represent finite resources. Ergo, when they redeem copied dollars in the form of buying real goods, it's a form of fraud. The only reason governments are allowed to copy money is because they have a monopoly on force, allowing them to devalue currencies as desired. If you became Supreme Dictator, you could copy dollars until your heart's sated and the value is crashed. However, you can make an infinite amount of copies of a book, a video, a movie, etc, and the original still exists in an untainted form because movies/music/books are not mediums of currency exchange but forms of art. Art which is only profitable in the way it is because of draconian copyright which is dangled over the heads of creatives as if it's their only salvation from starving.
Comparing copying dollars to copying ideas is about as apples-to-oranges as you can get, I think.
Cool. I'll copy the nuDune books, fix what's wrong with them, and get rich.
Of course the HLP are a litigious, spiteful bunch* and would come after me, but at least I'll have fixed the pile of BS they put out.
*To the point where they forced the Second Life Dune players to shred everything that could be identified as Dune, and also forced a group of Spanish Dune fans to take down the trailer they'd put up on YouTube. It's a shame that fan film was never finished. I don't understand Spanish, but I did get to see the storyboards and meet some of the people involved when they joined Arrakeen forum for awhile.
Owning a thought actually is something you can do if you never tell anyone else about it.
But what a lot of copyright holders should try to understand is that even if someone writes a story or makes a fan film set in their universe, it doesn't mean that people will no longer buy the official books/movies/watch the show, etc.
Well, usually. I'm grateful for all the so-far unread Star Trek fanzines I have around here, plus what's online, as I really don't care for the newer TV series.
On the other hand, just because the latest chapter of the Harry Potter story I'm following was posted yesterday, it doesn't mean I won't rewatch the movies.
It's so ridiculous that Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander novels, made a big speech about not wanting anyone to write Outlander fanfiction. What a hypocrite. Outlander started out as Doctor Who fanfiction based on the character of Jamie McCrimmon, who was one of the Second Doctor's companions. When it was in pre-production as a TV series, Gabaldon tried to get Frazer Hines (who played Jamie on Doctor Who) to star in the show. That didn't happen, but Hines did guest star in an episode or two.
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
Do it. If you can write a better story, you should be allowed to do so without being finanically or morally molested for "stealing" a "thought."
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
The human condition is complex. The Soviets tried first order information sharing thinking it would speed things up, similarly. But the practical outcome was that if someone innovated, it would stressful obligation to the other manufactories, without the promise of getting ahead. Or in other words, without the promise of getting a reprieve by front loading work.
What you proposed has been attempted in its most obvious form, and didn't go as planned.
Except you're not writing a better story from scratch. You're benefiting from the labour of others, which your work is building off of.
Note: I'm not arguing this in favour of how copyright is used in the modern world. I'm arguing this conceptually, because it seems a pretty anti-creative stance all told. Under the guise of it being meritocratic, even.
Like, Edison vs. Tesla, right? You're on Edison's side here, at least in terms of your argument. Is that a fair assessment?
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I too have mixed feelings on intellectual property and think it needs a big rewrite.
I think a starting principle should be based on a punching-up punching-down principle.
If a person or entity wants to use a smaller act's intellectual property, they have to get permission/pay etc. A big artist has to compensate the smaller artist from whom they sample, a car ad has to pay the band the use to sell the car, etc.
But a small youtube channel can play some AC/DC without demonetization, a small artist can sample and rework a bigger artist freely, etc. And then build the logic from there.
I think a starting principle should be based on a punching-up punching-down principle.
If a person or entity wants to use a smaller act's intellectual property, they have to get permission/pay etc. A big artist has to compensate the smaller artist from whom they sample, a car ad has to pay the band the use to sell the car, etc.
But a small youtube channel can play some AC/DC without demonetization, a small artist can sample and rework a bigger artist freely, etc. And then build the logic from there.
Edison had no problem suing others for copying "his" work, whereas in an IP-free vacuum he's just one in a sea of guys building off of Tesla.
Unfortunately, their stuff is so bad that nothing could fix it.
But consider the flip side. If you're suggesting that I do a copy/paste/fix-it on pro novels, what's to stop pro authors from stealing a fanfic author's story and passing it off as theirs?
That's why we're not allowed to discuss fanfiction or even mention ideas or suggestions in the TrekLit subforum at TrekBBS. Even if a fan were to tell the pro author, "It's okay to use my idea; I'd be honored to see it in a novel" the author cannot run the risk of the fan changing their mind and suing.
That's what happened with Marion Zimmer Bradley and a fanfic author. MZB, up to that point, had always encouraged fans to write stories and poems and songs and artwork for Darkover and she enjoyed reading them.
Did she use some of their ideas in her own books? Yes. Did the fan author get credit for them? No. The most a fan could hope for would be a mention in the dedication.
Things got legally ugly, however, when a fan and MZB were both working on a story covering the same events in Darkover's history - the events surrounding the murders of Rafael Hastur and Rafael Syrtis, by terrorists. That's a story that fans had long-wanted to see done, since those events were first alluded to in the novels The Bloody Sun and The Heritage of Hastur.
The fan sent her story to MZB - who read it - and then the fan asked for a co-author credit. Since by that time MZB couldn't prove that she hadn't copied any part of the fanfic story, both her agent and the publisher told her to kill the book. So the real story of what happened to the two Rafaels will forever be untold, especially since the fan author tried to make $$$$$ out of it another way...
... She knew the Darkover fans were unhappy with not getting to read this story. So she pitched an offer that if fans would send her money, she could take the time to sit home and write it (she called it "singing for her supper").
That backfired, big time. She'd already lost her legal battle with MZB. What MZB's estate did about it was to forbid any and all Darkover fanfiction, period. The fanfic sites aren't supposed to allow it, and anyone who owns it (ie. fanzines) is supposed to destroy it. If we've written any, we're supposed to either destroy it or change it so thoroughly that it can't possibly be mistaken for Darkover fanfiction.
So thanks a heap. Mind you, I suspect the fanfic sites only act if someone complains, and I very much doubt that anyone would who isn't part of the MZB Literary Trust. Some stories get unnoticed because they're in languages other than English. And I certainly have no intention of destroying the fanzines and filk music I've collected over the years, nor will I comply with the order to mutilate my own stories.
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
It isn't meritocratic or egalitarian. It's the stance that people shouldn't be punished for the impossible crime of thought theft. I have no idea about the Edison-Tesla point you're making, but I'd assume that Edison would be chapped if someone infringed on his copyright, meaning he and I would not be friends.
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