6 ms·
They've got until 2024 before Steamboat Willie enters the public domain. Until then we're just going to be getting the years from 1922 to 1928. I wish that Con
by OscarCunningham 8y ago
They've got until 2024 before Steamboat Willie enters the public domain. Until then we're just going to be getting the years from 1922 to 1928.
I wish that Congress would just say "Everything before Steamboat Willie is public domain, everything else has copyright in perpetuity". Just give us everything they can afford to lose while still getting paid.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoHow about instead we say "everything is death of the artist + 20 years, except for Disney, who will pay the government $50mm a year to keep that deal in place" and then if people want to fight a Disney battle, no one else has to care.
- zanny 8y agoWhy exactly do artists need copyright for 20 years after they are dead, again? ... why exactly do they need copyright, again?
- hackcasual 8y agoTo promote the progress of science and useful arts. Estates are things. I'm sure a fair number of artists have been encouraged to publish towards the end of their life to support their children or causes they believe in.
- Beldin 8y agoActually, since copyright is life + x years, an artist that wishes to leave his descendants with a source of income off of his works is better off creating a work and leaving it to them to slightly tweak and then publish as "by FAMOUS_ARTIST and his second cousin's daughter". That way, copyright will last for the life of the involved descendant as well. So I'm doubtful if anyone would publish anything just for the same of supplying for their children. It's just not the best way to achieve the goal.
- jzymbaluk 8y agoSome artists die tragically early and leave behind families to support
- munk-a 8y agoWhy are we okay with letting society and social safety nets off the hook of providing for these families. What if someone barely making a living dies tragically early? If it's too bad for their family, why does that artist's family get a free ride - how did they contribute to what the artist created.
- tonysdg 8y agoIIRC, the idea is to help the (dependents of the) Kurt Cobains of the world: artists who die young and still have loved ones who can now depend on the revenue from the copyrighted works for at least 20 years. But IANAL, so I could be way off.
- cwkoss 8y agoI don't think Courtney Love is the best strongman for this argument.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoWhy should children of artists get more help than say, builders, or doctors, or anyone?
- andrepd 8y agoYou're not wrong, but the same can be said of all inherited wealth.
- munk-a 8y agoI agree. We as a society should have this discussion, no one wants their children to live in poverty and people, while they live, transfer their value to their children - so someone who dies early has missed the opportunity to do the same to their children. But, the fact that the Waltons exist is just stupid.
- sparky_z 8y agoBuilders and doctors have regular salaries (or at least are paid in full upon completion of the work they do). The value of a creative work is in the income stream it creates over time. If you need the money now, you can recoup that by selling the rights. But it's hard to sell rights to an income stream that could disappear tomorrow if you were hit by a bus.
- zanny 8y ago
- snarf21 8y agoIf you create a $100M business you can give it to your kids. They can own it forever. I think is quite fair to say X years after death but only for family. Saying only while they're alive isn't quite fair.
- ta1234567890 8y agoExcept when you give a business to your kids, they need to run it or pay someone to run it for them and still manage that. With copyrights that make money, your kids would not need to run anything, just collect the money. For one you need to work, for the other not nearly as much. That doesn't sound too fair to me.
- egypturnash 8y agoYou have to reprint the thing so you can sell new copies of it. Or persuade a publisher that it's worth them going through the hassle and expense of reprinting it. Or hassle with getting it into newfangled distribution services so you can sell electronic copies of it. Trust me, this is work, I am an independent artist who has a thing that's out of print that she now regularly gets people asking her to reprint, and I am so damn burnt out from my last Kickstarter that I'm ignoring this ever-growing mass of people eager to give me money.
- mcbits 8y agoThe rightsholders still have to be proactive about marketing to maintain the popularity of the work and hire lawyers for enforcement. There's a lot of copyrighted work from the late 20th century on YouTube where apparently nobody is doing the work on either front because the videos have been up for years and have like 900 views. But I guess if something suddenly became a cult hit, it could be worthwhile to sue whoever instigated/profited from it. Unfortunately the rightsholders tend to be publishing companies, not the kids, so the kids would still only get pennies on the dollar in royalties, if that. And technology is gradually making it easier for publishers to enforce their "rights" on even the stupidest, least popular works.
- toyg 8y agoThe likes of Stan Lee should be able to pass their rights to their children, like you would a land deed. I think that's fair. Their grandchildren and/or businesses, probably not.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoWhy? If Stan Lee accumulated some wealth, he can pass that along.
- toyg 8y agoMany artists get recognition only after they pass, e.g. Philip K. Dick.
- hnick 8y agoIn addition to the other replies, I suppose it also removes some of the incentive for foul play if I want to use a copyrighted work and don't want to wait for a natural death.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoBecause they have family. 20 years, so you and your dependents can enjoy the fruits of your labour, even if you died of cancer, or old age, or you got hit by a bus 2 weeks after publishing your best work yet at 32. Don't have a will? Then sure, have the copyright expire. But if you have family, and they're in your will, they are most certainly entitled to those fruits until the copyright expires, just like how they can get any other business non-copyright-workers can set up. 20 years seems perfectly fair for that. And if that means you "leave a legacy" for 20 years, that your family can cash out on: no different from someone leaving their company or their land titles to their kids. Except that company or land will stick around a lot longer.
- redwall_hp 8y ago>no different from someone leaving their company or their land titles to their kids So...feudalism. How about we not perpetuate inequality.
- munk-a 8y agoI am quite okay with making a disney exception because a few years after it was made people might suddenly gain some common sense and say "no that's stupid" I don't understand why life+20 years is a thing though, even life seems excessive. Let an artist profit for twelve years off their work and then release it for free use. The vast majority of money will have already been made and the innovation of their work will have worn off.
- dannyw 8y ago12 years copyright, 20 years moral rights sound good to me.
- anticensor 8y ago3½ years of copyright (with royalties, transferable once) plus renewals every six months up to 21 years with moral rights along with copyright term and up to lifelong after copyright expiration (no monopolies, non-transferable authorship, attribution only) would be the solution. This will satisfy all the industry and academics, bar Disney.
- zjaffee 8y agoThe reason why we let copy written works remain that way is because then the profits of the artists work will always get eaten up by bigger companies. This is especially true in the digital age. Instead of artists profiting, corporations from netflix to amazon to spotify would profit instead of actual artists, and at least for big brand characters, Chinese toy companies would be able to undercut those who spent the capital building the brand around a given character. So much of the American economy and brand is cultural exports, and this would absolutely destroy a huge chunk of that.
- hakfoo 8y agoThere's some precedent for this-- I think the UK has a specific cutout providing a perpetual copyright for a few specific works that were willed to charities.
- TheRealPomax 8y ago
- nwallin 8y agoI like the sentiment, but it's unconstitutional under the equal protections clause of the 14th amendment.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoThere is a certain irony in saying that something is unconstitutional due to an amendment. The original constitution had to be amended in the first place, let's not pretend it's now somehow fixed forever and we can't possibly amend it any further as society changes over the centuries.
- bediger4000 8y agoPart of the problem with US copyright (and maybe Berne convention copyright) is that there's no good way to determine if something is copyrighted or not. "Death of the artist + N years" means you have to find the artist, find out when they died. Both parts can be difficult, see the "Happy Birthday To You" thing from a few years ago. USA copyright was ridiculous before joining the Berne convention in 1976 (or thereabouts), but at least if something didn't have a copyright notice on it, it wasn't copyrighted. If it did have a notice, you could figure out when it expired. Now you basically have to go to court to decide for sure.
- jrhurst 8y agoThey can't say things are copyright in perpetuity. It would validate Article 1 Section 8 Chapter 8 on the US Constitution
- gbear605 8y agoThen just say for the next 999 years, or something like that.
- anticensor 8y agoPerpertual copyright is unconstitutional in the US and continental Europe due to multiple grounds.