Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking about
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says why because
Speaker 1: we like you. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Laura, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And this is going to be part two
Speaker 1: of our discussion about copyright, uh, creativity and and the
Speaker 1: future of intellectual property. This was based on an email
Speaker 1: from our listener Dave. So if you haven't heard part
Speaker 1: one of this discussion, go back to our last podcast,
Speaker 1: listen to that episode, then come back and dive right
Speaker 1: into this one because it's in medias race. Y'all. That
Speaker 1: is correct. But let's talk a little bit about alternatives
Speaker 1: to this copyright just the if we If you're an
Speaker 1: artist and you want to create a work, and you
Speaker 1: want to have some protection of your work, but you
Speaker 1: also want people to be able and and feel um uh,
Speaker 1: they feel like they can totally take that work and
Speaker 1: tweak it in some way, make something new, rather than
Speaker 1: attaching a letter of intent to every single piece of
Speaker 1: thing that you create. Yeah, what do you do? Well?
Speaker 1: One thing you could do is use something like a
Speaker 1: public copyright license, which is a way for original authors
Speaker 1: to grant copyright permissions under specific conditions, depending upon whatever
Speaker 1: the license says. And there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: types out there, but the most famous would be the
Speaker 1: Creative Commons license. And uh this came about because there
Speaker 1: were a group of people who are saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to create a way for creators to be
Speaker 1: able to put their works out and have that peace
Speaker 1: of mind, but also to encourage creativity in the community.
Speaker 1: So not just be um, you know, a black and white,
Speaker 1: don't use my stuff. It is guarded for my entire
Speaker 1: lifetime plus another seventy years. Uh. So copyright doesn't really
Speaker 1: have that flexibility right there. There aren't grades of copyright,
Speaker 1: so you have to create these licenses. And licensing is
Speaker 1: one of those things that most people don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: the the ability to do You need lawyers in there,
Speaker 1: and it's just one of those things where if you
Speaker 1: are an individual artist, you might feel like you don't
Speaker 1: have a means of doing this. That's where Creative Commons
Speaker 1: came in, not for profit organization that did this work
Speaker 1: on the behalf of artists, so that artists can then
Speaker 1: use these licenses free of charge and to find how
Speaker 1: their work may or may not be used. The organization
Speaker 1: itself was founded in two thousand one and released its
Speaker 1: first set of licenses in two thousand two, which was
Speaker 1: version one point Oh. They revised those licenses over time,
Speaker 1: and here are some of the Actually, here are the
Speaker 1: six main ones. Uh So, here are the six main
Speaker 1: types of Creative Commons license. The c C B Y License,
Speaker 1: which allows others to use your original work as they
Speaker 1: see fit, even for commercial purposes, as long as they
Speaker 1: attribute you for the original creation. So this is their
Speaker 1: widest like that, like the one that has the most leniency. Right.
Speaker 1: So if I create something and Joe, you're you think
Speaker 1: I'm going to remix that work and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: end up selling it on you know, some music site,
Speaker 1: you can totally do that under this license. There's nothing
Speaker 1: preventing you from doing it, and I've given you permission
Speaker 1: through that license, even if even though my original work
Speaker 1: is technically under copyright. Though I would think a question
Speaker 1: might be, how do I attribute you? Well, like, can
Speaker 1: I do it in some little piece of fine print
Speaker 1: somewhere or do I need to Technically it depends, but
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, you could like for something like a song,
Speaker 1: it tends to be within the data, like the meta
Speaker 1: data for the song. Um, you wouldn't have to have
Speaker 1: an announcement before the song starts. Like I remixed this
Speaker 1: song by Jonathan Strickland and it was cool, but I
Speaker 1: made it cooler enjoy. You wouldn't have to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are specific rules, and these are the basics of
Speaker 1: creative There are very specific rules laid out on their
Speaker 1: website exactly. Uh. Next is the c C B y
Speaker 1: dash s A, which lets other others build on your
Speaker 1: work like the one I just mentioned, even for commercial use,
Speaker 1: but those who do also must abide by the same agreement.
Speaker 1: So that means that I would grant Joe the permission
Speaker 1: to remix my work, but as part of that agreement,
Speaker 1: Joe also has to license it under this same type
Speaker 1: of Creative Commons licenses, so that I could take Joe's
Speaker 1: work and transform it into my own exactly, and you
Speaker 1: would have to continue to agree. So this is supposed
Speaker 1: to be to to foster creativity and sharing, the pay
Speaker 1: it forward. Yeah, and Wikipedia operates under this particular Creative
Speaker 1: Commons license. Next, you have the B Y dash in
Speaker 1: D Creative Commons License, which allows for redistribution for commercial
Speaker 1: and non commercial use, but the work cannot be changed
Speaker 1: in any way and must remain whole with credit to
Speaker 1: the original author. So you could freely distrib tribute this work,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't chop it up. You couldn't remix it.
Speaker 1: You couldn't you had you would have to, you know,
Speaker 1: keep credit to the original creator of the work. By
Speaker 1: dash in C allows for non commercial tweaking and building
Speaker 1: upon an original work with credit to the original author.
Speaker 1: So you could do you could, you know, remix something
Speaker 1: to your heart's content, but you couldn't sell it. You
Speaker 1: couldn't make money from it. You couldn't generate revenue that way. Uh.
Speaker 1: B y dash in C D s A is the
Speaker 1: same as above, only now all new creations must be
Speaker 1: licensed under those exact terms. So it's similar to what
Speaker 1: we were talking about before non commercial use. I create something,
Speaker 1: Joe creates a remix, he has it under that same
Speaker 1: licensed Lauren creates a remix. None neither Joe nor Lauren
Speaker 1: can sell their stuff. I could technically sell mine, but
Speaker 1: you couldn't sell the remixes of mine. Um then you
Speaker 1: have b y in C, which lets other's remix and
Speaker 1: build upon your work, but only for non commercial use,
Speaker 1: and also acknowledge the average an owner. So uh, those
Speaker 1: are the six main types. There's also the ability to
Speaker 1: put work directly into the public domain, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. You do have to fill out some paperwork
Speaker 1: so that it acknowledges that you have relinquished ownership any
Speaker 1: rights to write. So the idea here is again to
Speaker 1: give artists the ability some options, you know, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just either full protection or you don't pursue any protection.
Speaker 1: You need to have some leniency in there so that
Speaker 1: you can you can foster creativity, but under the terms
Speaker 1: that you feel comfortable with, so that you can still
Speaker 1: make money if that's what you're choosing to do with whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever your work happens to be. So right now,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna look into the future of copyright, but
Speaker 1: right now, if nothing changes, the Steamboat Willie version of
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: But that's not going to happen, probably not, yeah, because
Speaker 1: that's creeping up, yeah, coming up pretty quickly. I want
Speaker 1: to imagine there are already some serious talks behind closed
Speaker 1: doors whether at corporations or Congress or both, about extending
Speaker 1: copyright protection even further than it has already been extended. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Walt Disney's head and you know under the
Speaker 1: parts of the Caribbean Ride probably has something to say
Speaker 1: about it. Right, we watched too much Futurama. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is where we get into that that issue.
Speaker 1: You know what, I think, I think all of us
Speaker 1: agree that the creator of a work should at least
Speaker 1: be allowed for the expectation of generating revenue from that
Speaker 1: work in some way. Um, whether they pursue it or
Speaker 1: not is beside the point. They should at least have
Speaker 1: that expectation that that is an option. But there's this
Speaker 1: balance between protecting that artist or owner and protecting the
Speaker 1: public and other artists who could enhance that work or
Speaker 1: or or use that work in some other means, some
Speaker 1: other transformative means without fear of being sued to the
Speaker 1: ends of the earth and back. And now that we
Speaker 1: have these corporations in place, and the corporations, like we said,
Speaker 1: don't die of old age, they have every incentive to
Speaker 1: keep pushing that copyright limit until it's at truly ridiculous lengths.
Speaker 1: Some would argue that we're already there. Of the life
Speaker 1: of the commuter. In seventy years is a long time.
Speaker 1: You still can't sing the song happy Birthday without technically yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's, um, we won't be doing that today. Luckily
Speaker 1: it's no one's birthday. It's no one's birthday right now.
Speaker 1: Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy.
Speaker 1: That's that's about as close as we're gonna get. So.
Speaker 1: Um yes, So, I'm guessing that we're going to see
Speaker 1: this content in you, and we're also going to see
Speaker 1: more resistance, but it's probably gonna be on the sort
Speaker 1: of independent artist side, where you have artists who don't
Speaker 1: want to pursue this same pathway that corporations are pursuing,
Speaker 1: and yet still need to make a living so that
Speaker 1: they can continue to make art. Um. So, I think
Speaker 1: we're going to continue to see those those public uh
Speaker 1: copyright licenses being pushed. But um, but this is this
Speaker 1: is tricky. I think we're gonna I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: just keep seeing actual official copyright law get more intant. Yeah. Now, Joe,
Speaker 1: before we recorded this podcast, we were just kind of
Speaker 1: talking over ideas. You brought up an interesting kind of
Speaker 1: sci fi idea about one element of copyright. What was that? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's this idea of fixed and the tangible medium. You
Speaker 1: remember that from earlier on. So your work, if you
Speaker 1: want to claim copyright on it has to be fixed
Speaker 1: in a tangible medium. You have to write it down
Speaker 1: or recorded. If it's music, it can't just be something
Speaker 1: that was ephemeral and can no longer be accessed, like
Speaker 1: a thought or an improvisational performance that wasn't recorded or
Speaker 1: something like that. It can, however, be something that's you know,
Speaker 1: written down on uh in computer memory, which some people
Speaker 1: would argue doesn't seem terribly tangible because it feels like
Speaker 1: it's ethereal, but in fact it actually is tangible. Sure. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one way in which we've extended the ways in
Speaker 1: which fixed in the tangible medium can apply to new
Speaker 1: types of things. So, now that we have recording equipment,
Speaker 1: electronic recording equipment, you can record performances of music that
Speaker 1: might have been improvised on the spot. Sure, you know. Sure,
Speaker 1: if you if you want that a half hour jam
Speaker 1: session from Dave Matthews band, then they can copyright that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even you can even copyright a performance of a
Speaker 1: work that otherwise was in public domain. Yeah. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so by by adding this new technological recording capability, we're
Speaker 1: covering more of the types of works you can create
Speaker 1: under copyright. And I wonder how far that can go.
Speaker 1: I mean number one, I just wonder about Okay, So,
Speaker 1: if we're recording more and more of our lives, if
Speaker 1: recording media become super pervasive they already are very pervasive,
Speaker 1: how much more of the ephemera of our lives can
Speaker 1: be copyrighted and claimed as art? Can you know, if
Speaker 1: you're just recording all the conversations you have with your friends,
Speaker 1: can copyright conversation? Yeah? If you're recording all the humming
Speaker 1: you do, just random humming while you're walking around, If
Speaker 1: someday later you hear a song, You're like, that sounds
Speaker 1: like something I hummed, and you can go back and
Speaker 1: find it narrate in song what I'm doing a lot
Speaker 1: as everyone around the off yesterday. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so I mean like, like, is my great hit um
Speaker 1: going to the Refrigerator going to be a breakaway pop
Speaker 1: thing next year? Well, just with the threat you could
Speaker 1: have even more of a chilling effect on the creation
Speaker 1: of new works. If there's just more and more out
Speaker 1: there all the time that somebody could raise an issue
Speaker 1: with it, like, hey, this sounds like something that I
Speaker 1: created once and didn't ever plan on doing anything with um.
Speaker 1: And then if we want to get even weirder, what
Speaker 1: if we think about the ability to scan our brains.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, right now we don't have the ability
Speaker 1: to scan your brain with an e g. And say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're thinking of a yellow house on a coastline by
Speaker 1: a tree, but the fact that you are having that
Speaker 1: thought is in some way physical, And we could imagine
Speaker 1: in the future that there might be ways that you
Speaker 1: could detect the contents of somebody's thoughts by scanning their brain.
Speaker 1: Your brain is a tangible medium, right, and so at
Speaker 1: that point, is a recorded brain scan of an idea
Speaker 1: of something that's fixed in tangible media, Well, the recording
Speaker 1: would be, but I would argue the memory itself is
Speaker 1: not fixed and tangible. It is tangible but not fixed.
Speaker 1: But scanning would be fixed, but not the idea. That
Speaker 1: is true because memories change all the time. That's right.
Speaker 1: Every time we remember, we're just retrying, We're trying to
Speaker 1: rebuild that original neural pathway that was formed upon the
Speaker 1: creation of that memory. But every time we remember, we
Speaker 1: alter that a little bit. So therefore the memory itself
Speaker 1: cannot be fixed, but the scan itself could be. So
Speaker 1: then you would argue, well, the scans protected, but does
Speaker 1: that protection extend to whatever the idea was, and if
Speaker 1: it were was a specific idea, but then you went
Speaker 1: and wrote something else down that would technically be a
Speaker 1: transformative work because it wouldn't be exactly the way you
Speaker 1: thought of it when you created it. Would you have
Speaker 1: to sue your own brain. I've often thought about suing
Speaker 1: my own brain, to be honest, there have been thought.
Speaker 1: It's particularly whenever I'm feeling really good about myself and
Speaker 1: then my brain digs up that memory of when I
Speaker 1: did something really terrible in elementary school and says, you're
Speaker 1: really a terrible person. You should remember that. Yeah, that happens.
Speaker 1: That's not a joke. Yeah, that's a good times brain.
Speaker 1: Thanks brain. But we've got a couple of other interesting
Speaker 1: points that Dave brought up right. Uh, yeah, he asked
Speaker 1: in his email about fan created derivative works like fan
Speaker 1: fiction and stuff like that. Very good point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there and there's actually a lot of conversation around
Speaker 1: this going on, or some conversation at the very least,
Speaker 1: because the Internet has allowed people to consume more and
Speaker 1: also to comment more. Yeah, you know, we see a
Speaker 1: lot of this development happened as technology a els for
Speaker 1: more expression. Right. The printing press obviously was one of
Speaker 1: those things that was going to push forward this concept
Speaker 1: because suddenly there was the capacity to copy works on
Speaker 1: a on a much larger scale than previous previously. And
Speaker 1: now we've gotten to a point where it is much
Speaker 1: easier to create a derivative work and distribute it globally. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: rather than just you know, writing a story and passing
Speaker 1: it around in class or something like that. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: another thing is that we are living in an age
Speaker 1: where fan fiction and these kinds of derivative works actually
Speaker 1: can become big money makers. It's not just something that's
Speaker 1: taking place for fun on the side. Like think about though,
Speaker 1: I hate to introduce it to the world of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Fifty Shades of Gray. It's an erotic novel series that
Speaker 1: apparently began as Twilight fan fiction, and they're releasing the
Speaker 1: movie on Valentine's Day. How messed up? Is that. Alright, well,
Speaker 1: let's not get into this movie. But anyway, this is
Speaker 1: this is fan fiction that became a huge money maker
Speaker 1: originally fan fiction at least. Yes, yeah, it was deemed
Speaker 1: transformative enough that as long as the author changed the names,
Speaker 1: it was totally ligit um. But I mean, you can
Speaker 1: see why people would be concerned about this. Oh, absolutely well,
Speaker 1: I mean, and and the concern goes back to basically
Speaker 1: the time at which more people were getting access to
Speaker 1: the Internet, back in the nineties and two thousand's, huge
Speaker 1: corporations like Fox and Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm started sending
Speaker 1: out cease and desists and sometimes pursued greater actions against
Speaker 1: fan websites, which sounds so crazy when you say it
Speaker 1: out loud, but but it was. But it was especially
Speaker 1: the kind of websites that were either operating under r
Speaker 1: l's that they wanted Star Wars fan dot com or
Speaker 1: something like that, it's something like that, or um Harry
Speaker 1: Potter World dot CEO dot uk um and and fans
Speaker 1: that were posting what these corporations deemed to be too
Speaker 1: much of their content. Um. Now, in general, companies have
Speaker 1: act off of lawsuits like this as long as fans
Speaker 1: have shown that they're not operating for profit. Well, and
Speaker 1: I mean obviously it's a it's a risky pr move
Speaker 1: to make, to to to go against your fan base,
Speaker 1: the people who are the most passionate supporters of your work,
Speaker 1: and then to say, uh, don't use the stuff you
Speaker 1: love it. But they do it, I mean, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the businesses behind beloved media these days
Speaker 1: don't really seem to care very much if the fans
Speaker 1: end up hating them. I mean, you could say the
Speaker 1: same thing about like DRM and stuff. There are just
Speaker 1: lots of companies. They're making media that people love, they're
Speaker 1: taking tactics that people don't like, but where else they
Speaker 1: go to. These corporations are also huge, and so it
Speaker 1: can always be that there are certain departments that are
Speaker 1: working with very different directives than other departments. Oh. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I imagine that a lot of actual, say, recording artists
Speaker 1: are not necessarily fans of DRM rules stuff and things.
Speaker 1: There's another element to this Internet world, right, engagement. Oh yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's it's all really complex because because you know, okay,
Speaker 1: fans are gaining access to two more media and two
Speaker 1: more online communities than encourage participation in that media. Um,
Speaker 1: not just consumption but actual participation and so and and
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Jonathan, like, it's kind of free
Speaker 1: marketing for the media, so they should like it, right,
Speaker 1: But it's also uncontrollable, which makes a lot of big
Speaker 1: corporations really twitchy. Um and and furthermore, you know that
Speaker 1: the consumer creators are using for profit web spaces to
Speaker 1: post and access this content, which means that third parties
Speaker 1: like Facebook and Tumbler and YouTube are profiting from this
Speaker 1: fan creation process. And in some cases, like YouTube, the
Speaker 1: fan can be profiting indirectly through ad revenue, and in
Speaker 1: some cases the third party can claim some ownership of
Speaker 1: the fans works depending on those terms of service. Right. So,
Speaker 1: in your YouTube example, let's say that I create a
Speaker 1: YouTube video that is deemed by the original owner of
Speaker 1: the work that I have incorporated in my video to
Speaker 1: be uh, you know, not transformative or derivative or whatever.
Speaker 1: They're not going to pursue legal action. They instead go
Speaker 1: through YouTube. YouTube actually allows for the owner of the
Speaker 1: original work to to gather the revenue generated by that
Speaker 1: the one that I created. So if I create, if
Speaker 1: I create something that pulls a ton of video from
Speaker 1: Star Wars as an example, from the new Star Wars
Speaker 1: trailer for sure. And let's say that my video is
Speaker 1: not appreciably that much longer than the trailer, and the
Speaker 1: trailer takes up a good deal of my video, then
Speaker 1: it could very well be that if I decided to
Speaker 1: run an ad in front of it instead of taking
Speaker 1: it down, instead of blocking me, the the owner says,
Speaker 1: all right, well, just any revenue that that video generates,
Speaker 1: send it to me instead. And I can totally do that,
Speaker 1: you know. So um, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: us would argue that's depending upon the the extent of
Speaker 1: that use, that might be kind of fair to the
Speaker 1: kind of the best of all possible tricky, sticky situations,
Speaker 1: better than getting sued. Yeah, there's another aspect to this
Speaker 1: that is interesting in theory, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: be too explicit about what I mean, but there are
Speaker 1: certain types of perhaps transformative works that could take somebody's
Speaker 1: intellectual property and do something new with it in a
Speaker 1: way that the original creator really might not like on
Speaker 1: a purely thematic level. You're talking slash vick, yeah, mainly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Okay, So imagine I write a series
Speaker 1: of stories online that are about I don't know, Darth
Speaker 1: Vader and Boba Fette being lovers, and I end up
Speaker 1: making a good bit of money with this by by
Speaker 1: selling it independently, like on your donations maybe or sure, Okay,
Speaker 1: what what does Lucasfilm have to say about that? I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure they're going to send you a cease and desists. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if I mean and and the key is if you're
Speaker 1: making money off of it, and that that's really the
Speaker 1: key to any of this is is that I mean
Speaker 1: kind of the rule of thumb is that if you're
Speaker 1: not profiting from it, most companies won't go after you.
Speaker 1: They just sort of they they assume that the effort
Speaker 1: of doing so is greater than any benefit they stand
Speaker 1: to in the case of getting you to stop doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Hum if it's something that ends up
Speaker 1: being like you know, it's it's again fostering the community,
Speaker 1: they may think, well, that's not really where we're never
Speaker 1: going to go in that direction. We're never going to
Speaker 1: create anything officially that's in that same vein, because that's
Speaker 1: not what what this this universe or story is about.
Speaker 1: From our perspective as the owners of that intellectual property.
Speaker 1: But we're also not going to stop people from doing it.
Speaker 1: Because there's no actual harm done to the brand or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, then chances are nothing's going to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in general, in fact, from from having kind of
Speaker 1: listened in on conversations that that authors were having on
Speaker 1: the on the internet, a lot of authors these days, uh,
Speaker 1: stay as far away from fan fiction of their works
Speaker 1: as possible, because if they do read something in a
Speaker 1: fan work and wind up incorporating any element of that
Speaker 1: into a later work of their own, they have violated copyright.
Speaker 1: They can transversely violate copyright exactly yea, even though they
Speaker 1: created the work that was transformed. If they copy the
Speaker 1: transformed work, that's a violational copyright. Um. So yeah, do
Speaker 1: not send your ideas for the Dresden Files, for example,
Speaker 1: into Jim Butcher, because he'll just dislike you. This is
Speaker 1: the same reason why if you ever create, you want
Speaker 1: to write a script on spec for a television series,
Speaker 1: it might be a better idea to send a script
Speaker 1: for a different TV series to that creative team to
Speaker 1: show you what show them what you're writing skills are
Speaker 1: like and how you put a story together, because most
Speaker 1: of those companies won't even look at an onspec script
Speaker 1: for their series for fear of that very thing happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um if if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about this general topic of of fan created works, a
Speaker 1: guy named Henry Jenkins has written a whole lot about
Speaker 1: it um and and has really interesting savvy things to say,
Speaker 1: so I recommend looking him up if you're curious about it. Cool. So,
Speaker 1: one of the things we wanted to wrap up with
Speaker 1: is what what would happen? What wouldn't be interesting if
Speaker 1: somehow there could be a monumental shift in the government's
Speaker 1: view of the value of copyright. What if we were
Speaker 1: to see an over correction or maybe just a correction,
Speaker 1: depending upon your point of view. Sure the Corporation is
Speaker 1: considered this an over correction, but a correction to move
Speaker 1: it back toward more what it was originally intended to be,
Speaker 1: a fourteen year period of protect Uh. I Well, I
Speaker 1: could be convinced otherwise if somebody had a really good
Speaker 1: argument they wanted to offer me. But I think that
Speaker 1: would be a much better situation even just the original
Speaker 1: fourteen years. And that's it. I think it seems like
Speaker 1: that's enough. I mean, if your work is successful, you
Speaker 1: can make a decent amount of money off of it.
Speaker 1: In fourteen years, that seems to me a totally reasonable
Speaker 1: amount of time for something to be protected by copyright. Well,
Speaker 1: it's I could also I could argue, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're vain going it and you really don't hit popularity
Speaker 1: until very late in your life, if not at all. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe in that case there could even be some kind
Speaker 1: of clause of some kind, like like how many billions
Speaker 1: of dollars? Uh, you know, if you hit a cap
Speaker 1: of how much this artwork is worth? Right? Maybe? I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's harder with art. It's harder with pieces
Speaker 1: of art, because that's the one thing that you can
Speaker 1: sell or prints of that thing. Obviously, if people are
Speaker 1: making prints of it, that would be different because if
Speaker 1: it's out of the copyright, everyone can make a print
Speaker 1: of that work. Then you wouldn't see any revenue from it.
Speaker 1: If it is already past that fourteen years, well, I
Speaker 1: mean you can still see revenue from something that people
Speaker 1: have made prince of that's certainly not well, if it's
Speaker 1: out of copyright, they can make print of it themselves.
Speaker 1: And not pay you anything. Well, yeah, but the original
Speaker 1: artwork there that we we we've argued about this before
Speaker 1: actually on the show. The the original van Go is
Speaker 1: obviously worth more than a print of it because there's
Speaker 1: magical properties involved in But the original van Go painting
Speaker 1: will only be sold by the owner once and then
Speaker 1: it's over. So if you've created this original work before
Speaker 1: you made it famous, and you sold it for a
Speaker 1: pittance because you hadn't yet made your name, sucks to
Speaker 1: be you. Yeah, That's that's the way life works, baby,
Speaker 1: is the way the way I look at that. So
Speaker 1: I actually wouldn't mind seeing this return either to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, as someone who creates stuff, I obviously see
Speaker 1: the value again of having that protection. But I I
Speaker 1: also don't think it necessarily needs to last my entire
Speaker 1: lifetime plus seventy years. Yeah. Well, working in the space
Speaker 1: we do, we can see it from both sides. I mean,
Speaker 1: we would like to be able to, you know, not
Speaker 1: just rip people off, but to fairly use works without
Speaker 1: having to worry about hor somebody going to try to
Speaker 1: sue us. If yeah, if I had sung happy Birthday,
Speaker 1: Heaven forbid on this podcast, would they sue us? And
Speaker 1: I think the answers, Yes, yeah, you want to be
Speaker 1: able to avoid that kind of chilling effect. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you do want to have your works
Speaker 1: protected for a reasonable amount of time that you can
Speaker 1: make revenue on. Uh, fourteen years seems to me like
Speaker 1: a good balance. Twenty eight years if you want to
Speaker 1: be more generous, how could how could you need it
Speaker 1: to be longer than twenty eight years? Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: agree with I would agree with twenty eight years. I
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that if I ever created something that was
Speaker 1: actually worth money, how would I feel about that? Again,
Speaker 1: where of course, we are looking at this from the
Speaker 1: perspective of individuals and not of a giant corporation that, oh,
Speaker 1: she's going to exist perpetually without us. That our job here?
Speaker 1: What would the corporations want? What would they feel? Not
Speaker 1: so much, not so much that's our job, but something
Speaker 1: that is a consideration. Like if you sit there and think,
Speaker 1: all right, if I had formed this corporation and the
Speaker 1: purpose of the corporation is to make money, and way
Speaker 1: of making money is to protect your assets, then you
Speaker 1: start to understand why certain decisions are being pushed for.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but
Speaker 1: you understand why they should create some more art. I agree,
Speaker 1: I not just tride on steamboat Willie's coat tails forever.
Speaker 1: One last point and we and we've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about this before in our three D printing related episodes.
Speaker 1: I think way back when um so technology keeps making
Speaker 1: pirrating or sharing depending on what side of the argument
Speaker 1: you're on, easier. So do you guys think that media
Speaker 1: corporations are ever going to catch up to the distribution
Speaker 1: speed that fans these days require and expect. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I think they'll. I think they'll catch up, but
Speaker 1: they'll only catch up to the you know, the transmission
Speaker 1: speeds of like three years ago type stuff. It will
Speaker 1: always be something that's gonna either either we get to
Speaker 1: a point where it's essentially instantaneous delivery, in which case
Speaker 1: there's there's not much you can do about it anyway,
Speaker 1: and as we're pretty close to that right now. Honestly, well, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I mean more in the more in the
Speaker 1: sense of, um, you know, a movie comes out and
Speaker 1: people want to see it, and some people are willing
Speaker 1: to go to a movie theater and see it. Some
Speaker 1: people are willing to go on Amazon and rent it
Speaker 1: and some people are going to download a stolen copy. Well,
Speaker 1: the argument there is, I mean, this is a slippery
Speaker 1: slope argument where you say that any pirated version is
Speaker 1: lost revenue, which is not the case because you cannot
Speaker 1: prove that a stolen view of a film or listen
Speaker 1: an experience of listening to a song the placement of
Speaker 1: monetary right that that otherwise that person would have spent
Speaker 1: the money to experience that, and because experience was worth
Speaker 1: free to me, but it is not worth nine dollars.
Speaker 1: So the problem there is that if the person was
Speaker 1: not going to buy it either way, then you haven't
Speaker 1: lost revenue. Uh you you know, it's irritating that someone's
Speaker 1: experiencing something that you've set a price on and they're
Speaker 1: doing it for free, But it's not like if they
Speaker 1: hadn't done that, you would have made that sale. So
Speaker 1: this is a this is a real argument that the
Speaker 1: US Office of Ethics looked into about how there were
Speaker 1: claims from the music industry in the movie industry about
Speaker 1: how much revenue was being lost due to piracy, and
Speaker 1: the conclusion was you cannot come up with a number
Speaker 1: because you cannot determine that every Uh, every instance of
Speaker 1: something being stolen would have otherwise been an actual sale.
Speaker 1: It goes back to not being able to predict behavior,
Speaker 1: and it goes back to it being digital rather than
Speaker 1: phiz sal right, because if it's physical, then clearly you
Speaker 1: can't sell a physical thing that's been stolen from you.
Speaker 1: You don't have it to sell it anymore. So if
Speaker 1: I'm selling c d s and I have ten c
Speaker 1: d s and sticky fingers, Lauren comes in and steals
Speaker 1: one of them, I now have nine CDs. I can
Speaker 1: no longer sell ten. But if I do digital copies
Speaker 1: and Lauren copies it, I haven't lost anything. I still
Speaker 1: have the original code. I can still sell those instances
Speaker 1: to everyone else. So it's a different experience than when
Speaker 1: you had a physical good in your hands. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: reminds me of I believe it was a bit by
Speaker 1: the comedian Mindy Kaling who was talking about that, uh,
Speaker 1: that old commercial in the movie Theater is it's like,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a purse,
Speaker 1: but you'll pirate a movie. And then she thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I would steal a car if all I had to
Speaker 1: do was touch the car, and then the car could
Speaker 1: be mine forever and the person could keep their car
Speaker 1: right right. It is a very very different case. And
Speaker 1: so I mean, does piracy result in lower revenue? We
Speaker 1: don't know. We honestly don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 1: The answer is probably a little bit. But to what
Speaker 1: extent or we don't know. It could be a significant amount,
Speaker 1: it could be a very small amount relatively speaking. There's
Speaker 1: also argument to be made that pirates tend to be
Speaker 1: people who will go out and buy the stuff they love.
Speaker 1: That the initial piracy is them sampling stuff, and then
Speaker 1: the things they like they actually go out and support.
Speaker 1: And there's some evidence for that as well. Now clearly, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not like every pirate has a heart of gold
Speaker 1: and is going to totally shell out the bucks for
Speaker 1: the stuff they love. They're gonna be some people who
Speaker 1: are going to try and take anything they can get
Speaker 1: for free. Uh. The The alternative to that, as far
Speaker 1: as I see from the corporation's perspective, is make your
Speaker 1: stuff as easy to buy as possible, put it on
Speaker 1: as many platforms as possible, price it reasonably, don't add
Speaker 1: a ton of drm to it. That's gonna make the
Speaker 1: experience negative for people who legitimate purchased your product. The
Speaker 1: easier you make something to buy, the more likely someone
Speaker 1: will buy it. Which is a little outside the copyright discussion,
Speaker 1: but it does tie into it. I mean, and copyright
Speaker 1: do are very closely related. I think I did want
Speaker 1: to bring it up because I do think that it's
Speaker 1: a contributing factor to what a lot of corporations are
Speaker 1: fighting for when they fight for copyright right, and it
Speaker 1: will definitely be an element that they will argue whenever
Speaker 1: they advocate for stricter copyright right. They are going to
Speaker 1: be going, yeah, well we're losing all of this yeah,
Speaker 1: and intangible money to intangible piracy. Yeah, And I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it's I can definitely see where that argument could
Speaker 1: be made. Uh not legitimately in my view, but I
Speaker 1: can see how it could be made. What is the
Speaker 1: future of watching I don't know, the next Star Star
Speaker 1: Wars movie filmed on a camcorder on some Chinese YouTube.
Speaker 1: It's not in my future because I refuse to do that.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that the experience is going to
Speaker 1: get a lot better. Cell phone cameras, cell phone cameras improved, technology,
Speaker 1: translation improved. It's not going to be Do not want? Guys,
Speaker 1: this is how three D happened? All right? Do you
Speaker 1: really want the next three D to happen? Because we're
Speaker 1: talking about how easy it will be to pirate movies?
Speaker 1: I don't want another three D, so let's let's just
Speaker 1: all right, So let's wrap this updates we got, We
Speaker 1: got an excellent discussion out of this, an epic excellent discussion.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for sending in that email.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. If you have a question, a comment,
Speaker 1: you want to know how something's gonna work in the future,
Speaker 1: just send us a message That email addresses thinking at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com or the line show us
Speaker 1: in the background giggling about do not want Sorry, please continue,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try, I'm so close. Or drop us a
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Speaker 1: in the future of technology, I visit forward thinking dot com,
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