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I, and a lot of other authors I know, am in favor of reducing the United States' extremely long copyright term, which largely benefits large corporations and th

by jawns 5y ago

I, and a lot of other authors I know, am in favor of reducing the United States' extremely long copyright term, which largely benefits large corporations and the estates of the few creatives who make gazillions of dollars. For instance, I'd be comfortable with going back to the term that was in place 100 years ago, which was 28 years, with the option to be renewed for another 28 years. But you can both be in favor of reducing the maximum copyright term AND believe that it is unfair to authors to just steal their works outright, which is what the IA effectively did through its "Emergency Lending" scheme.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Copyright will always be an absurd notion, but I agree that it would be a lot more tolerable if the terms were reduced. 28 years is still way too much, it should be 5-10 years. That's more than enough time to be properly rewarded for one's labor. People should not spend an entire lifetime without seeing the works they grew up with enter the public domain. > it is unfair to authors to just steal their works outright It would have been stealing if those were physical books. This is data. There is no stealing, there is only copying. They're not guilty of copying. There's nothing morally wrong about copying. They're guilty of not compensating authors. Creators deserve to be compensated but copyright is not the way it should be done in the 21st century. There needs to be a new way.