7 ms·

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. Espe

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.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  In various countries there are inheritance and estate taxes that ensure that part of a dead person's property is acquired by society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_tax And many people believe that such taxes should be raised.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Leasing land in 30 year increments or so instead of selling it would be pretty smart. Then the government can just not renew leases if it needs land for, say, infrastructure.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  Perhaps? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice (While I think the right of commons should have a higher institutional standing as a legal entity, I’m not convinced it should be conflated with the government. I would probably like to see constitutional writings limiting what rights a government would have as a custodian of the commons)
black_puppydog 7y ago
Funny. That sounds like you want to shorten copyright, but remove fair use? What about music remixes? Also only 40 years down the road?
- rhino369 7y ago
  Derivative works aren't fair use and aren't really related to fair use. Derivative works are like writing a new Harry Potter book or making a new Batman movie.
emn13 7y ago
20 years is absurdly long. I question whether 5 years of exclusivity is even reasonable, but at least it's a start. But 20 years is at least better that what we have now, so on the basis of that: it would be great if we could get there. On the other hand, society really should be looking at non-exclusive ways to incentivize creation. Maybe a real copyright could be part of the mix too, but the current model rewards trying to own shared history that is largely valuable because it is shared and previously experienced, and not for the artistic contribution itself. I think a system with a much shorter exlusivity periode - more like 1 year - and then a longer period of e.g. mandatory fixed-price licensing (pick a price per human end user, but you cannot say no to remixes or alter the price for anyone); or citation-based subsidy, or mandatory auctioning (e.g. the copyright owner sets a price, pays X% of that price as a tax, but must sell to the highest bidder over that price, potentially annually at increasing scale?) Frankly, though the details aren't unimportant, perhaps more urgent is the realization that the current system is completely broken; it's not rewarding actually valuable efforts; and it is rewarding actively harmful rent-seeking. Don't forget that the aim is to help society, not to reward artists. I get that 20 years would be nice for artists, but I doubt that "just" 5 would be too little to incentivize creation - let's be honest, humans have been creative since well before the dawn of copyright. Again, we should be looking at incentives with less harmful downsides. It's not just too long; it's incentivizing the wrong stuff; i.e. it's simply not working for news, and probably rewards low-quality spam too much too, and it makes stuff like archiving for histories sake tricky. 20 years plus extensions is waaayy too much; but perhaps it's OK as a stepping stone. Not that any of this is realistic as long as politics is entirely bought and paid for by a small set of vested interests.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  This line of thinking can be expanded beyond copyright. Exclusive access to capital assets are almost by definition rent-seeking. While there is absolutely arguments to be had for the efficiency and effectiveness of such arrangement I think we could do better in capturing the extra rent from those we grant exclusivity. To that end all monopoly grants, such as copyright, but others too, should be tied to a cost. F.ex. one could perhaps find a proxy for the rent value of a particular grant by means of annual auctions. Such a scheme wouldn’t capture the cost of losing a resource as a commons though. See Henry George and geo-libertarianism for more thinking in this direction. But I think there’s some need for innovation to address “commons based peer-production” as Yochai Benkler terms it in The Wealth of Networks).
dijksterhuis 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. Actually, the long tail does benefit corporations. 90% of all money goes to circa 10% of PRS for Music members. Those 10% members being the big labels. The companies themselves have a long tail, but the losses in the 90% of their long tail are paid for many times over by the successes of the 10%. The long tails is literally he business model of the music industry. Saying it provides minimal benefit is kind of moot. It’s how showbiz works. > So it a 1/200,000 shot at making a classic that will actually sell 100 years from now. Any stats or references to back that up, or have you pulled that number out of a hat? > 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 I have no idea what this discount rate you’re talking about is (I don’t think we don’t have anything like that in the UK), but the long duration of copyright totally incentivises creation of art if you think about it.
- perpetualpatzer 7y ago
  >I have no idea what this discount rate you’re talking about is (I don’t think we don’t have anything like that in the UK) He's talking about the discount rate in the sense of net present value calculations[0]. Roughly, the idea is that if something will give me £100 in a year, I shouldn't be willing to pay £100 for it today. Because I could alternatively get £100 in a year by lending out £95 today at interest, I should only be willing pay £95 for ANY asset (say rights to a song) that will pay me £100 a year from now. The alternative interest rate one can earn in this context is known as the discount rate. The idea from GP is that with compound interest, the value today of the payments I expect in year 70 are small relative to what I'd expect to make in the first few years because they're penalized by so many more years of potential interest. As a result, shortening copyright protections shouldn't change the value to an investor of funding new art by TOO much. [0]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discountrate.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discountrate.asp

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.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
In various countries there are inheritance and estate taxes that ensure that part of a dead person's property is acquired by society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_tax And many people believe that such taxes should be raised.
adrianN 7y ago
Leasing land in 30 year increments or so instead of selling it would be pretty smart. Then the government can just not renew leases if it needs land for, say, infrastructure.
CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
Perhaps? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice (While I think the right of commons should have a higher institutional standing as a legal entity, I’m not convinced it should be conflated with the government. I would probably like to see constitutional writings limiting what rights a government would have as a custodian of the commons)

black_puppydog 7y ago

Funny. That sounds like you want to shorten copyright, but remove fair use? What about music remixes? Also only 40 years down the road?

rhino369 7y ago
Derivative works aren't fair use and aren't really related to fair use. Derivative works are like writing a new Harry Potter book or making a new Batman movie.

emn13 7y ago

20 years is absurdly long. I question whether 5 years of exclusivity is even reasonable, but at least it's a start. But 20 years is at least better that what we have now, so on the basis of that: it would be great if we could get there. On the other hand, society really should be looking at non-exclusive ways to incentivize creation. Maybe a real copyright could be part of the mix too, but the current model rewards trying to own shared history that is largely valuable because it is shared and previously experienced, and not for the artistic contribution itself. I think a system with a much shorter exlusivity periode - more like 1 year - and then a longer period of e.g. mandatory fixed-price licensing (pick a price per human end user, but you cannot say no to remixes or alter the price for anyone); or citation-based subsidy, or mandatory auctioning (e.g. the copyright owner sets a price, pays X% of that price as a tax, but must sell to the highest bidder over that price, potentially annually at increasing scale?) Frankly, though the details aren't unimportant, perhaps more urgent is the realization that the current system is completely broken; it's not rewarding actually valuable efforts; and it is rewarding actively harmful rent-seeking. Don't forget that the aim is to help society, not to reward artists. I get that 20 years would be nice for artists, but I doubt that "just" 5 would be too little to incentivize creation - let's be honest, humans have been creative since well before the dawn of copyright. Again, we should be looking at incentives with less harmful downsides. It's not just too long; it's incentivizing the wrong stuff; i.e. it's simply not working for news, and probably rewards low-quality spam too much too, and it makes stuff like archiving for histories sake tricky. 20 years plus extensions is waaayy too much; but perhaps it's OK as a stepping stone. Not that any of this is realistic as long as politics is entirely bought and paid for by a small set of vested interests.

CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
This line of thinking can be expanded beyond copyright. Exclusive access to capital assets are almost by definition rent-seeking. While there is absolutely arguments to be had for the efficiency and effectiveness of such arrangement I think we could do better in capturing the extra rent from those we grant exclusivity. To that end all monopoly grants, such as copyright, but others too, should be tied to a cost. F.ex. one could perhaps find a proxy for the rent value of a particular grant by means of annual auctions. Such a scheme wouldn’t capture the cost of losing a resource as a commons though. See Henry George and geo-libertarianism for more thinking in this direction. But I think there’s some need for innovation to address “commons based peer-production” as Yochai Benkler terms it in The Wealth of Networks).

dijksterhuis 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. Actually, the long tail does benefit corporations. 90% of all money goes to circa 10% of PRS for Music members. Those 10% members being the big labels. The companies themselves have a long tail, but the losses in the 90% of their long tail are paid for many times over by the successes of the 10%. The long tails is literally he business model of the music industry. Saying it provides minimal benefit is kind of moot. It’s how showbiz works. > So it a 1/200,000 shot at making a classic that will actually sell 100 years from now. Any stats or references to back that up, or have you pulled that number out of a hat? > 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 I have no idea what this discount rate you’re talking about is (I don’t think we don’t have anything like that in the UK), but the long duration of copyright totally incentivises creation of art if you think about it.

perpetualpatzer 7y ago
>I have no idea what this discount rate you’re talking about is (I don’t think we don’t have anything like that in the UK) He's talking about the discount rate in the sense of net present value calculations[0]. Roughly, the idea is that if something will give me £100 in a year, I shouldn't be willing to pay £100 for it today. Because I could alternatively get £100 in a year by lending out £95 today at interest, I should only be willing pay £95 for ANY asset (say rights to a song) that will pay me £100 a year from now. The alternative interest rate one can earn in this context is known as the discount rate. The idea from GP is that with compound interest, the value today of the payments I expect in year 70 are small relative to what I'd expect to make in the first few years because they're penalized by so many more years of potential interest. As a result, shortening copyright protections shouldn't change the value to an investor of funding new art by TOO much. [0]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discountrate.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discountrate.asp