Copyright Basics: Crash Course Intellectual Property #2

This week, Stan Muller teaches you the basics of copyright in the United States. Copyright law is territorial, so we're going to cover the system we know the most about, and that's the US. Stan will talk about what kind of ideas can be copyrighted, who can get a copyright, and what protections the copyright grants. We'll also talk about the always contentious and seemingly ever-growing term of copyright. Stan will also teach you about the low bar for creativity, which means that original work doesn't have to be all that original, and he'll also touch on the problems with copyright in the modern world.

The Magic 8 Ball is a registered trademark of the Mattel corporation.

Citation 1: Title 17 United States Code, section 101
Citation 2: 17 USC 101
Citation 3: 17 USC 101

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[zanestrongukg]

Being a musician, copyright is critical. And these videos are incredibly informative and helpful for musicians of any genre. Highly recommend!

[thalandor]

I thought I was really going to enjoy this series, but I'm quickly realizing that it's mostly just going to make me furiously angry over everything I hate about copyright law.

[mustardsfire]

LOVED SEEING MATT MURDOCK IN THE THOUGHT

[TheFragmentTheory]

Helping people learn stuff is the best reward 🔥

[ErikYoungren]

11:30 Way the frig too long. We need to restore the copyright term to 14 years with *one* 14 year extension.

[ThePokeman]

You know what? A finite set of time may not be the best method of keeping copyrights active, particularly for digital works and media. Some works remain popular for decades, while others are difficult if not impossible to obtain through a legal sale after a few short years. Why can't we come up with a "use it or lose it" copyright law, where if a product is not given any means of a legal sale accessible to the majority of the population, it expires after a short time, like say 5-10 years, then the life + 70 rule can define an upper limit? Not only does this allow for continued protection of works as long as the copyright holder feels it is beneficial to make use of it, but when it is decided the product is no longer making money or protecting an interest, it can expire freely in a relatively short time. Of course, some loopholes might need to be investigated such as "what constitutes a product being available for sale to the majority of the population" - I could definitely see a company arguing that they have a copy of a work available in a proprietary format from the 90s that is no longer in use and therefore almost impossible for people to make use of, for example, so a definition of "readily available to the majority of the population" might need to be in order.


Someone might claim that it could be difficult to maintain something available for "sale" but it costs very little to keep a GB of data available on a cloud-based store for distribution these days. If the company does not make enough in sales to maintain that presence, the product likely would not make much more money over the life of the life+70 copyright anyway without some sort of massive revival that occurs mostly by chance.


The only remaining obvious problem I would then see is keeping track of all this, in which case I would argue the copyrights need to be made searchable in a public database so people can easily find out what is copyrighted and what is not.

[whitneyempey]

I just think it's awesome that Thought Cafe animated themselves as dogs. XD

[chrislee-anneminturn]

Oh my, so much information to understand. And yes I am a real person, and yes 120 years shorter than 90 years! and still such a long time, will it even be remotely relevant by then? Thanks for the video, its been very helpful.

[cheeseisgreat]

I think that's not only way too long, but it seriously stifles the growth of new ideas. It'd really be great to have the opportunity to see what would happen to something in the hands of its fans, which is kinda hard to happen when the copyright on it basically says "No, you are not allowed to use Han Solo as a character in this otherwise original work of art, he is copyrighted and licensing fees are enormous enough that you would never be able to pay them out of pocket, and no studio is backing you, so f-- off." Then the original fans die out, and all the ideas that COULD have happened are lost to time. Meanwhile, the major copyright holders either milk the product for all it's worth under their control, or let the ideas from it slowly dim away, only letting it flare up again when they stifle the new production from it. I've seen that happen to two absolutely brilliant re-hashes of 35-40 year old IPs. And what's worse is, they were both entirely out of public memory, so it's not like they were trying to capitalize on the popularity of star wars or something and steal from that (like in my example above, ) but rather trying to revitalize a storyline that had gone by the wayside and nobody remembered anything about.

[JustinSchwemmer]

@3:04 fonts can often be copyrighted; typefaces are the part that's not copyrightable

[johnnywatts]

Stan, in 2014 I copyrighted the material from my website as a literary work but it was not in the form of a book, just a reproduction of my website homepage. Afterward, my research which resulted from my website inspired me to further my cryptologic exploration of the Bible and after deciphering much more data,  I decided to actually write a non fiction book that stood on its' own as an independent literary effort, though the book stemmed from my 2014 website material, which was just a vague overview of the codes I uncovered about the Shroud of Turin. My 2016 book was all new material that I wrote between 2015 and 2016 and presented the results of my research in an entirely different presentation than what my website presented. The scope of my 2016 book was vastly different in expression than what I copyrighted in 2014. Regarding the issue of 'facts', there might be some who would say my book is not based on fact but conjecture because it involves cryptology and the deciphering of secretive data in the Bible, not unlike The Bible Code in some ways.  I phoned the US Copyright Office recently and asked a clerk there if my 2014 copyright would protect my 2016 book after explaining the details to her. She told me I would need to file for a new copyright registration for my 2016 book, even though the theme of it was derived from the material I copyrighted from my 2014 website. So I filed for a special handling copyright application for my 2016 book and now the US Copyright Office is giving me a hard time, claiming the material I am now trying to copyright was basically copied from the 2014 material but it was not copied as they claim but rather, written anew in non fiction book form, with chapters and is close to 300 pages long whereas the website material was nowhere near that length. The case is so far unresolved and up in the air. Any thoughts?

[Friemelkubus]

Another way would be to have a fixed term where only you can profit and then a second term where you get a %-age of all profits or of the asking price. (The %-age declining with time so you have an ever decreasing competitive advantage)

[Galitwo]

28 years, then it's time to share!

[nwman]

Stan seems like a cool guy! Howdy Stan!

[BR-me]

So wait, am I infringing on copyright laws with this username/picture?

I mean I probably won't change it either way, but was just wondering.

[dudehoorox]

stan i wanna thank you for the valuable info i was typing up a lot of the sections outlined from the constituion from some of your other videos and some in my summary i had a great essay written out and the damn computer at school signs me out my teacher let my skip the essay but id like to thank you for the obtained knowledge!

[cluiarts]

Hell yeah Stan!!! you should ask John Green´s opinion haha and why no more pork chop party fund??

[RozzamaTRON]

"The greatest reward is hoping people learn stuff" - Stan. This quote on its own explains why the copyright period is far too long. Copyright was put in place to give an incentive for creators to create, right? In my experience, most creators do so for the love of it, or - even better - because they think they are doing something good for humankind. There's no need to make copyright ownership particularly lucrative, because (at least the good, useful) creators aren't thinking "what's in it for me?" And they're almost certainly not thinking "What's in it for my great-grandchildren?"

But as everyone knows, copyright laws are now set in favor of corporate copyright holders, who have privileged making money over helping society, and the whole system is broken. Reset the whole thing to 50 years after creation, at most.

[MADDMOODY]

What about concepts? For example, that new pixar movie has emotions in someones head controlling their actions. Could you copyright something like that?

[IsYitzach]

I love your Magic 8 Ball. It seems to be telling the truth to me. Sounds like a lawyer with a limited vocabulary.