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I agree with you that 10 years is more than enough time for corporations to turn a healthy profit on something (not that they can't continue to make money off of a work after it has entered the public domain), but this wasn't a small victory.

If every ISP were at risk of being on the hook for endless billions in damages because of what their users did it would mean that ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of piracy. It's worth noting that cox was actually already doing this in a limited number of circumstances, and the media industry still wasn't satisfied.

The media industry insisted that they needed the power to get people's accounts terminated even though it would have left many people, including fully innocent ones, cut off from the internet entirely. This was a big deal, and I'm honestly surprised to see this supreme court do the right thing.

I'm not sure I agree that any single fixed term makes sense. Rather, I think it'd be better if the exponential cost to society (in terms of works that don't happen, and works that don't happen based on those works that didn't happen and so on compounding) was just part of the yearly renewal price. Do maybe everyone gets 7 years flat to start with, then it costs $100*1.3^(year). So after another 25 years it'd be around $70.5k renewal. At 50 years it'd be $50 million. At 75 years it'd be $35 billion. Fixed amount and exponential can of course be shifted around here but the idea would be to encourage creators to use works hard and if they couldn't make it work not sit on them but release them. Once in awhile something would be such a big hit it'd be worth keeping a long time, and that's ok, but society gets its due too. And most works would be allowed to lapse as they stopped being worth it.

Another alternative/additional approach would be to split up the nature of copyright, vs an all or nothing total monopoly. Let there be 7-10 years of total copyright, then another 7-14 years where no exclusivity of where it's sold or DRM is allowed, then 7/14/21 years where royalties can still be had but licensing is mandatory at FRAND rates, then finally some period of "creditright" where the creator has no control or licensing, but if they wish can still require any derivative works to give them a spot in the credits.

I think there is a lot of unexplored territory for IP, and wish the conversations were less binary.

At this stage I just want a coherent system. There is no way "individuals can have their accounts terminated for one song" and "AI companies can download a complete copy of everything, including pirated works, and roll it into models which can reproduce it exactly and sell it back to you" should be able to co-exist.

I'm not sure that's the correct approach. Why do you want to have free access to other people's books, movies, and songs in the first place? I have the feeling that's not the case, but what is it then?

The reason copyright doesn't get fixed or removed is largely because the general public is worried more about other things and the big rightsholders continue their monthly payments—err, lobbying.

Though AI might change that. In the end, large corporations get what they want.

In a world where copyright only lasts 10 years, what happens to the musician whose song from 20 years ago is used in a movie and becomes super popular? Do they get royalties or are there no royalties involved?

I want a system that doesn't syphon money to the corporations over the individual creator and the corporations can't tell me I can't use the song.

Disagree on the decade. There are plenty of examples of great movies or other works that took longer than a decade to bring to the public. Those projects would have been completely non-viable if their content could have been stolen after creators put a decade into their development.

I think 25 or even 50 years is more defensible. But 100? Nah.

But the crushing problem today for many of us here is SOFTWARE PATENTS. These should never have been allowed in the first place; and until their scourge is abolished, everyone is at risk for having his work stolen with one.

Leave it in 2, like patents. Even 3 could be tolerated. But current standard is crap.

Why do you think others should have the right to something they didn’t create?

I think it should be for a lifetime of the original author and non-transferable. The system is already rigged very much against artists, it's amazing how many people still contribute to culture under the given conditions. I don't see any reason why someone who writes a Christmas song or a novel shouldn't have a possibility to get payments for their works until they die, for example. However, I have a lot of problems with the bizarre extensions that companies and heirs have gotten for work they haven't created on their own.

> now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.

I'm not so sure they're unrelated.

The bondage of intellectual property forces very particular branches of human development to the exclusion of others. It's no surprise that restriction of thought and creativity - and most of all, music - is to be found alongside war and predation and uninspired leadership.

IANAL but it seems to have major implications beyond music piracy, like into the realm of ISPs and free speech in general, it seems the court (rightly) sees ISPs as a common carrier (like water pipes) and we may see more opinions of the kind that reach into the space of monopolies or duopolies in social media next.

Why 10 years? Why not 9 years? 8 years? If one year doesn't make a difference then 1 year? How about 11?

If you made anything that was worth protecting you might feel differently.

Now that is some first class irony.

Sweet. Some copyright infringement to start things off.

9-0 rulings happen all the time. I couldn't find an easy to consume list so I asked AI to provide the percentage and it said 65–75% of rulings in a term are 9-0.

If it isn't on the net, it can't go through prism

It's interesting to see how people look for powerful interests to explain simple and correct supreme court decisions.

How is IP “theft” more important now than 20 years ago?

Isn’t this decision in exact opposition to the point you’re trying to make?

> 9-0 against the record labels.

Love to see it. I'm still mad about the Sony rootkit[0] and the people sued for absurd amounts over downloading a few MP3s back in the 00's.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

The media industry has already decided that it should be allowed to turn copyright enforcement into a revenue stream and I doubt they're going to stop their extortion racket now.

This ruling could mean that they'll increase their efforts targeting individuals with threatening letters demanding that they admit wrongdoing and settle for a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars at a time or else get sued in court and be forced to pay a lawyer tens of thousands to defend their innocence. It could mean they actually take more individuals to court instead of dropping the case every time they threaten somebody with enough money to hire a lawyer to defend them at trial.

The media industry is also pushing for more control in other ways as well like blank media style taxes which would let them rake in a steady stream of cash without needing to make make specific accusations. They also still want to be able to force ISPs to instantly blacklist any IPs they accuse of streaming copyrighted content. They've got this power in many countries already and innocent users have already been screwed over by it. They may decide to focus their efforts on getting this pushed through in the US now.

I doubt this ruling will lead to the kinds of broad copyright reforms we need, but it's long past time the courts started pushing back on the insane power grabs of the RIAA/MPA. No other industry could get away with demanding what they have.

A personal anecdote:

I had several roommates, and we each were responsible for a utility. I was responsible for internet, and Cox was our provider.

I received multiple e-mails from Cox about copyright infringement. I can't recall them, but I remember it being serious enough for me to tell people to stop.

Thinking back, I feel like Cox's position is right and fair; let users know they're being observed by copyright holders, and inform the user that they could be compelled to provide their identity to complainants.

But ultimately, the responsibility to "stop" the supposed infringement is on the holder, not Cox.

And a slapdown to the lower courts being reversed.

> At the same time it likely puts things like the *Arr stack at more risk given their more tailored nature.

Well, those would be in the same position now that they previously were I think.

In terms of legality Megaupload messed up by directly participating in copyright infringement. They paid people to upload copyrighted movies. Cox doesn't reward people for copyright infringement. The lawsuit against them argued they failed to take enough precautions (for example cutting off subscribers upon receiving an accusation from a third party) and that should make them liable.

In practice Megaupload is not an established company. Other consumer file storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud are trillion dollar companies with deep legal benches and lobbying muscle. YouTube seeded the service with pirated content and Google helped fight off a copyright lawsuit by finding evidence that one rights holder uploaded their own video and then claimed infringement.

ISPs still need to comply with the DMCA. In their decision the court did weigh the fact that "Cox repeatedly discouraged copyright infringement by sending warnings, suspending services, and terminating accounts." so I would expect that processing DMCA notices and even repeat offender terminations will continue to be a part of an ISP's enforcement policy.

That said, I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that a customer should only be terminated as a last step and only after the ISP has been made aware that their customer is actually a repeat offender. Getting a large number of unproven accusations should not be enough.

It seems like you would still have to remove the infringing content, but no need to disconnect or ban the user who shared it.

But if you’re a pure ISP and not hosting content on your own servers, then I guess, yeah DMCA doesn’t really apply to you?

This is about moving bits through the pipes and not the resources that those pipes are moving.

What? You pay property tax because local services schools, streets, police and fire fighters need to be funded. Having a property in the area is a pretty great proxy for using some of these services, hence the property tax.