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> I do not see what moral claim we have, at all. All art is based upon the past. Think of how many times the plays of Shakespeare have been remade and reinter
by dmm 6y ago
> I do not see what moral claim we have, at all.
All art is based upon the past. Think of how many times the plays of Shakespeare have been remade and reinterpreted. His works represent a share heritage that generations of artists have freely borrowed from.
And Shakespeare did the same thing! Hamlet is based on a 13th century legend of Amleth. Should a high school production of Hamlet in 2022 be required to pay royalties to the 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus?
> Markets don't always work, but here's a place where they've worked exceptionally well.
I agree but I don't see why a reasonable fixed term, such as 25 years, wouldn't work as well and allow the cultural well to refill. Think of how liberating it would be to be able to, for example, freely sample music from 1993 or earlier. And every year we all get more!
- tptacek 6y agoEven the term we had in 1909, over a hundred years ago, long before Disney existed, the content we're talking about wouldn't be available today.
- iaw 6y agoUnder the 1909 act, works before 1963 with extension and works before 1991 without extension of their copyright term would now be coming under public domain. Could you elaborate your point? I fail to see how a difference of 3 years invalidates the previous posters point.
- tptacek 6y agoThe Charlie Brown Halloween Special would not be public domain under the 1909 Copyright Act, the point being that copyright extensions are not the reason network TV isn't broadcasting it.
- iaw 6y agoIt would be in two years at which point any network could broadcast it, AppleTV has likely bought the rights for many years to come making copyright extension a cogent component of this discussion in my opinion.
- tptacek 6y agoIn the counterfactual world where the US hadn't passed the Copyright Act of 1976, which is not the "Mickey Mouse extension" that people talk about when we talk about extensions. That's a world in which the United States has sharply lower copyright terms than Europe. And even in that world, Charlie Brown still isn't public domain this year. It's just not a strong argument. Don't forget: you were paying for Charlie Brown last year when it ran on network TV; you just weren't paying the same way you are now. This is really just a story about how broadcast TV is being obsoleted by streaming; it's not a copyright extension story.
- dmm 6y agoI didn't mention Disney? You asked what moral claim they would have to that work and I'm arguing that copyright is a govt imposed restriction on the natural right of humans to create and share derivative works. If we are citing legal trivia the original constitution of 1790 allowed for a copyright term of 14 years, with a single extension, for a total of 28 years. So the halloween special would have entered the public domain in 1994.
- tptacek 6y agoNo, the Copyright Act of 1790 did that. A specific term for copyright appears nowhere in the Constitution, which simply delegates to Congress the authority to authorize monopolies to authors and inventors.