Might I suggest "Blind Lake" by Robert Charles Wilson. I read it when it first came out two decades ago, but it reads strangely similar to what we're seeing now, and the sinister edge is there, too.
Does this also say something more about the "coffee nap"?
Trump's second administration is ripping up parts of the country’s cyber playbook and taking many of its best players off the field, from threat hunters and election defenders at CISA to the leader of the NSA and Cyber Command. Amid a barrage of severe attacks like Volt Typhoon and rising trade tensions, lawmakers, former officials, and cyber professionals say that sweeping and confusing cuts are making the country more vulnerable and emboldening its adversaries. “There are intrusions happening now that we either will never know about or won’t see for years because our adversaries are undoubtedly stepping up their activity, and we have a shrinking, distracted workforce,” says Jeff Greene, a cybersecurity expert who has held top roles at CISA and the White House.
Bingo. (no mod points today)
I wish I had mod points for this. My son-in-law works in this stuff and he's been frustrated about resistance to carbon-reduction efforts. The specific one he mentioned a while back I believe involved adding a (possibly calcium-containing) base to let a precipitate fall onto the sea bed sequestering the carbon. People were worried about sticking basic chemicals into the sea without realizing that reducing acidity itself was good in addition to carbon sequestration - that they're actually related.
Came looking for this. From what I can see, the people pushing AI the hardest have their own agenda, and that agenda does not appear to be good for me in the long run. I've also read of some good things being done with AI, like protein folding and other science-related stuff that you don't hear much about. I would also suspect that in the sciences they understand the pitfalls of AI better and are being careful to at least try to not delude themselves.
Popeye's great, and they're still making the comic strip. Nancy's gotten pretty good again. Little Orphan Annie eventually got canceled, but man, it was just insane after around 2000 or so.
Patents keep getting longer too. They used to be 14 years long, and now they're 20.
I agree with the idea of a fixed-term regardless of life but 5-years is too short.
My proposal has been requiring authors to take affirmative steps to get a copyright (it's not automatic or free, though the fee is nominal), so that we only have to worry about the works the author specifically wants to protect, and that the terms would be 1-year with renewals. The number of renewals would depend on the type of work, but in no event would be all that long.
There was a study some years ago that suggested that 15 years was optimal in general. I'd like to see more investigation of that.
With a short, fixed term like that I would also extend a "character-right" for the life of the author i.e. give them exclusive rights to author more books set in the same setting/universe with the same characters so that only they, or those they authorize, can write sequels to their works while they live.
Strong disagree. First, life terms are too unpredictable (and might be shorter than fixed or renewable terms of years). Second, part of the goal of copyright is to encourage the creation of unauthorized derivative works; that's why we have limited terms to begin with.
If an author writes a series of books over years in a common setting, with common characters, the first one entering the public domain only opens up the setting and characters as they were in the first book; third party authors can fork it -- instead of the character of John Smith remaining in Everytown USA on his farm, which was what the original author kept writing about, the new unauthorized one has him set out on magic spy adventures in space. The market can sort out whether this is popular or successful.
This sort of thing has worked out okay before. The Aeneid is just the pro-Trojan, pro-Roman fanfic sequel to the Iliad. (Virgil: "Turns out some of the Trojans survived the war and escaped and had crazy adventures! Let's follow them instead of continuing with Odysseus or Agamemnon.")
Copyright is, in part, to ensure that the creator is reasonably paid for the time the creation took.
No, it's not. This is, no pun intended, patently obvious -- look at all of the unsuccessful artists out there, who will never be successful by virtue of their art even if the copyright lasted a billion years.
Copyright gives people a shot at success, but ensures nothing. Most works are, with regard to copyright-derived income, total flops. Most artists don't get reasonably paid from their copyrights.
It's a lot more like a lottery ticket; lots of people try their luck, and all but a handful lose. The tiny number of big winners, combined with the poor math skills of the average artist or gambler, result in people trying again and again and again, almost always fruitlessly.
But as a side effect, our culture gets enriched with all of this art. Maybe not much, if it's bad, but the only way to get more good art is to have more art created period.
I don't know what the minimum guaranteed copyright term should be, just that 95 years definitely isn't it. Perhaps copyright shouldn't even be one thing, but variable from genre to genre, medium to medium.
I agree that it should vary, probably by medium. Different media have different viable commercial lifetimes, ranging from less than a full day, in the case of a daily newspaper, to usually no more than a couple of decades (and possibly less, now) in the case of TV and movies. On the other hand, I don't think we need guaranteed minimums at all. If an author wants a copyright, let them apply for it -- by as simple a means as possible, but still requiring an affirmative act and the payment of a token sum, such as $1, so that they have to put in at least a little thought. In many cases, the author won't bother, in which case, why should we be putting a copyright on it anyway?
Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong. -- Jim Gettys
