Life is riddled with a procession of minor impediments

[M.I.K.]

Also, said company wouldn't last long with business practices like that - word soon gets around and their ability to attract new scripts would evaporate.

If it took them 20 years to use the first bloke's idea and had twenty years worth of submissions stockpiled, they wouldn't need any new scripts for a number of decades.

[The Legendary Shark]

In theory, yes - but the creative industries are voracious. It's like they have some form of bulimia, gorging on talent then vomiting out product. No company in that market could sit on its hands for 20 years, hoarding material it hopes might make it in the long run. Companies need talent Now. Now! NOW! As a sensible business model, deliberately trying to cheat the creator wouldn't work.
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They don't need good product 20 years from now, they need it today. Next Thursday at the latest.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Hollwood Exec: "Hey we've got this great script! It's a banker I tells ya! We gotta buy the rights!"

*Hands investor a cigar and lights it for him*

Hollywood Exec: "......but we're not going to make it for twenny years, that way it will be slightly cheaper!"

Investor "So you're telling me I won't see a return on my investment for twenty years? Get out of my office!"

[The Legendary Shark]

Exactly. Capitalism isn't at its heart a bad thing at all. Capitalism knows how to get things done.

[M.I.K.]

It may not be bad, but it is amoral.

And while it may be slightly daft to suggest companies would sit on material for 20 years with the sole intention of waiting for the copyright to run out, I don't think it's quite as silly to believe they'd take advantage of an opportunity, should it present itself.

Besides, that's only one of the reasons I think it's a bad idea. I've got a whole load more, complete, (if necessary), with dubious theoretical situations I've thought up in a couple of minutes, (but they do all mainly involve folk trying to scrape by on a pittance, subsequently being done out of money by larger businesses / other individuals).

[Jim_Campbell]

Since we fell out in the Political Thread, Jim has tended to disagree with me whether he actually agrees or not. See also the discussion regarding Fiends of the Eastern Front.

Here he's confusing a moral standpoint with legal terminology, but I suspect he knows that full well.

Why the fuck are you speaking about me in the indirect third person?

I'm not 'confusing' two things, I have explicitly stated my position on the use of words which, I believe, are important since they are the only means we have to communicate on a forum like this. If we choose to use words as if they mean what we would like them to mean, rather than what they actually mean, then we have no shared common framework within which to debate or discuss ideas.

I also like the idea that I'm disagreeing with you in order to be a contrary twat. I'm disagreeing with you because you're fucking wrong about things. I wasn't disagreeing with you on the Fiends thread (which I had to go back and look up because I hadn't even registered it as a 'disagreement') I was correcting your incorrect assertion that Rebellion's use of WFH contracts on novels based on their IP was in any way unusual.* I agree with you on many things — your assessment of the problems with Judgement Day, for example, is spot on — and if it makes you feel better, then I will post "I agree with this." after every post you make with which I agree.

I also presume that, despite not using the T word to describe illegal downloading, he wouldn't encourage everyone to illegally download Dept of Monsterology 101, or indeed any other creative works, even those he was not directly involved in originating.

You think I'm avoiding using the word 'torrent'...? That's a bizarre assertion, and a strange tangent to the discussion that adds nothing.

Also: this is both a ridiculous straw man, and a fantastically cheap shot to which I will only offer: fuck you.

Jim

*If you didn't mean to suggest that the contracts were unusual, then all you had to do was say that that wasn't what you meant and I would have apologised immediately for the misunderstanding. Despite having a reputation for being argumentative on this forum, I do this all the time but people are too busy getting butthurt to notice.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Just to pour a little reality on some of the ideas being bandied about:-

(a) patents already last for only 20 years;
(b) if a big entertainment business wanted to use someone's story idea then they can work around it quite easily; copyright does not protect ideas but rather the expression of the idea.

The reason patents last for 20 years is to give a return and incentive to their inventor to create the patented technology. It is an expensive business, research, and so inventors are given protection for what they make. To balance that monopoly against the interests of the public, the protection lasts only 20 years and then anyone can make the thing. A good example is ibuprofen; it was invented by Boots and they sold it as Neurofen for 20 years (or slightly less, as they had to get it to market) and then, bang, loads of generic competitors came out.

Copyright is different, in that there is no inherent commercial value. The idea expressed by copyright is never protected; you cannot "copyright an idea". That's why there are so many rip-offs of stories; think of Rambo clones in the 80s. What is protected is one creator's vision - specifically (and I quote UK legislation here) "original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, sound recordings, films and (c)the typographical arrangement of published editions". Original does not mean there is artistic merit but rather that someone sat down and made it ("the sweat of the brow" test). Therefore, if I sat down and wrote a similar story to one in existence then it is my copyright.

Of course, there is a borderline. You cannot simply change the names of characters. The closer a new work is to a pre-existing one (the "look and feel test"), the easier it is to allege breach of copyright. But - bearing in mind there is no protection for ideas - a re-write of an existing story using similar themes, character-types and situations is quite straight forward.

One example: The Island. If you don't recall it, this film (starring Ewan MacGregor and, from memory, Scarlett Johanssen) was about an idyllic community where it turns out everyone is a clone of someone famous and they are being kept for spare parts.

To quote wikipedia's entry on the film: "Copyright infringement controversy. The creators of the 1979 film Parts: The Clonus Horror, which was also about a colony that breeds clones to harvest organs for the elite, filed a copyright infringement suit.  Michael Marshall Smith's 1996 novel Spares, in which the hero liberates intelligent clones from a "spare farm", was optioned by DreamWorks in the late 1990s but never made. It remains unclear if the story inspired The Island, and so Marshall Smith did not consider it worthwhile to pursue legal action over the similarities. Teressa Dick, former wife of the late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, referred to the film as "another PKD rip-off"

So, why wait 20 years? What The Man wants, The Man gets.

[The Legendary Shark]

People get done out of money by unscrupulous companies all the time. There's hardly an idea on Earth that can't be turned to nefarious purposes by nefarious characters but that's what contracts and laws and personal recognicance are there for.
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Here's a dubious theoretical situation of my own to explore the limited copyright/patent idea. I will base the explanation on a comic character but the subject could just as easily be a new drug or technology.
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Jon Ezquerra and Carl Wagner invent a character/world/story called 'Judge Alpha'. For the first 10 years, only Jon and Carl control Judge Alpha - both the product itself and where that product appears. They can license the product and its derivatives as much as they want and charge whatever they like for their licensing. Judge Alpha is all theirs.
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Once the first decade is over, Jon and Carl lose ultimate control over Judge Alpha but will still be entitled to a share of all income generated by that product. They can still control their own Judge Alpha output either directly or through agents like the editor of the medium in which Judge Alpha appears. However, now Jon and Carl's control has gone, anybody can now produce and sell new and original Judge Alpha stories/merchandise provided they pay a percentage of the generated revenue to Jon and Carl. Of course, Jon and Carl could turn this free-for-all to their advantage by issuing/selling their "Creator Approved" seal to products they like and withholding it from those they don't.
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Once that second decade is up, Jon and Carl's entitlement to automatic reimbursement for Judge Alpha products comes to an end. They'll still get paid for their continued original output and will still be able to charge for their Creator Approved stamp. By this time, the product called Judge Alpha belongs to everyone and so anyone can use it. The earliest stories can be reprinted without charge, which might be a great help to fledgeling magazines whilst re-introducing Judge Alpha to a whole new audience.
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The limited copyright/patent idea is, I think, a good one as it protects creators and encourages development.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

You mix patents and copyrights. They are different things.

Managing such a process for the sheer volume of copyright material would be impossible, unless you change what copyright protects - do that, and you lessen its scope.

Patents already have a 20 year life.

[The Legendary Shark]

Yes, I do mix them up.
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As I understand it, patents and copyrights can be extended somehow so that income and control continues even after the original creator/inventor has died. I do not like this rent-seeking culture.
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There are also instances of corporations buying up patents specifically to squash them. There is an urban legend from around here that I've heard occasionally ever since I was a kid which, true or not, illustrates my point. A Southport inventor created a new type of automotive headlight bulb that was brighter and three or four times longer lasting than current bulbs. The bulb was demonstrated on the incomplete and yet to be opened Formby Bypass to a small cabal of electronics and bulb manufacturers, who were all impressed.
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The cabal purchased the patent and then ripped it up in front of the inventor, who was confused as to why they'd do that. The patent was ripped up, of course, because even though the bulb was a marvel it would have meant replacing millions of pounds' worth of manufacturing and factory equipment in order to produce a bulb which, because of its inherent durability, would not be sold in such great numbers as ordinary bulbs. Private profit outweighed public benefit.
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Limiting the patenting/copyrighting system along the lines I've mentioned would not eradicate this practice but it would help to limit the damage to ten years, as after that anyone could access the patent and produce the bulb provided they do it properly, lawfully and tip up a percentage of the profits to the patent/copyright holder who may even use that extra income to start upgrading their own systems to produce those new bulbs.
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I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this concept of "intellectual property rights" and the idea that anything you think of belongs to you and only you. The majority of new ideas and inventions arise from the amalgamation or cross-fertilisation of pre-existing ideas and inventions, so what IP says is that it's all right for me to use the ideas and inventions of other people to create my own ideas and inventions but that nobody else has any right to use what I come up with.
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The copyright/patent system must, in my view, strike a balance between private profit and public benefit with the emphasis, or benefit of the doubt when needed, being given to the latter.
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Just to lighten things up, here's a list of supposedly lost or suppressed things which is fairly entertaining: listverse.com/2009/07/31/top-10-amazing-lost-or-suppressed-inventions/

[Dandontdare]

the current patent system forces an inventor/creator to pay to keep a patent renewed - didn't the inventor of the MP3 compression process make zero money form it because he couldn't afford to keep the patent up? Think I heard that on the radio recently.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

The copyright/patent system must, in my view, strike a balance between private profit and public benefit with the emphasis, or benefit of the doubt when needed, being given to the latter.
.

This is a flawed ideal. It turns upon the misconception, outlined in your post, that simply because a lot of new IP builds on the old then, somehow, anyone could create new IP. That is not true. Also, for those involved in creation, there is no guarantee of a return. The system therefore protects the IPs that actually make money.

Normally, I wouldn't take issue with what anyone says here, but the whole undertone of your posts seem to be that the existing system is flawed when it simply is not. It strives to strike the balance you seek. Of course, you can disagree with the length of protection offered, and I get that, but I get the impression that you think there is no attempt at balancing in the current system. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

Patents are only granted if an expert panel agrees that there is a "unique creative step" and more patents have been lost to pre-existing technology ("prior art") than any stifling.

The idea of "ripping up" a patent is, well, patent nonsense. They are registered in detail; anyone can see and access them, even during the protection period.

[The Legendary Shark]

Yes of course, "ripping up the patent" is just a dramatic embellishment in the urban legend and not to be taken as an actual destruction of information.
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Like most of our systems I do think that the patent/copyright process is important and largely helpful but it could be better - as everything could. A few tweaks to the way it works, such as this time limit idea, might make the system even more useful. I agree that there is a fine line between what is privileged and what is public but I also think that, as the pace of invention in the world seems to be accelerating, the systems we use to keep track of inventions/creations must evolve not only to cope with but also exploit this profusion for the good of as many as possible.
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[Theblazeuk]

This is all getting in the way of good old fashioned moaning.

I'm using a system based in flash which requires every step of the process to be added manually by different menus which each need to load and resolve independently of the main process.

Who the drock designs these things.

[I, Cosh]

Who the drock designs these things.

Children who can't get proper jobs.