9 ms·

imo copyright should last 30 years from creation. Thats plenty of time to make a profit and it also allows things to fall in to public domain while they are sti

imo copyright should last 30 years from creation. Thats plenty of time to make a profit and it also allows things to fall in to public domain while they are still culturally relevant. Currently anything made within your lifetime will not be public until well after you have died which is a shame. It would be great if all of the past content which is now slipping in to irrelevancy could be revived by the public domain.

DrPhish 7y ago
I think its fair that renewals would be allowed beyond that, but that the cost of doing so should increase on an exponential scale. That way the value of keeping a thing copyrighted would eventually be eclipsed by its value as a public property, fulfilling the social contract of limited protection in exchange for eventual public ownership.
- ghaff 7y ago
  That probably makes copyright renewals cost-effective for corporations making millions but not so for an author getting a nice $5k/yr annuity. (Or pick your numbers. But making cost a decision point for renewal definitely favors the big guys.)
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Yes, and adds a nice tax to the mix. From the tone of your post, you seem to think this is a problem. If so, why?
    - ghaff 7y ago
      So corporations can renew copyrights but not most individuals in practice. That seems problematic. Because, I don't know, the cards are already so stacked against individual content creators we don't want to make things worse? If we really care about getting the content released to the commons as early as possible, just apply a single shortened date to everyone.
      - danielheath 7y ago
        A single shortened date is a good start. I don't have a problem with 'buy an extension to copyright', though - that money can fund public goods that benefit everyone.
      - marcosdumay 7y ago
        On the other hand, the more valuable content can in commercial use for longer. It is as large an obstacle to the hoarding and disappearing of content corporations do today as any alternative, so I'd go for the easiest, whatever that is.
        derekp7 7y ago
        I think the argument is that a corporate entity would be willing to lose a large amount of money by extending copyrights on their back catalog, if only to keep those works from competing with their current offerings that make them loads of money.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        A strong enough exponent, and the costs of holding the old works back would very quickly eclipse the protected profits.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Have the fee be based time but scale with profits. So that author making 5k/year's fees may only would only have the fee increase by a few hundred per renewal whereas a company making 500k/year would see their fees go up by a few thousand per renewal etc. As an example.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      That introduces a massive accounting element. At least the current system is simple. By all means, shorten copyright terms. But let's not make it a complex mess that no one can really figure out.
    - koboll 7y ago
      Then you kick off an arms race where regulators are constantly fighting to keep up with increasingly sophisticated money laundering techniques to obscure how valuable an IP actually is. A lot of money would be siphoned off by lawyers just so they can fight back to a stalemate. Why make it complicated? Just let works fall into the public domain after a couple decades.
      - newsgremlin 7y ago
        Indeed, the one thing that can't be manipulated by dubious actors is time.
    - stevekemp 7y ago
      "Hollywood Accounting" just means that works will never generate a profit..
      - diffeomorphism 7y ago
        So include a condition like "for twice the (undervalued) amount you state, anybody can ...". If they price they quoted was fair, they should be more than happy to sell it for twice that. If it was too low, well shouldn't have lied. If it is too high, more money to the public.
  - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
    Can you name any piece of intellectual property that has a small, recurring income after 30 years?
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    It makes it cost effective for content which is highly profitable. A corporation isn't going to pay to keep garbage registered at a high fee but an individual will pay to keep something that is raking in mountains of cash. Not that it really matters much because virtually everything stops bringing in any money at all by 30 years. The only things that continue to have value are names and characters.
    - mjevans 7y ago
      The exact names and likenesses might be preserved via Trademark as a form of consumer protection. Meanwhile, derivative like works could still be created as long as they were clear to not confuse consumers.
    - numpad0 7y ago
      > A corporation isn't going to pay to keep garbage registered at a high fee Look at patent registry
      - nine_k 7y ago
        The fees are neither high nor increasing with time.
        taejo 7y ago
        They are not high but in many countries they do increase with time: e.g. in Germany the maintenance fee is 70 EUR in the third and fourth years, increasing year by year to 1940 EUR in the 20th year (and 4520 EUR in the 26th year in the case of supplementary protection) https://www.dpma.de/docs/english/formulare/allg_eng/a9510_1.pdf https://www.dpma.de/docs/english/formulare/allg_eng/a9510_1....
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Wouldn't corporate branding be enough? Even if Mario entered into public domain, Nintendo Mario games would still be the superior choice. It isn't like people would be allowed to claim their game was an official Nintendo Mario game. Profitable IPs would also be able to grow their IP as a means of protection. For example, there would be a significant time lag between when Mario would enter the public domain and Yoshi would, and as such more recent Nintendo games couldn't be copied because they include Yoshi (replace Yoshi with dozens of even newer characters). Edit: One way to think of it is that others could only use the cannon as it existed 30 years ago. As long as the IP isn't dropped and fans like where it is going, that provides a significant barrier of protection from others branching off and making their own cannon.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    It wouldn't be so much that thousands of people make a Mario game (people do that already) and Nintendo gets screwed as much as EA makes a Mario game and and uses the IP without paying Nintendo anything. EA being able to freely make "Battlefield Mushroom Kingdom III: Micropayments Edition" would not be a good thing.
    - danbolt 7y ago
      Nintendo (or better yet, and indie developer) remaking EA's public domain works into better products would be a great thing.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      Why would it not be a good thing? Every game involves people using public domain material and not paying the entity who would've owned it. Imagine if every game with dragons had to pay whomever currently held the IP for dragons, that wouldn't be good.
  - app4soft 7y ago
    > Even if Mario entered into public domain, Nintendo Mario games would still be the superior choice FTR, The source code for Super Mario Bros. X, a well-known Mario fangame, is now open under the MIT license.[0,1] [0] https://www.supermariobrosx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25160 https://www.supermariobrosx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25160 [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/opensourcegames/comments/f8tira/the_source_code_for_super_mario_bros_x_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/opensourcegames/comments/f8tira/the...
- bsder 7y ago
  Original author should probably get one free renewal that should cover most of his lifetime. After that, renewals should occur every 5 years and get expensive. The goal is to encourage those who can create to do so--not create a rental property in perpetuity for corporations or estates.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    > Original author should probably get one free renewal that should cover most of his lifetime. I don't really get this. If someone spends 6 months, or even a year or two, writing a book, why should they be entitled to profits from the sale of that book for the rest of their lives? That seems a little excessive to me.
    - ArnoVW 7y ago
      If you find that excessive, do you also consider that founders of startups should relinquish their shares "to the public domain" after some time?
      - kelnos 7y ago
        No, I don't. Because I don't equate ideas and property.
    - bsder 7y ago
      > If someone spends 6 months, or even a year or two, writing a book, why should they be entitled to profits from the sale of that book for the rest of their lives? Because, in spite of what the Internet thinks, good creators are rare and we should wish to encourage them. In addition, good creators often aren't recognized immediately--there is time lag. Corporations shouldn't get to profit from your labor of 20 years simply because it took that long for you to become popular.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  No, I think that is the opposite of what makes sense. We should allow popular properties that have already provided good profits for their creators to lapse as soon as possible into the public domain, since they have the largest impact on culture, and the lowest impact on their creators' livelihoods. Mickey Mouse is much more relevant, would lead to much more creative work, and would hurt Disney much less if it were public than making some song by some band which at best has a small dedicated following public.
- rlonn 7y ago
  Perhaps 30 years and then make it a yearly auction?
Gustomaximus 7y ago
I am ok with copywriter being lifetime plus. Often a creator doesn't see benifits of their material til many decades after creation. And they created this so during their life it seems fair they can use. Patents on the other hand I feel should be dropping in time scale. Technology is advancing more rapidly yet we extend protection no reduce it to match generally faster cycles of development. Shortening patents to 20 years type thing would be a far more important step. Also strengthening the rule that a patent is void where something has been created independently even if second to market so there isn't a race to patent first what is bound to be discovered soon by many.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  >Often a creator doesn't see benifits of their material til many decades after Is this the common case? It would seem logical that most content makes the most amount of money soon after it comes out. I think for many kinds of content, the first week makes about as much as the rest of the lifetime of sales. And even in the rare case where some content becomes rediscovered after the 30 years, the creator simply needs to create a sequel, which by having their name attached to it, will be recognized as the official continuation.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Yeah, I can't think of a single example. Usually, I'd guess/assume/overconfidently assert that 90% of revenue happens in the first 5 years. Though I'm open to being corrected.
    - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
      I'm having trouble finding the source (I suspect a brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft), but I recall reading that over 90% of books are out of print within 3 years of their initial publication. I've also seen claims that it's typical for heavily marketed movies and video games to make roughly half of their total revenue in the first week of release, though I'm not sure where to find the actual numbers for that, and it probably doesn't account for re-releases (DVD, "HD remaster", etc.). edit: Based on skimming some numbers at vgchartz.com, it looks like the basic shape of the claim for heavily marketed video games is right, but the revenue half-life is more like three or four weeks.
fouc 7y ago
A number like 30 is far too arbitrary. How can we come up with a less arbitrary approach? Don't forget some people might take years of thinking about a story before ever releasing it publicly. So the cost of creation can vary quite a bit, picking a fixed number ends up being somewhat unfair to many of the creators.
- baddox 7y ago
  Isn’t cost of creation just one of many normal inputs to the marketing and pricing of every product? What’s special about copyright? It’s also true for, say, an idea about starting a company, but we don’t have laws to somehow adjust the potential return on investment of a company based on how long the founder was thinking about it.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  The exact number can be tuned but there is nothing wrong with being somewhat arbitrary. The age we let people drink is arbitrary. Why 18, why not 19 or 17. Its just a number picked to be good enough. >Don't forget some people might take years of thinking about a story before ever releasing it publicly. It applies as soon as you release it publicly. Copyright doesn't instantly apply as soon as an idea pops in to your head. It only applies as soon as you can prove you created it at a date.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    > The age we let people drink is arbitrary Maybe this was childhood conditioning but I was told 21 is the general age where your brain is fully developed so that drinking alcohol doesn't affect your cognitive growth.
    - bcrosby95 7y ago
      Mid 20's actually. Some earlier some later. Even as late as their early 30s.
- danbolt 7y ago
  Doesn't copyright usually start from date of publication? It changes a bit for unpublished works, but otherwise a long gestation period doesn't eat into the duration of exclusivity. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term#Length_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term#Length_of_copyr...
jan888 7y ago
Thirty years? Why have copyright at all? I've yet to hear a good argument that doesn't boil down to "because my business model deserves to be profitable." Intellectual property isn't a scarce resource. I look forward to the day we all exploit that. We'll find new business models, ones that take advantage of being able to build on all proir human knowledge, and we'll all be more productive because of it.
- thereisnospork 7y ago
  >"because my business model deserves to be profitable" Why have authors? Or poets? Or scientists? Or SWEs? we don't work for free. Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business.
  - mc3 7y ago
    Yep without copyright Google can gobble up most of the web!
  - clarry 7y ago
    > Why have authors? Because someone needs something written, and they hire you to do it. Or because you want to write, and then others discover that they like what you write, and they want to help you write more. None of this requires copyright, and in fact copyright make some works illegal to author, therefore it restricts authorship. > Or poets? As above. > Or scientists? Someone needs research done. Someone wants to do research. Someone wants to fund research. None of this requires copyright. > Or SWEs? "Hey I need this software, can you write it for me? Here's how much I'm willing to pay for it." Copyright has never been relevant in my career as a software developer. If anything, developers giving up their exclusive rights via free software licenses has been a massive boost for the entire field and everyone is building products atop someone else's work. That's a good thing! I only with copyright didn't restrict our field so much. > we don't work for free. Indeed, someone needs my labor and they pay for it. Pretty simple. > Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business. Strawman. GP argued against particular business models that are reliant on copyright. That's not an argument against these entire fields, and indeed most of them would continue to exist without copyright. But yes; I'm ok with letting people with poor business models go out of business. Abandoning copyright would enable other business models that are currently difficult or impossible to conduct legally. I think the status quo is bad, because there are many services I can think of that would benefit end users (and which I would pay for) but which are not going to happen because of copyright.
masonic 7y ago
So, Star Wars (A New Hope) should have gone public domain 12 years ago?
- danbolt 7y ago
  I would kill for anime studios to reinvent A New Hope. The plot and the characters would translate to anime tropes really well.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Obviously yes? The social contract is "we are willing to give you a time-limited monopoly, so that you get compensated for the work you did". Are you seriously arguing that star wars was financially unsuccessful and needs many more decades to break even?
  - buckminster 7y ago
    Yet you would struggle to find the original movie, even if it was public domain. I'm pretty sure they keep updating Star Wars so that no available copy will ever fall out of copyright.
Kaiyou 7y ago
I think one year is enough, as that's the time the majority of the money comes in.
dwild 7y ago
> It would be great if all of the past content which is now slipping in to irrelevancy could be revived by the public domain. Would it though? Go see torrents that are 10-15 years old and look at how many are still being seed. Sure making it legal to distribute will make it easier to go on more device, but hosting content is not cheap. Web Archive is trying to host everything they currently can, and it doesn't seems that easy. They are slipping into irrelevancy because there's something else to consume, that's all. Removing copyright may bring them back a bit, they would still slip into irrelevancy, because the same reason will still apply. People want fresh content, that's actually a huge reason which push people to pirate because they can't wait for the content to reach streaming platforms. That's all. I would love for copyright terms to be shorter though. As a native french speaker, there's so many translation from my youth that are lost in limbo because of copyrights. I'm from Quebec and to preserve Quebec translation of Pokemon, I had to buy a bunch of VHS and I'm about to digitize them to preserve them. I think a reform of copyright that consider theses things should be made. If the content isn't available at all, there should be a way to consider it public domain. How can you consider it good for profit when a work isn't being profited on. After a set amount of time, if there was no way to consume the content in a reasonable way (because I'm sure company would simply say that they would be happy to sell license to the content for 7 figures), that it should go to public domain.
- rkuykendall-com 7y ago
  > Go see torrents that are 10-15 years old and look at how many are still being seed You're on the wrong trackers. Public, legal trackers would have NO problem with this. Every single movie would be available, no problem.
  - dwild 7y ago
    > Public, legal trackers would have NO problem with this. How can you tell that? What would make legal content more likely to be supported by the seeders? Believe me, none of the seeders ever asked themselves whether holding that data was legal or not in the decision on whether they keep it. Private trackers solve this issue by rewarding people that does keep seeding them, I guess supporting that kind of private community could allow to support older content, but there will always be an effort/gain that will be considered. For something to keep being seeded require someone to still want to seed it. There's just too much content to care about and not enough people caring about it though. People want what's new, not what's old, so they go that way instead and abandon the older things. I have no doubt that I could find a bunch of royalty free content that just can no longer be found anywhere, even with Web Archive goal to archive everything. The legality of it doesn't affect how people act with content.

DrPhish 7y ago

I think its fair that renewals would be allowed beyond that, but that the cost of doing so should increase on an exponential scale. That way the value of keeping a thing copyrighted would eventually be eclipsed by its value as a public property, fulfilling the social contract of limited protection in exchange for eventual public ownership.

ghaff 7y ago
That probably makes copyright renewals cost-effective for corporations making millions but not so for an author getting a nice $5k/yr annuity. (Or pick your numbers. But making cost a decision point for renewal definitely favors the big guys.)
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Yes, and adds a nice tax to the mix. From the tone of your post, you seem to think this is a problem. If so, why?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    So corporations can renew copyrights but not most individuals in practice. That seems problematic. Because, I don't know, the cards are already so stacked against individual content creators we don't want to make things worse? If we really care about getting the content released to the commons as early as possible, just apply a single shortened date to everyone.
    - danielheath 7y ago
      A single shortened date is a good start. I don't have a problem with 'buy an extension to copyright', though - that money can fund public goods that benefit everyone.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      On the other hand, the more valuable content can in commercial use for longer. It is as large an obstacle to the hoarding and disappearing of content corporations do today as any alternative, so I'd go for the easiest, whatever that is.
      - derekp7 7y ago
        I think the argument is that a corporate entity would be willing to lose a large amount of money by extending copyrights on their back catalog, if only to keep those works from competing with their current offerings that make them loads of money.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        A strong enough exponent, and the costs of holding the old works back would very quickly eclipse the protected profits.
- grawprog 7y ago
  Have the fee be based time but scale with profits. So that author making 5k/year's fees may only would only have the fee increase by a few hundred per renewal whereas a company making 500k/year would see their fees go up by a few thousand per renewal etc. As an example.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    That introduces a massive accounting element. At least the current system is simple. By all means, shorten copyright terms. But let's not make it a complex mess that no one can really figure out.
  - koboll 7y ago
    Then you kick off an arms race where regulators are constantly fighting to keep up with increasingly sophisticated money laundering techniques to obscure how valuable an IP actually is. A lot of money would be siphoned off by lawyers just so they can fight back to a stalemate. Why make it complicated? Just let works fall into the public domain after a couple decades.
    - newsgremlin 7y ago
      Indeed, the one thing that can't be manipulated by dubious actors is time.
  - stevekemp 7y ago
    "Hollywood Accounting" just means that works will never generate a profit..
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      So include a condition like "for twice the (undervalued) amount you state, anybody can ...". If they price they quoted was fair, they should be more than happy to sell it for twice that. If it was too low, well shouldn't have lied. If it is too high, more money to the public.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  Can you name any piece of intellectual property that has a small, recurring income after 30 years?
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  It makes it cost effective for content which is highly profitable. A corporation isn't going to pay to keep garbage registered at a high fee but an individual will pay to keep something that is raking in mountains of cash. Not that it really matters much because virtually everything stops bringing in any money at all by 30 years. The only things that continue to have value are names and characters.
  - mjevans 7y ago
    The exact names and likenesses might be preserved via Trademark as a form of consumer protection. Meanwhile, derivative like works could still be created as long as they were clear to not confuse consumers.
  - numpad0 7y ago
    > A corporation isn't going to pay to keep garbage registered at a high fee Look at patent registry
    - nine_k 7y ago
      The fees are neither high nor increasing with time.
      - taejo 7y ago
        They are not high but in many countries they do increase with time: e.g. in Germany the maintenance fee is 70 EUR in the third and fourth years, increasing year by year to 1940 EUR in the 20th year (and 4520 EUR in the 26th year in the case of supplementary protection) https://www.dpma.de/docs/english/formulare/allg_eng/a9510_1.pdf https://www.dpma.de/docs/english/formulare/allg_eng/a9510_1....
SkyBelow 7y ago
Wouldn't corporate branding be enough? Even if Mario entered into public domain, Nintendo Mario games would still be the superior choice. It isn't like people would be allowed to claim their game was an official Nintendo Mario game. Profitable IPs would also be able to grow their IP as a means of protection. For example, there would be a significant time lag between when Mario would enter the public domain and Yoshi would, and as such more recent Nintendo games couldn't be copied because they include Yoshi (replace Yoshi with dozens of even newer characters). Edit: One way to think of it is that others could only use the cannon as it existed 30 years ago. As long as the IP isn't dropped and fans like where it is going, that provides a significant barrier of protection from others branching off and making their own cannon.
- onion2k 7y ago
  It wouldn't be so much that thousands of people make a Mario game (people do that already) and Nintendo gets screwed as much as EA makes a Mario game and and uses the IP without paying Nintendo anything. EA being able to freely make "Battlefield Mushroom Kingdom III: Micropayments Edition" would not be a good thing.
  - danbolt 7y ago
    Nintendo (or better yet, and indie developer) remaking EA's public domain works into better products would be a great thing.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    Why would it not be a good thing? Every game involves people using public domain material and not paying the entity who would've owned it. Imagine if every game with dragons had to pay whomever currently held the IP for dragons, that wouldn't be good.
- app4soft 7y ago
  > Even if Mario entered into public domain, Nintendo Mario games would still be the superior choice FTR, The source code for Super Mario Bros. X, a well-known Mario fangame, is now open under the MIT license.[0,1] [0] https://www.supermariobrosx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25160 https://www.supermariobrosx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25160 [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/opensourcegames/comments/f8tira/the_source_code_for_super_mario_bros_x_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/opensourcegames/comments/f8tira/the...
bsder 7y ago
Original author should probably get one free renewal that should cover most of his lifetime. After that, renewals should occur every 5 years and get expensive. The goal is to encourage those who can create to do so--not create a rental property in perpetuity for corporations or estates.
- kelnos 7y ago
  > Original author should probably get one free renewal that should cover most of his lifetime. I don't really get this. If someone spends 6 months, or even a year or two, writing a book, why should they be entitled to profits from the sale of that book for the rest of their lives? That seems a little excessive to me.
  - ArnoVW 7y ago
    If you find that excessive, do you also consider that founders of startups should relinquish their shares "to the public domain" after some time?
    - kelnos 7y ago
      No, I don't. Because I don't equate ideas and property.
  - bsder 7y ago
    > If someone spends 6 months, or even a year or two, writing a book, why should they be entitled to profits from the sale of that book for the rest of their lives? Because, in spite of what the Internet thinks, good creators are rare and we should wish to encourage them. In addition, good creators often aren't recognized immediately--there is time lag. Corporations shouldn't get to profit from your labor of 20 years simply because it took that long for you to become popular.
tsimionescu 7y ago
No, I think that is the opposite of what makes sense. We should allow popular properties that have already provided good profits for their creators to lapse as soon as possible into the public domain, since they have the largest impact on culture, and the lowest impact on their creators' livelihoods. Mickey Mouse is much more relevant, would lead to much more creative work, and would hurt Disney much less if it were public than making some song by some band which at best has a small dedicated following public.
rlonn 7y ago
Perhaps 30 years and then make it a yearly auction?

Gustomaximus 7y ago

I am ok with copywriter being lifetime plus. Often a creator doesn't see benifits of their material til many decades after creation. And they created this so during their life it seems fair they can use. Patents on the other hand I feel should be dropping in time scale. Technology is advancing more rapidly yet we extend protection no reduce it to match generally faster cycles of development. Shortening patents to 20 years type thing would be a far more important step. Also strengthening the rule that a patent is void where something has been created independently even if second to market so there isn't a race to patent first what is bound to be discovered soon by many.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
>Often a creator doesn't see benifits of their material til many decades after Is this the common case? It would seem logical that most content makes the most amount of money soon after it comes out. I think for many kinds of content, the first week makes about as much as the rest of the lifetime of sales. And even in the rare case where some content becomes rediscovered after the 30 years, the creator simply needs to create a sequel, which by having their name attached to it, will be recognized as the official continuation.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Yeah, I can't think of a single example. Usually, I'd guess/assume/overconfidently assert that 90% of revenue happens in the first 5 years. Though I'm open to being corrected.
  - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
    I'm having trouble finding the source (I suspect a brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft), but I recall reading that over 90% of books are out of print within 3 years of their initial publication. I've also seen claims that it's typical for heavily marketed movies and video games to make roughly half of their total revenue in the first week of release, though I'm not sure where to find the actual numbers for that, and it probably doesn't account for re-releases (DVD, "HD remaster", etc.). edit: Based on skimming some numbers at vgchartz.com, it looks like the basic shape of the claim for heavily marketed video games is right, but the revenue half-life is more like three or four weeks.

fouc 7y ago

A number like 30 is far too arbitrary. How can we come up with a less arbitrary approach? Don't forget some people might take years of thinking about a story before ever releasing it publicly. So the cost of creation can vary quite a bit, picking a fixed number ends up being somewhat unfair to many of the creators.

baddox 7y ago
Isn’t cost of creation just one of many normal inputs to the marketing and pricing of every product? What’s special about copyright? It’s also true for, say, an idea about starting a company, but we don’t have laws to somehow adjust the potential return on investment of a company based on how long the founder was thinking about it.
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
The exact number can be tuned but there is nothing wrong with being somewhat arbitrary. The age we let people drink is arbitrary. Why 18, why not 19 or 17. Its just a number picked to be good enough. >Don't forget some people might take years of thinking about a story before ever releasing it publicly. It applies as soon as you release it publicly. Copyright doesn't instantly apply as soon as an idea pops in to your head. It only applies as soon as you can prove you created it at a date.
- judge2020 7y ago
  > The age we let people drink is arbitrary Maybe this was childhood conditioning but I was told 21 is the general age where your brain is fully developed so that drinking alcohol doesn't affect your cognitive growth.
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    Mid 20's actually. Some earlier some later. Even as late as their early 30s.
danbolt 7y ago
Doesn't copyright usually start from date of publication? It changes a bit for unpublished works, but otherwise a long gestation period doesn't eat into the duration of exclusivity. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term#Length_of_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term#Length_of_copyr...

jan888 7y ago

Thirty years? Why have copyright at all? I've yet to hear a good argument that doesn't boil down to "because my business model deserves to be profitable." Intellectual property isn't a scarce resource. I look forward to the day we all exploit that. We'll find new business models, ones that take advantage of being able to build on all proir human knowledge, and we'll all be more productive because of it.

thereisnospork 7y ago
>"because my business model deserves to be profitable" Why have authors? Or poets? Or scientists? Or SWEs? we don't work for free. Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business.
- mc3 7y ago
  Yep without copyright Google can gobble up most of the web!
- clarry 7y ago
  > Why have authors? Because someone needs something written, and they hire you to do it. Or because you want to write, and then others discover that they like what you write, and they want to help you write more. None of this requires copyright, and in fact copyright make some works illegal to author, therefore it restricts authorship. > Or poets? As above. > Or scientists? Someone needs research done. Someone wants to do research. Someone wants to fund research. None of this requires copyright. > Or SWEs? "Hey I need this software, can you write it for me? Here's how much I'm willing to pay for it." Copyright has never been relevant in my career as a software developer. If anything, developers giving up their exclusive rights via free software licenses has been a massive boost for the entire field and everyone is building products atop someone else's work. That's a good thing! I only with copyright didn't restrict our field so much. > we don't work for free. Indeed, someone needs my labor and they pay for it. Pretty simple. > Or would you prefer to drive the aforementioned out of business. Strawman. GP argued against particular business models that are reliant on copyright. That's not an argument against these entire fields, and indeed most of them would continue to exist without copyright. But yes; I'm ok with letting people with poor business models go out of business. Abandoning copyright would enable other business models that are currently difficult or impossible to conduct legally. I think the status quo is bad, because there are many services I can think of that would benefit end users (and which I would pay for) but which are not going to happen because of copyright.

masonic 7y ago

So, Star Wars (A New Hope) should have gone public domain 12 years ago?

danbolt 7y ago
I would kill for anime studios to reinvent A New Hope. The plot and the characters would translate to anime tropes really well.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Obviously yes? The social contract is "we are willing to give you a time-limited monopoly, so that you get compensated for the work you did". Are you seriously arguing that star wars was financially unsuccessful and needs many more decades to break even?
- buckminster 7y ago
  Yet you would struggle to find the original movie, even if it was public domain. I'm pretty sure they keep updating Star Wars so that no available copy will ever fall out of copyright.

Kaiyou 7y ago

I think one year is enough, as that's the time the majority of the money comes in.

dwild 7y ago

> It would be great if all of the past content which is now slipping in to irrelevancy could be revived by the public domain. Would it though? Go see torrents that are 10-15 years old and look at how many are still being seed. Sure making it legal to distribute will make it easier to go on more device, but hosting content is not cheap. Web Archive is trying to host everything they currently can, and it doesn't seems that easy. They are slipping into irrelevancy because there's something else to consume, that's all. Removing copyright may bring them back a bit, they would still slip into irrelevancy, because the same reason will still apply. People want fresh content, that's actually a huge reason which push people to pirate because they can't wait for the content to reach streaming platforms. That's all. I would love for copyright terms to be shorter though. As a native french speaker, there's so many translation from my youth that are lost in limbo because of copyrights. I'm from Quebec and to preserve Quebec translation of Pokemon, I had to buy a bunch of VHS and I'm about to digitize them to preserve them. I think a reform of copyright that consider theses things should be made. If the content isn't available at all, there should be a way to consider it public domain. How can you consider it good for profit when a work isn't being profited on. After a set amount of time, if there was no way to consume the content in a reasonable way (because I'm sure company would simply say that they would be happy to sell license to the content for 7 figures), that it should go to public domain.

rkuykendall-com 7y ago
> Go see torrents that are 10-15 years old and look at how many are still being seed You're on the wrong trackers. Public, legal trackers would have NO problem with this. Every single movie would be available, no problem.
- dwild 7y ago
  > Public, legal trackers would have NO problem with this. How can you tell that? What would make legal content more likely to be supported by the seeders? Believe me, none of the seeders ever asked themselves whether holding that data was legal or not in the decision on whether they keep it. Private trackers solve this issue by rewarding people that does keep seeding them, I guess supporting that kind of private community could allow to support older content, but there will always be an effort/gain that will be considered. For something to keep being seeded require someone to still want to seed it. There's just too much content to care about and not enough people caring about it though. People want what's new, not what's old, so they go that way instead and abandon the older things. I have no doubt that I could find a bunch of royalty free content that just can no longer be found anywhere, even with Web Archive goal to archive everything. The legality of it doesn't affect how people act with content.