There are Moments

[liralen]

When I wish someone would just take Disney down, and get the damned copyrights back to the way they're supposed to be, i.e. putting things back into the common domain after 20 years. Patents only go 20 years, so should copyrights, so far as I'm concerned, long enough to make a good profit, and then profit everyone else. There's a *reason* generic drugs are cheap enough to afford, the patent ran out on them.

What made me think of it even more was LibriVox.org, which records common domain books for anyone to download and listen to. I used to work for Distributed Proofreaders for Project Gutenberg for much the same reasons. Uhm, yeah, that's probably where my proofreading skills got pretty good.

Okay, having looked through Distributed Proofreaders again, my brain is like, I could do a couple pages a day, couldn't I? I used to plow through dozens a day after working even. Or hey... that final formatting round looks really good....

Comments

[dragonacesg7.livejournal.com]

I really think Walt Disney would be sickened by the lengths his company goes these days to own and own forever then milk it to death well beyond it's time.

I have always blamed a lot of it on the way the company was run by Michael Eisner, who was finally forced out a few years ago, but they have been slow to recover and let go of some of the garbage practises they have been running.

And while I think them getting involved with Studio Gibli(sp) was a mistake, I don't believe like many hard core Miuzaki(sp) fans that Disney is out to get the man for everything.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Well, Pixar, too. *sighs*

I dunno. We'll have to see in the long run.

[cmc42.livejournal.com]

Forget disney, FOX are the ones with real hanging onto copyright issues. Read my Uni friends profile here to see what I mean: http://hm-murdock.livejournal.com/profile

The TV companies here don't mind short clips because they view it more as a promotion of their material, and also all of the major channels here have their own youtube accounts anyway.


The film (and music) industries do not seem as willing to move with the times. *sigh* Actually the Music industry is probably worse than the film one.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, that it's far more than just one company doing it.

The Music industry got hit hard by cheap distribution, it'll be interesting to see what falls out. Yeah, hopefully, as they get less money for fewer and fewer things, things might change...

[tearraws.livejournal.com]

"There's a *reason* generic drugs are cheap enough to afford, the patent ran out on them."

I won't argue that this is certainly at least one major reason ... but there's more than just this.

The generic drugs are also cheaper because they let the major drug company do everything else for them. They let the major drug company spend billions on research, millions more on marketing. Then, even before the patent runs out, a generic brand can closely reverse-engineer the recipe (or engage in industrial espionage) and make a minor modification that bypasses copyright law, model their packaging to look almost-identical to the main brand, and they get the benefit of billions on research, millions on marketing, without having actually spent the money on it.

That having been said, I think that copyright and patent law need some serious alterations in the direction you're talking about, for the same reasons you said, but also for many more.

For instance: There are too many examples of copyrighted or patented products that are not on the market, but which are blocked from entering the market because someone holds the copyright or patent. You *should not* be able to keep something from the market entirely just because you hold the copyright or patent for it, and don't want it to be out there. The patent or copyright for something not generally available on the market should expire in, say, a year, unless it can be demonstrated that there's serious effort being put into bringing it to the market. (that latter is vitally important for small inventors who try to get their product made by big companies, to keep the small inventor from getting ripped off by just waiting a year.)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Oh, very, very true. The major drug companies very much deserve everything they can get.

Yeah, that last one really does need changing, badly.

[annieroo2.livejournal.com]

Distributed Proofreaders sounds really interesting. Is it a volunteer thing or did you get paid to do the work?

Something like that, if I could just get paid by the page would be the way for me to go, since it will still be a while yet before I can go back to work. But damn it would be nice to make a few bucks occasionally when I need it.

I really need to start looking for non-solicitous work from home programs. It just all seems to be so much a big scam that it's hard to wade through.

I didn't even know there were such things as common domain books, but in retrospect it totally makes sense. Otherwise how would Jane Austen keep getting published.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Sadly, it's just volunteer work. Though I've heard of a few of the folk that qualify for the harder work actually getting real work doing it; but that's like 1000's of pages in... not sure if it would be worth doing for that.

But, yeah, doing work like *that* from home is pretty cool.

I know a couple of friends doing medical transcription at home, as they didn't like the solicitation angle either.

But, yeah. And Shakespeare. *grins*

[nosferatu-blue.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a nice idea! It's not fair that Disney can just hold onto things like Beauty and the Beast when someone else might be able to play with it and do something, oh, I don't know, better than Disney?
(Then again, where would be the profit in THAT for the mouse?)

Distributed Proofreaders looks like a good idea. Spread the work out to get a major job done. It seems like a noble cause to get the books/information more accessible (sorta like the same goal of libraries).

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy DP. It's kind of soothing to do, too.