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Please read this: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 And also look at the
by Houshalter 11y ago
Please read this: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976 https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976
And also look at the graphic on this page: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-mi...
Copyright serves a legitimate purpose. I doubt there would be many big budget games or movies produced without some degree of protection. The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to produce creative works. But it also needs to balance the benefits of that with the costs of restricting works from the public.
I believe that copyright should last 10 years. That sounds really short, but hear me out. The vast majority of works are not economically relevant after 10 years. And the ones that are, have usually earned 99% of their money within ten years. It's a power law, the first year gets vastly more money than the second year, than the third year, and so on. This is especially true for games and movies which are fast paced industries. It's also true for books and music, but the power law curve is a bit less steep.
There are exceptions to this, but they are just that - exceptions. The point is to provide an incentive for creators, not to give giant benefits to the outliers at the expense of the public.
Also originally copyright law had some additional measures to keep it from being restrictive. You had to actually register the copyright, not just grant it automatically, and you had to renew it halfway through. Which cost a few thousand dollars.
I also am very much in favor of derivative works. Fanfiction shouldn't be illegal, making a t shirt with your favorite character on it shouldn't be illegal, etc.
With this system you would be able to use old music, photos, software, books, movies, etc. As long as they were made before 2006.
Also trademark could handle some of the remaining issues. E.g. "Star Wars" could be a trademark of george lucas. You could make star wars derivatives, but you couldn't brand them with star wars. Consumers would be able to tell apart ripoffs from works by the original creator. Mickey mouse would still be a trademark of disney, but you could watch steamboat willy cartoons on youtube.
- oconnor663 11y ago> I doubt there would be many big budget games or movies produced without some degree of protection. I get where you're coming from, but I worry there's a ton of status quo bias in that doubt. Of all the bajillion ways to incentivize creativity, either with or without laws, how sure can we be that this is the best one?
- dclowd9901 11y agoIt also presumes big budget movies and games are a net positive culturally, entertainingly or otherwise.
- work-on-828 11y agoWe should have a status quo bias when considering tearing down a certain fence, lest we be gored by Chesterton's bull.
- facetube 11y agoI think we have a pretty good understanding of why this particular fence keeps growing taller and taller.
- kijin 11y agoIt doesn't even have to be a strict cutoff. The first 10 years might be free and automatic, but the Copyright Office could charge exponentially increasing fees for renewals afterward. For example, $1K for the next 10 years, then $10K, then $100K... This means that only works that remain truly profitable in the long term will stay copyrighted. If Disney wants to pay $10B to keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted, they are welcome to do so. The extension fees could be put to good use improving the nation's public schools and libraries.
- pitay 11y agoAnother option is to tax intellectual property at the rate of real property in the countries that they want to claim copyright in. The holder of the copyrighted material will have to declare how much the intellectual property is worth, and be forced to put it in the public domain (or maybe transfer ownership) if some entity pays the declared worth of that asset.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoI think this is a generally sensible proposal that would garner much public support. However, I would like to see moral rights retained for longer than 10 years - the right to prevent modification of the work, the right to be named as author, for example. Extending these to life+X years (but requiring free-gratis registration) seems fair to me as well.
- AnthonyMouse 11y agoThe ability to create derivative works is one of the primary benefits of works entering the public domain, so no.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoI think you misunderstood - you can make derivatives, you can't sell the work with your own modifications as if it were the original (you can sell your derivative though). Neither could you plagiarise works under such a system.
- 11y ago
- the_ancient 11y ago>> The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to produce creative works False, the purpose, and only reason for copy right is to promote the useful sciences, all other reasons are UnConstitutional (from a US Stand point anyway) The Surprising History of Copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI http://questioncopyright.org/learn http://questioncopyright.org/learn
- work-on-828 11y agoThe full text of the clause is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." "Creative works" is as reasonable shorthand for "useful arts and sciences" as "privacy" is for "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects"
- mindslight 11y agoIf you're looking to strike a balance, there also needs to be a good-faith effort to make the work available to the public domain after the copyright term expires. For software, the original creative work (source code) should need to be escrowed. And the same for any work obfuscated with DRM.
- jdbernard 11y agoI disagree. I do not think there should be an obligation for a creator to give away their work after the copyright expires. They just no longer get the benefit of having a legal mechanism to prevent others from copying/using it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mindslight 11y agoAnd what does the public get from granting you this temporary monopoly?
- jdbernard 11y agoLet's look at music for an example. Copyright provides a period in which they original artist had control over how the work is handled commercially. After the copyright expires the original artist can no longer use the law to prevent other people from redistributing or reproducing the work. However, the artist has no obligation to release the studio masters. Copyright makes it more viable for the creator to actually make a moving from their work. So to answer your question, the public is encouraging creative work. In the case of software, the work itself would no longer be protected from reproduction or duplication by others, but there is no obligation for the original creator to facilitate the reproduction by others.
- mindslight 11y ago> So to answer your question, the public is encouraging creative work Creative work which the public has no access to even after the limited monopoly period is up.
- jdietrich 11y agoI agree that copyright should be shorter in duration, but I think some of your suggestions would be disproportionately harmful to independent artists. Many songwriters rely on their back catalogue - a hit song serves as a pension, earning a steady trickle of royalties from radio play and sync usage. I don't see it as morally reasonable that, for example, a decade-old song could be used in a commercial without royalties being paid. Requirements to register and renew would be trivial for large corporate rightsholders, but could be a substantial burden for independent artists, particularly at the beginning of their career. The current situation of indefinite renewal serves nobody but the big publishers, but I think that a copyright term of approximately the life of the creator makes a great deal of sense. I'd be open to the idea of a shorter duration for works that have been assigned to a corporation. I'd also be open to the idea of a clearinghouse for orphan works, to ensure that orphan works can be used without unfairly disadvantaging artists.
- rwmj 11y agoWhy doesn't a pension serve as their pension?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Houshalter 11y agoLosing 1% of their income from that tiny trickle of royalties is not a big deal. 99% of the income a work will bring is made in the first 10 years or so, after that the royalties are tiny compared to the initial value. Nothing is preventing the artists from investing the income they make so they have something to retire on, as people in all other careers have to do. I agree the registration/renewal process could be burdensome on small creators. However the process does not need to be difficult, it could be a simple online form. And the renewal fee could be really low, perhaps $100. The point is just to keep every single photo ever taken from ending up copyrighted. Which usually means unusable, since no one can track down every copyright owner and negotiate licensing fees when they just want to use a photo in their power point demonstration. Instead of being automatic, only things people explicitly want to copyright are protected.
- emergentcypher 11y agoI'd like to point out, in support of your arguments, that all artistic works are derivative. Creative works are not created in a vacuum. They copy and derive build upon the cumulative works of the rest of society. Nobody should ever have been entitled to a lifetime copyright.