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I don't know if it's fair to blame the TPP-- it seems that everybody everywhere was independently converging upon this. The EU, for instance, moved from 50-year

I don't know if it's fair to blame the TPP-- it seems that everybody everywhere was independently converging upon this. The EU, for instance, moved from 50-year copyright terms to 70-year in 2011.[1] It's yet another case of a motivated special interest. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copyright-extension http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copyr...

afarrell 11y ago
I was unaware of that. It is a shame. I had been holding out hope that the rise of pirate parties in Europe meant that there was enough of a countervailing special interest to push things back to 14+14.
- derefr 11y ago
  Rather than Europe, I imagine the biggest countervailing force going forward will be a billion-strong market of Chinese consumers who don't consider IP rights to exist, and don't really care whether the products they're purchasing are originals or bootlegs.
  - tl 11y ago
    Once upon a time, Americans didn't care about violating European (largely British) copyright. I expect at some point, the Chinese will start moving to protect the "originality" of their near copies which will get more legitimately original over time.
    - umanwizard 11y ago
      Unfortunately it's really difficult to produce cultural products (films, TV, books, etc.) in China because you never know when the censors are going to shut you down -- unless what you've produced is so bland there's no way anyone could find it objectionable. This will have to be fixed before China can start producing its own export-quality cultural products.
  - peteretep 11y ago
    They will be led to believe these rights exist when there's sufficient Chinese artistic IP that people from abroad want to use.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    They aren't going to push for limited copyight terms though.
- clort 11y ago
  Just on this a+b issue. I think the +b is the most objectionable part of the whole thing and I wish people would not propose a return to shorter terms but include that as a sop. My reasoning is this. If I publish something, and claim copyright on it '(c) yyyy' for example. Then, after yyyy+a years it could be known by all to be copyright free, because you have the original published document in your hand which states the start date and the term is known. With the possible +b included, it becomes difficult to determine what the copyright status is because you don't know if it has been 'extended' so you really need to wait until after yyyy+a+b. With the current system of life+b then its even harder to know if a published work is out of copyright unless the author is well known, and because this suits the entrenched interests I believe that it is at least partially intentional. If pirate parties or anybody else want to campaign for copyright reform, then my utmost wish would be that they fix this issue at the start. Lets have a fixed term please.
  - slavik81 11y ago
    The problem with fixed terms is that there's really two classes of copyrighted things: junk and treasure. The opposition in this debate is obsessed with treasure. They love the rare, valuable IPs that retain relevance for decades. A scheme that still assigns long copyright terms to treasure is much easier to pass. Then at least the junk can have short copyright terms. That might seem pointless, but the fact is that there's a lot more junk than treasure in the world. And, just because the copyright holder didn't value it doesn't mean it's useless. After all, one man's junk is another man's treasure.
    - beefield 11y ago
      That's why the copyright term should be flexible. A natural way to achieve this would be to tax copyright (why not? many other properties are taxed, why not IP?) progressively over time. For example first three years zero tax, fourth year $1000 and doubling every year from that. When copyright holder is not willing to pay the tax anymore, the piece of work moves to public domain. This solves also the orphan works issue automatically. (Obviously, there are some international details to be sorted out with this idea.)
mark-r 11y ago
I wouldn't blame the TPP, I'd blame the powers behind the TPP. This is an effort that's been going on in parallel along many fronts.

afarrell 11y ago

I was unaware of that. It is a shame. I had been holding out hope that the rise of pirate parties in Europe meant that there was enough of a countervailing special interest to push things back to 14+14.

derefr 11y ago
Rather than Europe, I imagine the biggest countervailing force going forward will be a billion-strong market of Chinese consumers who don't consider IP rights to exist, and don't really care whether the products they're purchasing are originals or bootlegs.
- tl 11y ago
  Once upon a time, Americans didn't care about violating European (largely British) copyright. I expect at some point, the Chinese will start moving to protect the "originality" of their near copies which will get more legitimately original over time.
  - umanwizard 11y ago
    Unfortunately it's really difficult to produce cultural products (films, TV, books, etc.) in China because you never know when the censors are going to shut you down -- unless what you've produced is so bland there's no way anyone could find it objectionable. This will have to be fixed before China can start producing its own export-quality cultural products.
- peteretep 11y ago
  They will be led to believe these rights exist when there's sufficient Chinese artistic IP that people from abroad want to use.
- afarrell 11y ago
  They aren't going to push for limited copyight terms though.
clort 11y ago
Just on this a+b issue. I think the +b is the most objectionable part of the whole thing and I wish people would not propose a return to shorter terms but include that as a sop. My reasoning is this. If I publish something, and claim copyright on it '(c) yyyy' for example. Then, after yyyy+a years it could be known by all to be copyright free, because you have the original published document in your hand which states the start date and the term is known. With the possible +b included, it becomes difficult to determine what the copyright status is because you don't know if it has been 'extended' so you really need to wait until after yyyy+a+b. With the current system of life+b then its even harder to know if a published work is out of copyright unless the author is well known, and because this suits the entrenched interests I believe that it is at least partially intentional. If pirate parties or anybody else want to campaign for copyright reform, then my utmost wish would be that they fix this issue at the start. Lets have a fixed term please.
- slavik81 11y ago
  The problem with fixed terms is that there's really two classes of copyrighted things: junk and treasure. The opposition in this debate is obsessed with treasure. They love the rare, valuable IPs that retain relevance for decades. A scheme that still assigns long copyright terms to treasure is much easier to pass. Then at least the junk can have short copyright terms. That might seem pointless, but the fact is that there's a lot more junk than treasure in the world. And, just because the copyright holder didn't value it doesn't mean it's useless. After all, one man's junk is another man's treasure.
  - beefield 11y ago
    That's why the copyright term should be flexible. A natural way to achieve this would be to tax copyright (why not? many other properties are taxed, why not IP?) progressively over time. For example first three years zero tax, fourth year $1000 and doubling every year from that. When copyright holder is not willing to pay the tax anymore, the piece of work moves to public domain. This solves also the orphan works issue automatically. (Obviously, there are some international details to be sorted out with this idea.)

mark-r 11y ago

I wouldn't blame the TPP, I'd blame the powers behind the TPP. This is an effort that's been going on in parallel along many fronts.