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> But today’s protection times — life plus 70 years — are absurd. No investor would even look at a business case where the time to pay-back was that long. Thi

> But today’s protection times — life plus 70 years — are absurd. No investor would even look at a business case where the time to pay-back was that long. This is something that should resonate with the HN crowd. The heart of the problem is that the law treats big media and the independent artist the same way. Instead of the flat 5 year copyright term for every piece of work, I think a system that works better is that after 5 years, the copyright on an item can be annually extended by an year using a small fee - say the original sale cost x 10. The independent artist can renew the few items he has created easily at this small price. But Big Media houses, who own the copyright of tens of thousands of items will have to release any items that no longer sell and do not directly compete with their current offerings.

Spivak 7y ago
But all these reform schemes assume that copyright expiration is the end goal when it's really there to allow the creator of a work to extract pretty much all the value from their work -- the expiration is really an afterthought. I think expanding fair use makes sense in a lot of cases but I also think that harping on copyright expiration terms generally miss the point. Copyright expiration should protect against works being abandoned but those are the exceptional cases. I think my ideal copyright system would be indefinite but you can make a case before a court if you think a work has been abandoned and you want to pick it up. All of these systems that are clearly designed to burden copyright holders and make it harder to maintain copyright are silly.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
  I would love to see an explanation of why you think putting the burden of proof on the new creator to prove that their new work does not violate copyright is advantageous to an auto-expiry approach. I can think of thousands of situations where what you propose would stifle innovation. Why is this way better?
- admax88q 7y ago
  > you can make a case before a court if you think a work has been abandoned That's an absurd amount of additional work to put on the legal system.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    It's actually not a bad idea if you tweak it a little bit. Move it out of the court system and into a computer in the copyright office. You upload a work and claim it's abandoned, they publish the claim and the copyright holder has e.g. six months to dispute the claim or it proves that you're right and the work becomes public domain. No human involvement, simple automatic process. Then works that have been registered/renewed in the last 14 years (or were created in the last 14 years) can't be claimed to be abandoned, so copyright holders that don't want to have to deal with policing abandonment claims can just register their old works instead.
- chrismcb 7y ago
  Copyright expiration IS the end goal. And, at least constitutionally, the goal of copyright was to encourage creation of works, not to extract every last cent. Expiration isn't an afterthought of the process. Without copyright, everything would be in public domain. So public domain is essentially the default. Copyright was created to allow the artist to make some money, for a time, before returning the work to the public domain, so that others can build of it. Giving an entity, forever, to enjoy the Monopoly is just absurd, and unconstitutional. Five years is to short, but 75 or 90 is to long. Based on the fact that most books on Amazon are less than 25 years, I think 25 is a good term length.
rorykoehler 7y ago
There should be a centrally agreed fair use license (regulated marketplace). No restrictions on copying and no negotiation on price. Works must be derivatives and not 1 for 1 copies. For artistic works this could kick in after 3 (or some other short time frame) months of release and last forever. For other IP this should kick in after 3 (long enough to realise the gains) years. For other IP a provision to change the fair use price in court would be provided. It's not right that private individuals and organisations can steal from the future due to greed. Every innovation is a derivative of what came before. As a society we should embrace and encourage sharing and derivation.
rhino369 7y ago
And this point isn't even up for debate. Present value calculations essentially prove that a copyright long-tail provides minimal benefit to a corporation. Especially since long-tail sales are incredibly rare. So it a 1/200,000 shot at making a classic that will actually sell 100 years from now. And even for that one shot, the discount rate says a million dollars of sales 100 years from now is worth a couple thousand dollars now. There is no way 100-year copyright incentives art now. Every 5 years is annoying short though. I'd say 20 years automatically, with 5 year extensions up to 40 years. I'd probably also allow copyright-lite protection after 40 years. You would lose protection against direct copying and sales of your work. But you'd keep protections against derivations. This would allow an author of a long-running book series to keep his rights to his characters and "universe" for future works. I'm not sure how long I'd let those copyright-lite rights run for, but at least 70 years. Maybe with a trademark like a requirement for consistent usage.
- OscarCunningham 7y ago
  Does the same reasoning also imply that the government should get all physical property 100 years after its creation? If not, what makes that case different?
  - black_puppydog 7y ago
    The same that makes copyright violation different from theft: you can "take away" information from the owner and still have them keep it.
  - tordanik 7y ago
    The ability to create infinite copies for essentially zero cost changes the utility calculus significantly. If we're talking about physical property like, say, a single-family home, the only question is which family is allowed to live in it. If the physical world worked like copyrighted creations, we'd be able to give every family on earth a copy of that home to live in, for free. And while that would still have downsides for the heirs of the builder (with infinite supply, they could no longer rent out their own copies of the home for a profit), the total utility gained by humanity would easily justify that step.
echelon 7y ago
If you offer extension for a nominal fee, those with big pockets will always opt to do it. Domain registration fees are supposed to combat squatting, but look at where we are. Any good domain name you can think of is probably owned by a squatter. And there's a similar situation in the media industry right now. Before Fox got bought out, they were churning out Marvel films in order to keep their license. It didn't matter if the films were any good or made a profit. Sony is in the same boat. I'm not sure if changing copyright is good or bad, but if we do move to a world with temporary copyright, it needs to expire uniformly for all parties.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  So simply price ownership at market value. Of course price control distorts the market, we know this.
dijksterhuis 7y ago
A) You’ve made a massive assumption here in regards to the sale price. Sales prices vary depending on a multitude of factors. There’s no single sales price that exists for one album/track/etc. iTunes charges differently to Beatport. Beatport charges differently to direct to fan over Bandcamp. B) Furthermore, you’re assuming independent artists earn in a linear fashion which is just not the case. I have been toiling away for 10 years making music. I don’t earn enough to pay original sales price x 10 every year to keep my work in copyright. So 50% of my work is now public domain. Now let’s suppose I “make it big” tomorrow. 50% of my hard graft over the last 10 years was for nothing. Everyone can get my work for free. Maybe my recent album makes me a few bucks. But now I can’t re-copyright those earlier works. As an independent artist, I’ve just been screwed by your proposed system. Edit1- C) you’re assuming that everything that any musician does is released as an album. And sold to the public. How would you set the rates for something that only gets broadcast on radio and never sold? Edit2- D) my point regarding B is actually one of he fantastic things about copyright existing for my lifetime +70 years. If, at any point during that period I “make it big” then either myself, or my estate, are able to be paid for my hard graft. ————— Music is inherent to our society, even our humanity. Personally, I think we should place appropriate value on it. Lifetime +70 places a good value on the work musicians do in my opinion.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  I have never thought of B before, so thanks for that. Let me challenge you by with one problem with the whole copyright system. Right now there are many works that were produced decades ago, are still under copyright, but cannot be bought at all because its not economically valuable for the copyright owner to produce a few dozen/hundred copies a year. Society is worse off because the above is true for possibly millions of works, and while not having access to one individual work is not that concerning, in the bulk it is. A significant part of the cultural heritage of our society has been lost because of the intersection of copyright law and economics. One reason many people support short copyright periods (5-10 years) is because they want to prevent the loss of cultural heritage. Not to mention most of these copyrighted works at this point are held by Big Media companies and not the actual creators of the work. Do you see this as a problem? If yes, do you have a proposed solution?

Spivak 7y ago

But all these reform schemes assume that copyright expiration is the end goal when it's really there to allow the creator of a work to extract pretty much all the value from their work -- the expiration is really an afterthought. I think expanding fair use makes sense in a lot of cases but I also think that harping on copyright expiration terms generally miss the point. Copyright expiration should protect against works being abandoned but those are the exceptional cases. I think my ideal copyright system would be indefinite but you can make a case before a court if you think a work has been abandoned and you want to pick it up. All of these systems that are clearly designed to burden copyright holders and make it harder to maintain copyright are silly.

SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
I would love to see an explanation of why you think putting the burden of proof on the new creator to prove that their new work does not violate copyright is advantageous to an auto-expiry approach. I can think of thousands of situations where what you propose would stifle innovation. Why is this way better?
admax88q 7y ago
> you can make a case before a court if you think a work has been abandoned That's an absurd amount of additional work to put on the legal system.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  It's actually not a bad idea if you tweak it a little bit. Move it out of the court system and into a computer in the copyright office. You upload a work and claim it's abandoned, they publish the claim and the copyright holder has e.g. six months to dispute the claim or it proves that you're right and the work becomes public domain. No human involvement, simple automatic process. Then works that have been registered/renewed in the last 14 years (or were created in the last 14 years) can't be claimed to be abandoned, so copyright holders that don't want to have to deal with policing abandonment claims can just register their old works instead.
chrismcb 7y ago
Copyright expiration IS the end goal. And, at least constitutionally, the goal of copyright was to encourage creation of works, not to extract every last cent. Expiration isn't an afterthought of the process. Without copyright, everything would be in public domain. So public domain is essentially the default. Copyright was created to allow the artist to make some money, for a time, before returning the work to the public domain, so that others can build of it. Giving an entity, forever, to enjoy the Monopoly is just absurd, and unconstitutional. Five years is to short, but 75 or 90 is to long. Based on the fact that most books on Amazon are less than 25 years, I think 25 is a good term length.

rorykoehler 7y ago

There should be a centrally agreed fair use license (regulated marketplace). No restrictions on copying and no negotiation on price. Works must be derivatives and not 1 for 1 copies. For artistic works this could kick in after 3 (or some other short time frame) months of release and last forever. For other IP this should kick in after 3 (long enough to realise the gains) years. For other IP a provision to change the fair use price in court would be provided. It's not right that private individuals and organisations can steal from the future due to greed. Every innovation is a derivative of what came before. As a society we should embrace and encourage sharing and derivation.

rhino369 7y ago

And this point isn't even up for debate. Present value calculations essentially prove that a copyright long-tail provides minimal benefit to a corporation. Especially since long-tail sales are incredibly rare. So it a 1/200,000 shot at making a classic that will actually sell 100 years from now. And even for that one shot, the discount rate says a million dollars of sales 100 years from now is worth a couple thousand dollars now. There is no way 100-year copyright incentives art now. Every 5 years is annoying short though. I'd say 20 years automatically, with 5 year extensions up to 40 years. I'd probably also allow copyright-lite protection after 40 years. You would lose protection against direct copying and sales of your work. But you'd keep protections against derivations. This would allow an author of a long-running book series to keep his rights to his characters and "universe" for future works. I'm not sure how long I'd let those copyright-lite rights run for, but at least 70 years. Maybe with a trademark like a requirement for consistent usage.

OscarCunningham 7y ago
Does the same reasoning also imply that the government should get all physical property 100 years after its creation? If not, what makes that case different?
- black_puppydog 7y ago
  The same that makes copyright violation different from theft: you can "take away" information from the owner and still have them keep it.
- tordanik 7y ago
  The ability to create infinite copies for essentially zero cost changes the utility calculus significantly. If we're talking about physical property like, say, a single-family home, the only question is which family is allowed to live in it. If the physical world worked like copyrighted creations, we'd be able to give every family on earth a copy of that home to live in, for free. And while that would still have downsides for the heirs of the builder (with infinite supply, they could no longer rent out their own copies of the home for a profit), the total utility gained by humanity would easily justify that step.

echelon 7y ago

If you offer extension for a nominal fee, those with big pockets will always opt to do it. Domain registration fees are supposed to combat squatting, but look at where we are. Any good domain name you can think of is probably owned by a squatter. And there's a similar situation in the media industry right now. Before Fox got bought out, they were churning out Marvel films in order to keep their license. It didn't matter if the films were any good or made a profit. Sony is in the same boat. I'm not sure if changing copyright is good or bad, but if we do move to a world with temporary copyright, it needs to expire uniformly for all parties.

CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
So simply price ownership at market value. Of course price control distorts the market, we know this.

dijksterhuis 7y ago

A) You’ve made a massive assumption here in regards to the sale price. Sales prices vary depending on a multitude of factors. There’s no single sales price that exists for one album/track/etc. iTunes charges differently to Beatport. Beatport charges differently to direct to fan over Bandcamp. B) Furthermore, you’re assuming independent artists earn in a linear fashion which is just not the case. I have been toiling away for 10 years making music. I don’t earn enough to pay original sales price x 10 every year to keep my work in copyright. So 50% of my work is now public domain. Now let’s suppose I “make it big” tomorrow. 50% of my hard graft over the last 10 years was for nothing. Everyone can get my work for free. Maybe my recent album makes me a few bucks. But now I can’t re-copyright those earlier works. As an independent artist, I’ve just been screwed by your proposed system. Edit1- C) you’re assuming that everything that any musician does is released as an album. And sold to the public. How would you set the rates for something that only gets broadcast on radio and never sold? Edit2- D) my point regarding B is actually one of he fantastic things about copyright existing for my lifetime +70 years. If, at any point during that period I “make it big” then either myself, or my estate, are able to be paid for my hard graft. ————— Music is inherent to our society, even our humanity. Personally, I think we should place appropriate value on it. Lifetime +70 places a good value on the work musicians do in my opinion.

abdullahkhalids 7y ago
I have never thought of B before, so thanks for that. Let me challenge you by with one problem with the whole copyright system. Right now there are many works that were produced decades ago, are still under copyright, but cannot be bought at all because its not economically valuable for the copyright owner to produce a few dozen/hundred copies a year. Society is worse off because the above is true for possibly millions of works, and while not having access to one individual work is not that concerning, in the bulk it is. A significant part of the cultural heritage of our society has been lost because of the intersection of copyright law and economics. One reason many people support short copyright periods (5-10 years) is because they want to prevent the loss of cultural heritage. Not to mention most of these copyrighted works at this point are held by Big Media companies and not the actual creators of the work. Do you see this as a problem? If yes, do you have a proposed solution?