6 ms·
The sheer length of timespans involved in copyright make it very detached from the actual reality a lot of people grew up with. A copyright of a few years woul
by yason 8y ago
The sheer length of timespans involved in copyright make it very detached from the actual reality a lot of people grew up with.
A copyright of a few years would better reflect what has been going on in the daily life since 70's-80's. If you grew up then you would see films of only few years back on TV at which point you could tape them for yourself and your friends. Anything that was broadcast immediately became effectively free: there was always someone who had a copy you could borrow or copy yourself. This gave the industry a lot of time to milk revenues from the cinema and then home video until everyone had it from broadcasts.
With a few notable exceptions, I don't see content from five years back making a huge cashflow, not to mention ten years. Thus copyright could be a paid privilege.
You would get the copyright for the first year for free. Then it would cost more each year to maintain the copyright for one more year. Let's take a small percentage of the first year's total sales for a given piece, make it the cost of copyright for the next year and for the following year, add the same percentage to the previous cost of copyright.
We would therefore effectively be taxing the practise of hoarding content under copyright.
At the same time income from the content would fall so the markets would reach a point where it would cost too much to keep the copyright in effect. The content business could make their own decisions per each piece of content. They would extend copyright on the most popular films and music while let go of the ones that don't sell too well.
All this would benefit everyone and make the copyright monopoly vs people's rights closer to a balance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Nursie 8y agoThe only counterpoint I can think of is that it seems unfair for copyright to lapse after a couple of years on a song and then have a movie studio pick it up and use it as a movie theme a few years later. They could end up making a ton of money with it and not benefitting the artist at all.
- teddyh 8y agoIf the hypothetical movie studio from your example could not have used the song because of copyright, they would not have used the song, leaving the artist just as bereft of benefits as before – there is no change for the artist either way. If the movie studio can pick the best song from all available non-copyrighted songs since there are a large number of them, the artist will still not benefit but the movie studio might make a better movie, benefiting them and thereby the economy and society as a whole, even if nothing changes for the artist.
- fiblye 8y agoBut now we have movie studios who are (generally) paying for rights to use a song that was popular a few years ago, or they're paying for original soundtracks. Reduce copyrights to just a few years and Hollywood, with all the parasites in it, would just lift songs like there's no tomorrow and further dodge paying a cent to the artists involved.
- nicoburns 8y agoPerhaps, but we'd be free to use their content as we saw fit too. Overall, I think reduced copyright would benefit the smaller artists (who might not be able to afford to license prior art now).
- goto11 8y agoMovies and TV use copyrighted music all the time - they just pay the copyright holder for licensing it.
- bluntfang 8y agoI am OK with using this logic when it comes to individuals using media for non-profit purposes, but movie studios are out to make money. Saying "if it didn't exist they wouldn't have used it" is taking away from the final composed project that includes many artists and mediums.
- vidarh 8y agoSo differentiate between copyright periods for personal use and commercial use. Many countries used to have strong explicit exemptions for personal use, but even just making it shorter in time for personal use would make a huge difference.
- lettergram 8y agoI always questioned whether we should be paying artists for music at all. The fact is, song writers don’t make most of their money from recordings. It’s merchandise and concerts. This would solve most of the copy right issues because someone recorded it with a cell phone. More than that, we’ve seen cases such as the Louis CK video release where he asked politely for people to pay and they did.
- goto11 8y agoYou don't have to pay artists for music if you don't listen to it.
- Matumio 8y agoCopyright law is not supposed to create fairness. It is supposed to benefit society as a whole. If protection is too long, limited access to (and reuse of) existing work reduces the benefits of having a law. If protection is too short, some works may not get created due to the lack of incentives. Someone attempted to calculate an optimal duration, and concluded it was about 15 years: https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf (Related article: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intellectual-property-and-the-tool-that-could-finally-reform-it-2ec037309837 https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intelle...)
- trampypizza 8y agoI would recommend reading James Boyle's 'The Public Domain'. It's available free from his site on a creative commons license[1]. He makes a great argument about the development of IP laws, similar to the points you have made. [1] http://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf http://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf
- Nursie 8y ago15 years sounds fine. I guess I was talking about just a couple.
- jaxtellerSoA 8y agoNo one goes to see a movie just because it features 1 song.
- gaff33 8y agoPart of the problem is derivative works. I don't think even Disney cares too much if people stream Steamboat Willy - but if MGM Studios wants to create a new Mickey Mouse film that could be a problem for them. Still I have little sympathy - it's hard to argue that endless Twilight fan-fiction did the franchise any harm. And there's plenty of non-canon James Bond films that have no impact on the main franchise.
- Iv 8y agoAlso there are a lot of franchises where, arguably, fans do a much better job than heirs. I am bitter that Zelazny's heirs killed Amber RPG, one of the best of the time. A lot has to be said on Dune and LOTR heirs as well. And don't get me started on Tintin, currently managed by the surviving second husband of Hergé's wife...
- clort 8y agoPretty sure that Disney will have trademarked Mickey Mouse and therefore a lack of copyright would be irrelevant anyway.
- leephillips 8y agoI can think of two: the Casino Royale with Woody Allen, and Never Say Never Again. Any others?
- goto11 8y agoThose are properly licensed. They are not derivative works or "fan fiction" any more than the Broccoli produced installments.
- nicoburns 8y agoThat's only a problem for Disney. The rest of the world gets to benefit from an explosion of creativity, and more available content. I definitely support a short copyright period (say 10-20 years). Beyond that, as the original creators of the characters, any further 'official' content/stories created by them are likely to be popular if they are any good (and would be subject to their own copyright period). But if someone else takes on those characters and manages to produce great stories with them. Well fantastic, let's allow them to, and reward them for it.
- Iv 8y agoIt was a proposition of the pirate party that RMS supported: make copyright duration 5 years long. Grant longer copyright terms to people who choose to add freedoms to it: free to copy, free to modify, free for commercial use would each add 5 years.
- clort 8y ago> You would get the copyright for the first year for free. Then it would cost more each year to maintain the copyright for one more year. I have a major problem with this. The problem is that if I purchase an item and it says 'Copyright (c) 1990' for instance, I would have no way of knowing when or if the copyright had expired. A fixed term would mean that I would know the date I could reproduce that work based on the work itself, which I held in my hand. A fixed term seems to me the best of worlds. Probably something like 10 years would be enough. My reasoning is that the vast majority of works would have exhausted their cashflow potential at that point. That a vanishing minority which had made lots of money would lose the opportunity to make vastly more is uninteresting to me. The work would still be fresh enough in the mind of society that a derivative work would be useful. If the work was successful then the creators name would still be fresh in the mind of society that they would have an inherent advantage when they created more. I personally don't see any reason why we should care that the grandchildren of a successful artist would not have a guaranteed income stream. My father is a civil engineer and has worked on infrastructure projects all over the world that will be used by millions for a hundred years or more and I will inherit what he leaves me in his will (yeah, he was paid for his time). I don't see any reason that the users of his bridge would be beholden to my descendants in 50 years time. My mother was a teacher and the thousands of children who passed through her classroom will grow up and live their lives and some will be successful and some will die in poverty and I don't have a single claim on any of their future income streams and thats the way it should be. I myself have created many works and I don't see that my claim on the future is in any way greater than my parents. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
- simonh 8y agoI concur the fact that grandchildren or the wife's second husband, or corporate executives living off copyright long after a person died in old age is obscene. However 10 years is equally absurd in the opposite direction. A book can take 10 years to write, or 10 years to get published and more than 10 years to get popular. George R R Martin has been writing GoT books for 22 years and I'd hate to see him lose ownership of the characters and stories when he is still writing more in the series. That would be horrible. Asimov was writing Foundation novels for 50 years. Transitioning a book to film or TV can easily take 10 years or more and I think is a reasonable source of income for an author. It would seem obscene to me that an author could write a book and then 10 years later see major motion pictures released for the same material earning studios hundreds of millions and they get nothing. Most authors earn a small stipend from their work and rely on that income through retirement, so I think a term until death, or commensurate with a single lifetime to support immediate family such as a spouse is reasonable, but that's it.
- ataturk 8y agoI agree. The whole mess that took place in the late 90s with copyright extensions was just another example of the few using their power to lord it over the rest of us. It's time we the people demanded a better seat at the table. Behold, the power of lobbying! Sickening.