Also, we need to move towards a registration based copyright system. This post doesn't need copyright protection.
This idea seems very wrong to me, for two reasons. First, you might not deem this particular comment of yours worthy of copyright protection, but people might find themselves in different situations. Consider for example the following Reddit comments, don't they deserve copyright protection?
Secondly, a registration based system puts unsophisticated creators at a disadvantage. People who don't have the resources to register all their creations or lack knowledge of the procedures will be penalized.
I would be happy to live in a copyright-free society[1], as it would not favor anyone. But a registration based system would shift the balance even more to the advantage of big corporations and copyright trolls.
[1] As long as some moral rights are preserved, e.g. one cannot take credit for someone else's work.
You must be young, and Not remember. Registration worked fine for majority of history, pre 1970, I believe thats when sono bono copyright act made copyright automatic.
In fact auto registration has shifted power towards the fewer.
Can you support these claims? Just because "it worked" doesn't mean it was better than the present system.
The upside of automatic copyright is clear: you don't have to bother registering every blog post you write if you want to prevent people from copy-pasting them.
The downside is less convincing: tons of material "unworthy" of copyright are automatically protected? Well, who cares if I cannot copy some HN comment...
That HN comment may have a historical significance you can't see now, but it will be lost because of automatic copyright. The most valuable historical material are the thoughts and experiences of "average people", because that's how we can truly understand an era. How will people in 500 years understand this era when it is likely that most of the popular culture and social commentary will be lost by then?
Twenty-two years ago I wrote a humor column for the college newspaper. A few years later (because of a scandal with the student government) they declared their independence and moved off-campus. A few years after that, they went bankrupt and shut down.
Who owns the copyright to the columns I wrote?
With a registration system, I could look that up. Now? I could republish the content and wait to get sued to figure out who owns it, but that's rather expensive.
You own the copyright. Unless of course you explicitly transferred it to the college newspaper, but then you would know.
This is a good example why a registration based system is bad: as a student you would likely not have bothered registering for copyright on your humor column, while in the present system you enjoy the protections and can republish as you like.
(If you had worked for a commercial newspaper, you would have created a work for hire and the newspaper would detain the copyright. I'm not sure what happens to copyright when the newspaper disappears but this is unrelated to copyright registration)
You could offer a grace period (lets say 1 year) to give time to people to register their post if they want. Same as with the reform to Patents which occurred last year.
This will still favor sophisticated creators/content owners.
I see the advantage of your system when coupled to an increasing price for maintaining registration (it would flatten the plot in the original submission). But I don't see the advantage over the solution of a short-term copyright: your system would basically keep out of the public domain important works that already benefited the content owners more than enough...
Well I feel it's a compromise, large corporation like Disney will never yield, what I'm trying to avoid is them causing other works that are no longer in print or distributed from disappearing. I want to give a disincentive to keep things under copyright for ever.
"your system would basically keep out of the public domain important works that already benefited the content owners more than enough." While true the exponential rise in cost in my proposition would lead to ensuring that these things will go into the public domain at some point. As it is now, extensions apply to everything including things for which no one cares for anymore.
Let's not ignore that the current system is also biased towards large corporations anyway. The cost of enforcing copyright is prohibitively high for small creators. I also suggest in a previous post to have a open databases showing registration (paid for by the registration fees) that would make it easier to find and contact creators to license their things.
It would still be a huge improvement over our current system, where the majority of works enter the copyright blackhole and become inaccessible because they are too old to be profitable yet too "new" to be in public domain.
This idea seems very wrong to me, for two reasons. First, you might not deem this particular comment of yours worthy of copyright protection, but people might find themselves in different situations. Consider for example the following Reddit comments, don't they deserve copyright protection?
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/kkmm4/you_unexpec...
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_des...
Secondly, a registration based system puts unsophisticated creators at a disadvantage. People who don't have the resources to register all their creations or lack knowledge of the procedures will be penalized.
I would be happy to live in a copyright-free society[1], as it would not favor anyone. But a registration based system would shift the balance even more to the advantage of big corporations and copyright trolls.
[1] As long as some moral rights are preserved, e.g. one cannot take credit for someone else's work.