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I wrote this on another thread a few months ago. It's in the context of paywalled science, but it applies more generally: Copyright law is ridiculous. Nonficti

I wrote this on another thread a few months ago. It's in the context of paywalled science, but it applies more generally: Copyright law is ridiculous. Nonfiction and scientific work should be treated differently than fictional works. I don't really care if Mickey Mouse goes into the public domain. But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. These objectively have value to society, and the argument for the existence of the public domain is much stronger. And why on Earth should copyright last last so long to begin with? How many works are worth anything after 10 or 15 years? I believe 99% of all works make 99%+ of their revenue in the first few years. Having copyright last a lifetime, let alone much longer, is just crazy. Creators benefit exponentially less for every additional year of protection. And only the very successful ones even benefit to begin with - the vast vast majority of works are just forgotten by that time. Put a cost on renewing copyright. This is actually how it used to be. Half way through, you could pay a fee to have copyright extended. Very few people paid this fee (because most works aren't economically valuable), so most works went into public domain much sooner. Journals charge $30 to access obscure ancient papers. But I bet they wouldn't pay even $30 to keep the rights to those same papers. Don't put everything into copyright by default. And again especially works of nonfiction or scientific papers. If the authors want that, then sure. This wouldn't fix the issues with big journals that demand it. But it still seems like a sensible idea to have copyright opt-in, not opt-out.

colejohnson66 10y ago
Well yeah, but then Disney came along...
- peller 10y ago
  The ironic thing is, most of Walt Disney's biggest hits were all based off of others' works in the public domain. A fact whose implications are sadly lost upon the people who continue to rubber-stamp copyright term extensions.
  - kagamine 10y ago
    Like these classic fairy tales that were folklore until written down and of which many exist in the collective consciousness of western civilization: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/ http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/
    - touristtam 10y ago
      Charles Perrault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault) and Grimm's fairy tales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales) are better read anyway.
      - kagamine 10y ago
        My daughter wanted me to read The Little Mermaid to her, so we read from HC Andersen's book. That story was brutal. I don't think either my daughter or I were expecting that bleak lesson in life.
        touristtam 10y ago
        Yes the original fairy tales are usually quite grim: a far cry from their disney version. The advantages of the compilation of tales from the Grimm brother is there are a lot of them to pick from. ;)
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I'm sure when it gets close again, they'll lobby to extend copyright once again for Mickey, Donald, et. al. Imagine all the fun stuff all people would be able to do with the Disney characters if they came out of copyright. Disney could then make new things to define themselves. Most of our entertainment industry just latches on to the old, giving us endless remakes and sequels instead of trying to find new writers and artists that give us things that are not cliche, inspiring and new.
NamTaf 10y ago
As much as I hate the situation and as much as I agree with you, your contradiction answers why: " But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. These objectively have value to society, and the argument for the existence of the public domain is much stronger. And why on Earth should copyright last last so long to begin with? How many works are worth anything after 10 or 15 years?" The nature of capitalism means that because there's value to those scientific works, someone will try to extract wealth from them. That's why this happens across the board.
- SamBam 10y ago
  Sure, but the laws regarding eminent domain already show that the state can appropriate property if it's considered to be in the public good. Just because something has value it doesn't mean that we have to allow someone to extract wealth from it. Regardless, I see what you're saying about OP contradicting his/herself, but it's not necessarily a contradiction: the value to society may be greater than that to the copyright holder. Of the millions of works still under copyright today created in 1960, only a handful are still generating wealth for their copyright holders. But could all those works which are not generating wealth actually be valuable to modern people breathing life into old works by republishing or remixing? Perhaps.
- loqwe 10y ago
  This is incorrect. Old works are not copyright-locked because the owner can charge for access. Old works are copyright-locked because they compete with new marketable products. If we could watch classic films/music/etc for free, we'd spend less on new films/music/etc
JoshTriplett 10y ago
> Put a cost on renewing copyright. This is actually how it used to be. Half way through, you could pay a fee to have copyright extended. Very few people paid this fee (because most works aren't economically valuable), so most works went into public domain much sooner. Journals charge $30 to access obscure ancient papers. But I bet they wouldn't pay even $30 to keep the rights to those same papers. I agree completely. This would go a long way towards bringing old works into the public domain, by making sure the artificial privilege of exclusive control requires active interest to maintain. Ideally, I'd suggest making the fee scale exponentially (or at least non-linearly) with age, as well. That would lead people to ask questions like "is this decades-old work really worth millions to renew again, or should we make something new with that same money that'd reset the fee schedule?".
int_19h 10y ago
Rather than a renewal fee, why not basically just go all the way with "intellectual property", and start treating it as such? You can own it if you want, but please pay the property tax. Or you can always surrender it to the public domain, if the taxes get too onerous. I'd even go one step further, and make it a progressive tax proportional to the duration the work has been copyrighted. Initial grace period of a few years is free, then a very modest rate, but after a couple of decades it starts to ramp up really high. If it's that valuable, you can keep paying it off the profits as long as you want. Same thing with estates. Inheriting a copyright? Fine - but there's a tax on that (with the usual applicable caps etc). And said tax receipts could be specifically allocated to, say, fund libraries, free public Internet, and other forms of storing and distributing information and works of art for the benefit of all.
- Spivak 10y ago
  If you care about such things this word be a death sentence for basically all Free Software licenses like Apache, BSD, GPL, etc. -- basically everything except MIT and WTFPL since it would be progressively more expensive to maintain the requirements of the license.
  - imtringued 10y ago
    Assuming a 14 year copyright that would mean gcc 3.0 enters the public domain but the current version obviously has it's own duration. I don't see why they should get special treatment. Do they really need copyright of 14 year old versions of software and monopolise it? Are they that scared that someone takes some old version of gcc and uses it for a commercial application? Also nothing stops you from taking a public domain work (even your own) and slapping a new license on top of it if all you care about is the license not the monopoly. Also the way the current copyright system works means those free software licenses are already "dead" by your definition. It's just through pure chance that the duration keeps getting extended retroactively. The only difference between the current system and the proposed system is in the duration and the fact that in the old system all works had effectively the same duration again through pure chance because it's based on the lifetime of the author.
ewams 10y ago
Devil's advocate: think about star wars. Did it make more in the first few years, or these past few years? How do we handle that? If anyone could produce a star wars item, think about all the artists, engineers, lawyers, authors, that currently support that industry and would then be threatened. (ie, books, movies, TV, music, video games, cards, boardgames, comics, websites, shorts, etc etc).
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Well Star Wars is the rare top 0.1% of works to become so successful. I don't think derivative works should be protected personally. Is the world really better off with only George Lucas being able to make Star Wars movies? The fans would say no, I imagine. Creators should be protected from pirates. Movies require a ton of money to make, and copyright protects their investment. And gives an economic incentive to create new works. Protecting derivative works doesn't really increase incentives for new works much. But it heavily restricts what others can create on it. That said, it would be trademarkable. So you wouldn't be able to call it "Star Wars", or advertise it as canon. Or put the famous logo on it. I read once that ancient Greek plays had lots of crossover and common characters that everyone knew. I think an alternative world without derivative work protection would be pretty interesting. Some of the best works I've ever read were fan fiction. They are technically illegal, and can never be put to print.
lerpa 10y ago
> But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. That's why it shouldn't be considered plagiarism for the author or someone eles to republish those works at freer pastures. But who are we kidding, many journals refuse to publish validation of existing studies, which is the basis of empirical science. They refuse to do science properly and we are worried about them not giving access to information.

colejohnson66 10y ago

Well yeah, but then Disney came along...

peller 10y ago
The ironic thing is, most of Walt Disney's biggest hits were all based off of others' works in the public domain. A fact whose implications are sadly lost upon the people who continue to rubber-stamp copyright term extensions.
- kagamine 10y ago
  Like these classic fairy tales that were folklore until written down and of which many exist in the collective consciousness of western civilization: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/ http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003947956/
  - touristtam 10y ago
    Charles Perrault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault) and Grimm's fairy tales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales) are better read anyway.
    - kagamine 10y ago
      My daughter wanted me to read The Little Mermaid to her, so we read from HC Andersen's book. That story was brutal. I don't think either my daughter or I were expecting that bleak lesson in life.
      - touristtam 10y ago
        Yes the original fairy tales are usually quite grim: a far cry from their disney version. The advantages of the compilation of tales from the Grimm brother is there are a lot of them to pick from. ;)
djsumdog 10y ago
I'm sure when it gets close again, they'll lobby to extend copyright once again for Mickey, Donald, et. al. Imagine all the fun stuff all people would be able to do with the Disney characters if they came out of copyright. Disney could then make new things to define themselves. Most of our entertainment industry just latches on to the old, giving us endless remakes and sequels instead of trying to find new writers and artists that give us things that are not cliche, inspiring and new.

NamTaf 10y ago

As much as I hate the situation and as much as I agree with you, your contradiction answers why: " But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. These objectively have value to society, and the argument for the existence of the public domain is much stronger. And why on Earth should copyright last last so long to begin with? How many works are worth anything after 10 or 15 years?" The nature of capitalism means that because there's value to those scientific works, someone will try to extract wealth from them. That's why this happens across the board.

SamBam 10y ago
Sure, but the laws regarding eminent domain already show that the state can appropriate property if it's considered to be in the public good. Just because something has value it doesn't mean that we have to allow someone to extract wealth from it. Regardless, I see what you're saying about OP contradicting his/herself, but it's not necessarily a contradiction: the value to society may be greater than that to the copyright holder. Of the millions of works still under copyright today created in 1960, only a handful are still generating wealth for their copyright holders. But could all those works which are not generating wealth actually be valuable to modern people breathing life into old works by republishing or remixing? Perhaps.
loqwe 10y ago
This is incorrect. Old works are not copyright-locked because the owner can charge for access. Old works are copyright-locked because they compete with new marketable products. If we could watch classic films/music/etc for free, we'd spend less on new films/music/etc

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> Put a cost on renewing copyright. This is actually how it used to be. Half way through, you could pay a fee to have copyright extended. Very few people paid this fee (because most works aren't economically valuable), so most works went into public domain much sooner. Journals charge $30 to access obscure ancient papers. But I bet they wouldn't pay even $30 to keep the rights to those same papers. I agree completely. This would go a long way towards bringing old works into the public domain, by making sure the artificial privilege of exclusive control requires active interest to maintain. Ideally, I'd suggest making the fee scale exponentially (or at least non-linearly) with age, as well. That would lead people to ask questions like "is this decades-old work really worth millions to renew again, or should we make something new with that same money that'd reset the fee schedule?".

int_19h 10y ago

Rather than a renewal fee, why not basically just go all the way with "intellectual property", and start treating it as such? You can own it if you want, but please pay the property tax. Or you can always surrender it to the public domain, if the taxes get too onerous. I'd even go one step further, and make it a progressive tax proportional to the duration the work has been copyrighted. Initial grace period of a few years is free, then a very modest rate, but after a couple of decades it starts to ramp up really high. If it's that valuable, you can keep paying it off the profits as long as you want. Same thing with estates. Inheriting a copyright? Fine - but there's a tax on that (with the usual applicable caps etc). And said tax receipts could be specifically allocated to, say, fund libraries, free public Internet, and other forms of storing and distributing information and works of art for the benefit of all.

Spivak 10y ago
If you care about such things this word be a death sentence for basically all Free Software licenses like Apache, BSD, GPL, etc. -- basically everything except MIT and WTFPL since it would be progressively more expensive to maintain the requirements of the license.
- imtringued 10y ago
  Assuming a 14 year copyright that would mean gcc 3.0 enters the public domain but the current version obviously has it's own duration. I don't see why they should get special treatment. Do they really need copyright of 14 year old versions of software and monopolise it? Are they that scared that someone takes some old version of gcc and uses it for a commercial application? Also nothing stops you from taking a public domain work (even your own) and slapping a new license on top of it if all you care about is the license not the monopoly. Also the way the current copyright system works means those free software licenses are already "dead" by your definition. It's just through pure chance that the duration keeps getting extended retroactively. The only difference between the current system and the proposed system is in the duration and the fact that in the old system all works had effectively the same duration again through pure chance because it's based on the lifetime of the author.

ewams 10y ago

Devil's advocate: think about star wars. Did it make more in the first few years, or these past few years? How do we handle that? If anyone could produce a star wars item, think about all the artists, engineers, lawyers, authors, that currently support that industry and would then be threatened. (ie, books, movies, TV, music, video games, cards, boardgames, comics, websites, shorts, etc etc).

Houshalter 10y ago
Well Star Wars is the rare top 0.1% of works to become so successful. I don't think derivative works should be protected personally. Is the world really better off with only George Lucas being able to make Star Wars movies? The fans would say no, I imagine. Creators should be protected from pirates. Movies require a ton of money to make, and copyright protects their investment. And gives an economic incentive to create new works. Protecting derivative works doesn't really increase incentives for new works much. But it heavily restricts what others can create on it. That said, it would be trademarkable. So you wouldn't be able to call it "Star Wars", or advertise it as canon. Or put the famous logo on it. I read once that ancient Greek plays had lots of crossover and common characters that everyone knew. I think an alternative world without derivative work protection would be pretty interesting. Some of the best works I've ever read were fan fiction. They are technically illegal, and can never be put to print.

lerpa 10y ago

> But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. That's why it shouldn't be considered plagiarism for the author or someone eles to republish those works at freer pastures. But who are we kidding, many journals refuse to publish validation of existing studies, which is the basis of empirical science. They refuse to do science properly and we are worried about them not giving access to information.