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[mikejkelley]

MY BATMAN IS AN OBESE TRANSSEXUAL
I write fan-fiction. My proudest achievement to date has been my very well-received Batman fan-fiction. My Batman is not the Batman of his corporate masters at DC. My Batman is in fact a Batwoman. She is a post-op transsexual sidelined from fighting crime as she deals with a debilitating weight problem, a side-effect of her hormone therapies. In her stead Alfred scours Gotham for wrongs to right. Just as Batman adopted his persona from the result of a traumatic childhood encounter with a colony of bats, Alfred has become "The Punchinello" as the result of a bad-touch incident with a troupe of traveling mimes. This convention has served me well; in the current storyline Alfred is suffering from amnesia and has been mistakenly taken in by the Joker's henchmen. This will lead to an epic confrontation with Batwoman who will have to choose between seeking justice and offering clemency for her one time best-friend, lover, and father-figure.

I'M AN INNOVATOR
There's a word for the fan-fiction I write; innovative. I deal with themes that the big boys at DC are too afraid to touch, not the least of which is Batwoman's gender identity (currently in a healthy relationship with an under-aged Robin, thank you!). DC's Batman, with the exception of his dalliance with psychoactive drugs in the 60's, has remained largely unchanged since his creation in 1939. He's still the same brooding, bat-mantled crime-fighter he was nearly 80 years ago. The reason for such lack of innovation? Copyright laws.

COPYRIGHT LAWS SUCK ASS AND DO NOT INNOVATE
Copyright laws are essentially a state-sponsored monopoly. These laws ensure that ideas are made artificially scarce by barring the use of someone else's intellectual property. Even the whole idea that something as intangible as intellect and its issuance can become entitled to the same rights as physical property is fundamentally absurd. Ideas are not scarce. The millions of fanfic creations testify to this. Nor should ideas be made artificially scarce. If someone wants to sell their Batman fan-fiction they should be allowed; this is how we get innovation.


COPYRIGHT LAWS KILL PEOPLE
There are life-and death consequences to a lack of innovation. Consider - if there were multiple Batman storylines, it can rightly be assumed that there would be multiple Batman movies (I'd love to see my version on the big screen!). If there are multiple Batman movies, it can be rightfully assumed that the market share of each would cannibalize the other, making each movie premiere less of an event. Being less of an event means being less of a target to attention seeking, self-aggrandizing, gun-wielding lunatics. Without copyright laws, those Colorado movie-goers would be alive today.

COPYRIGHT LAWS KILL JOBS
In addition to jeopardizing lives and stifling creative innovation, copyright laws also stifle business innovation and inflate prices. Without copyright laws, a person would be able to, with an off-the-shelf printer/scanner and stapler, create dot-for-dot reproductions of DC comics. Such reproductions can be made indistinguishable from the originals. And without the overhead of paying writers and artists, can be done much, much cheaper. This would lead to a whole new industry creating reproductions. With new industries come more jobs. And lower production costs mean lower prices for the consumer.

WHO LIKES COPYRIGHT LAW? SELL-OUTS.
Who doesn't want less murder, more jobs, and lower prices? The only people in favor of this crazy copyright scheme are successful, elitist, IP creators. They will tell you that if you were to take money from the mouths of writers and artists by selling counterfeits and cannibalizing their market share with unlicensed storylines, new, innovative IP such as the Batman "property" would never have been created in the first place (this is bullshit, I can tell you as an Artiste that the creative spark occurs independently of monetary reward and that my transgendered, boy-loving Batwoman and clown-molested Punchinello sidekick would come into being with or without DC's help!). So these sell-out writers and artists don't want to write and art anymore? Fine, let them dig ditches like the rest of us. Copyright laws must go.

[moi]

butthurt?
Notch is coming for you.
sleep tight,.... if you can....

[:^)]

You made a lot of good points. But I probably wouldn't buy your fan-fiction. That being said I am only one person and the world is a large place and there is probably a market for what you have to offer.

I'd like to say though that innovation is nice and stuff. It makes you feel like you live in a free and beautiful world where anything is possible, but let's face it, we don't.
The best ideas (financially) are the ones that appeal to the largest amount of people (Like food and shelter), and corporate big bro already got to most of those. So there.

So we should all just go see The Dark Knight Rises, and pay our taxes.

[PompiPompi]

The effort people put in creating a troll account just to tell a joke. 

[Evan Balster]

Part of the original thinking behind copyright law was protection of inventors from larger entities which had the resources to easily steal and manufacture their designs.  Whether this purpose is served in the present day is another matter.

In paragraph 5 -- You're saying I should be able to reproduce and sell your fanfiction without remuneration?


Also where's my umbrella?  Forecast says a giant shitstorm is headed in.

[moi]

I think his post is full of sarcasm, mjkelley is actually in favor of patents of all kinds
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=26837.0

He seems angry, I assumed in my first post that it was because of the recent notch ordeal, but I might be wrong

[Evan Balster]

Quiet you!  I was being gullible deadpan guy.  Yeah, that's it... 

Any links on said notch thing?  I didn't hear about it and don't allow myself near games/general.

[pelle]

This is why I mostly buy really old books (19th century, although with the law here I still have to check the creator has been dead for 70 years). I know I own it, for real, and can copy/reuse everything in it without violating anyone's silly intellectual property. Nice and rare feeling in a world where you must otherwise ask for permission for almost any reuse.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

parody is actually protected speech. fanfiction is largely legal, as long as it's explicitly parody. this is why "spaceballs" wasn't sued by "star wars". if you were to make a movie of an obese, transsexual batman, they would *not* be able to successfully sue you, because it's a parody, which is fair use

copyright law is actually pretty fair and *does* allow for stuff like you describe, you just need to call it parody

other examples of legal high-profile parody:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody_film

"the starving games", a parody of "the hunger games"
"2001: a space travesty", a parody of "2001: a space odyssey"
"scary movie", a parody of "scream"
etc., there's a whole list of them there

there are also a huge number of porn parodies; completely legal, and they didn't get permission. there's a porn parody of pretty much any popular movie / tv show that you can imagine

[J-Snake]

I don't want multiple different Batman films. I want one Batman, the most Batman, the real Batman.

Also if you try to copy the games I am making I will find and kill you. I don't want my image to be spoilt by incompetent clones. Just pointing out the good points. Otherwise yea, you are right on heavy points.

The silliest thing I remember is "Carmack's reverse" (for volume shadows) technique he used in Doom3 in this regard. A really rotten thing he wasn't allowed to use it without deals.

[EBrown]

Honestly, I think copyright laws are right on track. They protect your direct intellectual property, but they don't overly eliminate the ability for someone else to do it. They keep you safe, while still allowing for creative development.

Of course, this is just my opinion.

Thanks,
EBrown

[Fallsburg]

Copyright laws are pretty decent. 

Patent laws are an insane shitfest that need to be drastically reworked.

[Evan Balster]

Copyright laws are pretty decent. 

Patent laws are an insane shitfest that need to be drastically reworked.

I'm gonna second that.

[Garthy]

Copyright laws are pretty decent. 

Patent laws are an insane shitfest that need to be drastically reworked.

I'm gonna second that.

Thirded. Could not have said it better. Although retroactive copright extension is pretty bad.

Patents, on the other hand, have deviated so far from their original purpose that's it's one of the very few things I have a "nuke the site from orbit" view toward.

[VDZ]

I don't know, in a situation where nearly every person is technically a criminal I can't say the laws causing that classification are 'decent'. Maybe the current level of prosecution is decent, but the actual law is something nearly everybody breaks.

[Garthy]

in a situation where nearly every person is technically a criminal

The situation where there is a law that is frequently broken ("everyone is a criminal") but selectively enforced is almost universally a bad thing. This is an extremely good point.

I wonder what the best way to address this concern is, whilst also ensuring there is motivation for people to gamble large amounts of time in creating works that wouldn't otherwise exist without such a system in place.

[TomHunt]

Here's why patents are no longer serving a useful purpose now: it costs more money to draft and file a patent than it typically does to actually put it to use and make well more than enough of a return to justify the investment.

This was not the case 100-200 years ago, when things like factory machinery would be patented. These things would require an additional significant investment of resources to actually implement, and patents were required to be so specific that infringement could only occur if someone already had the pile of money needed to implement the design. If they have the pile of money, then the additional cost of them doing due diligence in the then-not-super-clusterfucked patent system would have been reasonable enough that they should not have had any excuse not to.

When we have things like algorithms that can be patented - the additional cost of implementing an algorithm is building it into machine-runnable instructions and putting it into distribution. And now that distributing code is simply a matter of uploading it to the Internet, the costs can come down to next to nothing. The monetary cost of coming up with an idea is zero. One does not hand cash over to someone to get an idea. Ideas come from inspiration, which resides outside of the monetary system. Anyone can sit on a park bench and come up with ideas for things. What costs money in writing software is the computer itself and maybe some software on it to build the code - and much of the time this software is made available at no cost. Internet connection is less than $100/month. Server hosting can be had for less than $20/mo.

Altogether, let's ballpark this at, say, $5000 for the computer, some development tools, an internet connection, and hosting. 

In terms of patent filing costs, $5000 might get you a patent on a newfangled coat hanger doohicky. A software patent is probably going to run you upwards of $10k - just to file one patent.(source) This is not including the costs of enforcing the patent by actively searching for cases of infringement and going through legal process with each one of them, whether or not the case actually goes to court or reaches a settlement.

Anyway, the point of all this is, software is not factory machinery.

[Garthy]

I'll have to restrain myself somewhat here, I have some very strong opinions on the devastation caused by the current state of the patent system, and could literally go on for hours. Not today, though.

Anyway. Another big issue with the patent system as it stands at present is that a well-funded entity can pick up a patent portfolio based on a set of obvious patents (eg. clicking something once, online highscores, device layout with a device that is 95% screen, tracing a straight line with your finger, and the concept of a menu), and use the legal system to lock out competition or tie them up in expensive litigation for years. This is particularly devastating to smaller entities who simply won't survive the legal assault. Even if you're content with the tech giants being the only entities able to push new products on the market, even that is coming under threat as these tech giants cannabalise each other, using these portfolios to lock the products of other giants out of markets.

When you've got a system originally set up to protect innovation being used to stifle it, you've got a big problem.

Anyway, IMHO (and hopefully not too off-topic).

[Schoq]

How is copyright any better than patents when it comes to not working against the supposed initial purpose?

How does it make sense that the copyright on a song is practically infinite while a patent can last for at most 20 years? It restricts development in the artistic fields as obviously as it only serves to make the giant content holders richer and give them more control.

I wonder what the best way to address this concern is, whilst also ensuring there is motivation for people to gamble large amounts of time in creating works that wouldn't otherwise exist without such a system in place.

No matter what system you put in place you will have people creating and people helping them survive while they do.

-Hey, Tumak, we're going out to hunt some boar. Are you ready?

-Eh, actually I was hoping to get this cave painting done before sundown.

-Oh, right. Yeah, your last one turned out really sweet. Can't wait to see this one finished. See you later then!

-Happy hunting!

^100% accurate actual scene from 20000 BC

[Fallsburg]

The Mickey Mouse continuation scheme is a bit shitty, I'll give you that, but copyright is still much less broken than the current patent scheme.

Examples:
1) Patenting algorithms/mathematical formulas.  My stance is that these aren't inventions.  They are floating in the ether, waiting to be found. And yet, people have patented sorting algorithms, variations on FFT's, etc.  And that means that I can't use that mathematical truth, just because someone else thought to patent it first.  It is like patenting gravity, or addition.

2) Patents now protect ideas, not implementation.  It used to be that if a dude invented a new cotton gin, he would patent that cotton gin and be done with it.  Modern patents are more of the type "A thing that separates cotton fiber from cotton seeds." Look at the Mojang-Uniloc debacle:  "by or through making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing Android based applications for use on cellular phones and/or tablet devices that require communication with a server to perform a license check to prevent the unauthorized use of said application, including, but not limited to, Mindcraft [sic]". So, they patented the idea of communicating with a server to perform a license check on Android.  I mean, at least they narrowed it down to Android, but still it is immensely general and stupid.