9 ms·

I think it might me interesting to ask the HN crowd: if you were to fix copyright, how long would it last and why? I like a fixed term of around 50 years. That

by Zak 5y ago

I think it might me interesting to ask the HN crowd: if you were to fix copyright, how long would it last and why? I like a fixed term of around 50 years. That's long enough for a creator to monetize a work over a majority of their adult lifetime, but short enough that people would have the unrestricted opportunity to remix works they enjoyed in their youth later in life.

tsimionescu 5y ago
I think a much shorter time would be better, maybe at most 20 years? That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), and plenty of time for an author to profit; but, it's also short enough that it could still be relevant by the time other artists can start adding to it and improving.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  > That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), Twenty years is absolutely short enough for that to happen.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The way companies chase short term profit, twenty years is almost certainly an eternity.
zdw 5y ago
I have a proposal that allows for indefinite copyright, but also with a tax regime that would require someone to pay for this right handsomely. 1. 14 years automatic copyright (enough time for anyone to file registration paperwork) 2. Free 14 year renewal, to 28 years on formal registration. 3. After that, taxing it like regular property - a valuation must be created on which it is taxed like other real property at a reasonable rate, and with the caveat that anyone can buy the rights for that valuation, and then either keep paying tax or let it lapse into public domain. This is like the government buying a piece of land at assessed value if they need to build a public work. 4. Tax in 4 goes up over time, starting at say 1% of valuation yearly up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years. Don't pay the tax, copyright lapses and enters public domain. Value too low, someone buys your copyright out. The end result would be that most normal copyrights last 28 years, before the tax comes into effect. Also, Mickey Mouse can be held in copyright for perpetuity, but Disney has to pay a lot for this right and continually increase the valuation/tax if someone wants to buy it from them.
- Zak 5y ago
  That's an interesting way to do it. When you write "up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years", do you mean there should be a cap? I like the idea of no cap, and a fairly aggressive schedule that would make keeping a copyright longer than a human lifetime almost universally unprofitable.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Even without an escalating charge it's interesting - as if you put the value too high you're paying more than you want, put it low and a competitor will buy you out. Take the entire Star Wars canon for example, say they put the value at $10b, netflix could buy it relatively easily, but a 1% tax would mean Disney have to pay $1b a decade just to keep it registered. Bump that to $50b though and it will cost $5b a decade to register. Drop it to $100m and some individuals might buy it just for shits and giggles.
- rileymat2 5y ago
  If the tax is 10% of value, won’t it always be worth renewing as when it gets less valuable the tax goes down towards 0?
  - zdw 5y ago
    Add in a minimum processing fee of $20, or a minimum valuation. The point is to make the cost of retaining a copyright over time non-zero and subject to tax, so people aren't incentivized to retain copyright on everything for no cost.
    - rileymat2 5y ago
      Maybe, but it seems like these kind of things mutate into protection rackets for the big guys to get all benefit out of the system. By requiring a minimum for protection. Works at first then they shift the laws and make it legally complicated and require scale.
- y7 5y ago
mojzu 5y ago
I think a scaled cost would be more interesting, although the chances of it being implemented enough to test it anywhere is probably nil. E.g. you get 5 years for free without registration, to get another 5 years you must register and pay a small fee, for another 5 years you must pay 10x the previous fee, etc. Scaled in a way where it is relatively cheap to keep a copyright for 2-3 decades, but keeping one for much longer becomes financially prohibitive
glitchc 5y ago
20 years should be plenty to recover value. People should be incentivized to continue to create, not live large off of a single lucky break.
foxfluff 5y ago
For me the best fix would be to just abolish it entirely. The next best thing would be a short term automatic copyright (e.g. one year after initial publication) and for extension, registration & increasing tax is required. I would also put some limits on exclusivity. For example, I think non-commercial modding of games should be always legal, even if that includes distributing modified assets and binaries. Ideally after the one-year exclusive period, anyone can sell copies if they pay royalties to copyright holder (royalties inversely proportional to the tax -- so it gets cheaper and cheaper over time). I really hate that right now the main obstacle to making a good movie/game/etc store is the fact that you spend 99% of your effort trying to strike licensing deals and most copyright holders have zero incentive to even respond if you're small time.
- ketzu 5y ago
  > I really hate that right now the main obstacle to making a good movie/game/etc I do not believe that is the main obstacle even by a far margin. It is at best the main obstacle to do that in an established universe. The main obstacle, in my opinion, to making a good movie/game/etc. is that most people are not very good at making these. Making a popular movie/game/etc. on the other hand...
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    You skipped one word: store.
    - ketzu 5y ago
      Wow, I really completely missed that. Thank you for the hint and sorry for my mistake. (I personally don't see how abolishing copyright goes well with the concept of game/movie stores, though, it would make it easier to set them up for sure.)
hyperman1 5y ago
I would not give it a fixed term, especially not 50 years. I'd start with a short copyright, say 1 year, and extend it based on a few criteria: 1) The current copyright holder is known/reachable. If it is unclear who owns something, it should become public domain. This implies a more or less centralized registry, where you have to re-register your copyright claim every year. This can give you, say, 10 years of copyright at max for just sitting on a property doing nothing. 2) The copyrighted work is still being extended, e.g. like Mickey Mouse still gets new episodes today. If this is the case, older content also gets an extension, say up to 30 years. Active characters can get their copyright extended indefinitely this way, as long as the author sees value in creating new works. So Steamboat Willy is free to consume and remix today, but only Disney can produce new Mickey Mouse content. If Disney stops producing Mickey Mouse for e.g. 10 years, all of it drops back to public domain status. An artist doing live performance might be considered extension, while replaying a record would not be extension. This means only stuff someone cares enough about to track it will get copyright protection. Only authors that do some minimal effort creating copyright get a long term copyright. There is a perverse incentive here, in that Disney can go very low effort, e.g. scribble a new Mickey Mouse episode on a napkin and use it to claim an extension. Pseudo-creation if you will. Another company, say Netflix, should be able to sue for this, to get the content in public domain. They might settle by Disney selling the ownership rights to Netflix, as Netflix clearly values it, and will presumably create usefull new content.
chrismorgan 5y ago
I like this solution we came up with a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16163984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16163984 Ten years of free protection, then costing $10 × 1.5 ⁿ ⁻ ¹ for each subsequent year. Year 10 costs $0, year 20 about $380, year 30 about $22,000, year 40 about $1,300,000, year 50 almost $75,000,000—and few fifty-year-old things will be worth $75,000,000 per year and growing to retain copyright to.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Doesn't seem nearly aggressive enough.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I don't like these copyrights persisting forever just so that the extended family of the original creator can collect money for doing nothing. I think an interesting side effect of copyright reform could be that original creators get a boost of street cred when they create new works even if the original is now public domain. They might even like some of the remixed ideas that new artists would be free to tinker with. I'm a big believer in the mostly free market so I tend to side with whatever allows more competition. Copyright, as it stands right now, stifles innovation and competition and only benefits entities like Disney.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > street cred Like “exposure”, this is something people talk about being a reward to justify arrangements that are materially exploitive. There are good arguments to be made for limiting copyright, but invoking artists getting street cred undermines rather than reinforces them.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    Wrong. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about new works from the original artist getting a boost for being by the original artist and not some random person.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  > I don't like these copyrights persisting forever just so that the extended family of the original creator can collect money for doing nothing. That's inheritance. If your father builds a house before he dies, you will inherit the house even though you did nothing, it won't become public property. If your father writes a book before he dies, you will inherit the copyrights even though you did nothing, it won't become public domain. You may not like the idea of inheritance, or long copyright terms, but extending copyright way past the original creator life is a logical conclusion when you combine the two.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    Under your analogy patents and copyrights would last forever?
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
as always gets brought up when this idea is proposed this makes a creator lose out when they become popular late in life. Aside from all this it should be noted that not every country shares the U.S theory that the purpose of copyright is to 'promote the progress of science and useful arts' as per the framers of the Constitution, so it might be not be possible to get other countries to agree to reduce the length of copyright in the proposed way.
tzs 5y ago
Copyright isn't just one right. It's a bundle of rights. In the US those are the copying, distribution, derivative work, public performance, and public display rights. I'd like to see some consideration of setting different terms for these different rights. I don't see any reason for example that the optimal term for copying and the optimal term for derivative works must be the same. I'd also like some consideration for having the term depend on the nature of the work. I could see a case for example for the derivative work right to have a shorter term for nonfiction than for fiction. For nonfiction, what the author brings to the table is the work in researching and organizing the underlying facts. Give them long enough exclusive rights to make that monetarily worthwhile so that it gets done and we're good. For fiction, there is cultural value in having a character developed consistently over the course of several works so I'd support longer rights there for the author.
- laumars 5y ago
  I think there is a risk of over complicating the rules in doing all that you suggest. Baring in mind copyright law affects everyone, having something that is easy to reason with is definitely a feature rather than a problem. That all said, I do think the concept of different terms for different rights is an interesting idea that deserves more discussion.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  > For fiction, there is cultural value in having a character developed consistently over the course of several works so I'd support longer rights there for the author. Authors could still use trademark to denote what is 'canon'. I don't think society is worse off if some books had "Official Star Wars Canon" logos on them, and more books that lacked this logo. Right now we only get the former, which doesn't benefit anyone but the IP owner.
stonemetal12 5y ago
I would go with 10-20 years after last "use". That is to say your copyright is extended as long as you keep producing new derivative works but once it stops being a driver of new work it comes to the public domain fairly quickly.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Copyright owners notoriously work around “use it or lose it” clauses (common in rights contracts) already, adding one to the law will just prompt junk works to extend copyright. A better idea, IMO, is just to have a limited free copyright period (say, 30 years) and beyond tha copyright owners pay an annual ad valorem tax at a rate which increases over time (time holding the copyright past the 30 year mark, specifically, so someone with a 31 year old copyright in 2053 would pay the same rate as someone with a 31 year old copyright in 2075, but the former would be paying more in 2075 than the latter) on the declared value of the copyright, with the caveat that: (1) the declared value constitutes acceptance of that valuation as fair compensation for purposes of eminent domain, and (2) a list of all works with such a declaration, and their declared value, will be published, with the work itself available for inspection (deposit requirement being mandatory for extended copyright), and (3) any person may, by paying the declared value plus a fixed administrative surcharge to the Copyright Office, trigger the government exercise of eminent domain to purchase the work into the public domain. The tax assures that if it's not driving new work it comes into the public domain, the public domain purchase option and public right of exercise safeguard against underrating the value and provide a way to pull works into the public domain if there is a constituency which sees sufficient value for it.
kragen 5y ago
Copyright was a reasonable bargain when printing a book involved a large up-front investment of typesetting it and then printing all the copies that would ever be printed from that setup. It didn't affect most people, just printers. And it enabled authors to make a living from writing. It became fairly dubious in the age of photocopiers, but fortunately was little enforced, except in the USSR. A photocopier was useless without typeset or handwritten text to copy, and the copies degraded every generation, so publishing houses were still needed. Now every computer is a book-copying machine more powerful than the entire publishing industry a few decades ago: it can transmit a gigabit per second, and for a one-megabyte book, that's 125 copies a second, 10 million copies a day, 3 billion copies a year, so copyright is a constant danger to everyone. Fanfic sites are full of people sharing stories they wrote with no expectation of making money. The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago, not due to xeroxes but due to TV. The best software is free software, as copyright makes proprietary software untrustworthy, creating incentives to stuff it with malware. And, even if Elsevier were paying researchers instead of vice versa, the idea that copyright on research papers could fund research is as ludicrous as the idea that people would stop singing songs and telling stories without monopoly profits. Apps, videos, and websites constantly disappear due to (often groundless) accusations of copyright violations. Police evade accountability by playing copyrighted music, rendering any recordings of their abuses copyright violations. A friend of mine committed suicide after being prosecuted for copyright violations that might have been fair use; we'll never know. So, I would set the copyright term at zero years. Legal monopolies on preserving and sharing knowledge are not only useless in today's world, they are harmful, a monstrous menace to the integrity of the historical record and to private communication.
- Zak 5y ago
  > The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin are two well-known counterexamples. You'll likely counter that much of their wealth came from movies and TV, and while that's partly true, they only got those deals due to the success of their books. I agree that aspects of traditional copyright law don't mesh well with modern technology, and that academic/scientific publishers are parasites, but I'm not convinced the concept has outlived its usefulness.
dorchadas 5y ago
My personal idea would be 10 years, but renewable. However, it can only be renewed if new copies of a work are made available in decent quantities. For a book, this would mean a print run of, say, over 1000 copies. Same for reprinting a CD. This means that, while it's still copyrighted, there are copies able to buy and be acquired. And if it's popular enough to still be relevant 10 years later, it should still be being reproduced. This can extend indefinitely to life of creator, as long as it keeps being reprinted or reproduced like this. Basically, as soon as it becomes difficult to get, you lose copyright if another run isn't made. This works especially great for academic texts, in my opinion, as well as certain types of music etc. And if someone has a big hit, well, it'll get another print run anyway. I'd give a longer term for artwork and things like that that don't get republished in the same way, with no renewal. Or maybe something like two free renewals for these things after 10 years, to a maximum of 30 years or life of author, whichever is shorter.
chrismcb 5y ago
My thinking is 25 years. The main reason for this, at one point on time it was difficult to get a book on Amazon that was 25 years old. I can't find the research that claims this. But 25 years feels like a decent amount of time as well. Perhaps with an expensive extension for an additional 25 years. My personal opinion is the current length of the is unconstitutional.

by Zak 5y ago

tsimionescu 5y ago

I think a much shorter time would be better, maybe at most 20 years? That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), and plenty of time for an author to profit; but, it's also short enough that it could still be relevant by the time other artists can start adding to it and improving.

Mindwipe 5y ago
> That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), Twenty years is absolutely short enough for that to happen.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The way companies chase short term profit, twenty years is almost certainly an eternity.

zdw 5y ago

I have a proposal that allows for indefinite copyright, but also with a tax regime that would require someone to pay for this right handsomely. 1. 14 years automatic copyright (enough time for anyone to file registration paperwork) 2. Free 14 year renewal, to 28 years on formal registration. 3. After that, taxing it like regular property - a valuation must be created on which it is taxed like other real property at a reasonable rate, and with the caveat that anyone can buy the rights for that valuation, and then either keep paying tax or let it lapse into public domain. This is like the government buying a piece of land at assessed value if they need to build a public work. 4. Tax in 4 goes up over time, starting at say 1% of valuation yearly up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years. Don't pay the tax, copyright lapses and enters public domain. Value too low, someone buys your copyright out. The end result would be that most normal copyrights last 28 years, before the tax comes into effect. Also, Mickey Mouse can be held in copyright for perpetuity, but Disney has to pay a lot for this right and continually increase the valuation/tax if someone wants to buy it from them.

Zak 5y ago
That's an interesting way to do it. When you write "up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years", do you mean there should be a cap? I like the idea of no cap, and a fairly aggressive schedule that would make keeping a copyright longer than a human lifetime almost universally unprofitable.
- iso1631 5y ago
  Even without an escalating charge it's interesting - as if you put the value too high you're paying more than you want, put it low and a competitor will buy you out. Take the entire Star Wars canon for example, say they put the value at $10b, netflix could buy it relatively easily, but a 1% tax would mean Disney have to pay $1b a decade just to keep it registered. Bump that to $50b though and it will cost $5b a decade to register. Drop it to $100m and some individuals might buy it just for shits and giggles.
rileymat2 5y ago
If the tax is 10% of value, won’t it always be worth renewing as when it gets less valuable the tax goes down towards 0?
- zdw 5y ago
  Add in a minimum processing fee of $20, or a minimum valuation. The point is to make the cost of retaining a copyright over time non-zero and subject to tax, so people aren't incentivized to retain copyright on everything for no cost.
  - rileymat2 5y ago
    Maybe, but it seems like these kind of things mutate into protection rackets for the big guys to get all benefit out of the system. By requiring a minimum for protection. Works at first then they shift the laws and make it legally complicated and require scale.
y7 5y ago

mojzu 5y ago

I think a scaled cost would be more interesting, although the chances of it being implemented enough to test it anywhere is probably nil. E.g. you get 5 years for free without registration, to get another 5 years you must register and pay a small fee, for another 5 years you must pay 10x the previous fee, etc. Scaled in a way where it is relatively cheap to keep a copyright for 2-3 decades, but keeping one for much longer becomes financially prohibitive

glitchc 5y ago

20 years should be plenty to recover value. People should be incentivized to continue to create, not live large off of a single lucky break.

foxfluff 5y ago

For me the best fix would be to just abolish it entirely. The next best thing would be a short term automatic copyright (e.g. one year after initial publication) and for extension, registration & increasing tax is required. I would also put some limits on exclusivity. For example, I think non-commercial modding of games should be always legal, even if that includes distributing modified assets and binaries. Ideally after the one-year exclusive period, anyone can sell copies if they pay royalties to copyright holder (royalties inversely proportional to the tax -- so it gets cheaper and cheaper over time). I really hate that right now the main obstacle to making a good movie/game/etc store is the fact that you spend 99% of your effort trying to strike licensing deals and most copyright holders have zero incentive to even respond if you're small time.

ketzu 5y ago
> I really hate that right now the main obstacle to making a good movie/game/etc I do not believe that is the main obstacle even by a far margin. It is at best the main obstacle to do that in an established universe. The main obstacle, in my opinion, to making a good movie/game/etc. is that most people are not very good at making these. Making a popular movie/game/etc. on the other hand...
- foxfluff 5y ago
  You skipped one word: store.
  - ketzu 5y ago
    Wow, I really completely missed that. Thank you for the hint and sorry for my mistake. (I personally don't see how abolishing copyright goes well with the concept of game/movie stores, though, it would make it easier to set them up for sure.)

hyperman1 5y ago

I would not give it a fixed term, especially not 50 years. I'd start with a short copyright, say 1 year, and extend it based on a few criteria: 1) The current copyright holder is known/reachable. If it is unclear who owns something, it should become public domain. This implies a more or less centralized registry, where you have to re-register your copyright claim every year. This can give you, say, 10 years of copyright at max for just sitting on a property doing nothing. 2) The copyrighted work is still being extended, e.g. like Mickey Mouse still gets new episodes today. If this is the case, older content also gets an extension, say up to 30 years. Active characters can get their copyright extended indefinitely this way, as long as the author sees value in creating new works. So Steamboat Willy is free to consume and remix today, but only Disney can produce new Mickey Mouse content. If Disney stops producing Mickey Mouse for e.g. 10 years, all of it drops back to public domain status. An artist doing live performance might be considered extension, while replaying a record would not be extension. This means only stuff someone cares enough about to track it will get copyright protection. Only authors that do some minimal effort creating copyright get a long term copyright. There is a perverse incentive here, in that Disney can go very low effort, e.g. scribble a new Mickey Mouse episode on a napkin and use it to claim an extension. Pseudo-creation if you will. Another company, say Netflix, should be able to sue for this, to get the content in public domain. They might settle by Disney selling the ownership rights to Netflix, as Netflix clearly values it, and will presumably create usefull new content.

chrismorgan 5y ago

I like this solution we came up with a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16163984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16163984 Ten years of free protection, then costing $10 × 1.5 ⁿ ⁻ ¹ for each subsequent year. Year 10 costs $0, year 20 about $380, year 30 about $22,000, year 40 about $1,300,000, year 50 almost $75,000,000—and few fifty-year-old things will be worth $75,000,000 per year and growing to retain copyright to.

cwkoss 5y ago
Doesn't seem nearly aggressive enough.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

I don't like these copyrights persisting forever just so that the extended family of the original creator can collect money for doing nothing. I think an interesting side effect of copyright reform could be that original creators get a boost of street cred when they create new works even if the original is now public domain. They might even like some of the remixed ideas that new artists would be free to tinker with. I'm a big believer in the mostly free market so I tend to side with whatever allows more competition. Copyright, as it stands right now, stifles innovation and competition and only benefits entities like Disney.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> street cred Like “exposure”, this is something people talk about being a reward to justify arrangements that are materially exploitive. There are good arguments to be made for limiting copyright, but invoking artists getting street cred undermines rather than reinforces them.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Wrong. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about new works from the original artist getting a boost for being by the original artist and not some random person.
GuB-42 5y ago
> I don't like these copyrights persisting forever just so that the extended family of the original creator can collect money for doing nothing. That's inheritance. If your father builds a house before he dies, you will inherit the house even though you did nothing, it won't become public property. If your father writes a book before he dies, you will inherit the copyrights even though you did nothing, it won't become public domain. You may not like the idea of inheritance, or long copyright terms, but extending copyright way past the original creator life is a logical conclusion when you combine the two.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Under your analogy patents and copyrights would last forever?

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

as always gets brought up when this idea is proposed this makes a creator lose out when they become popular late in life. Aside from all this it should be noted that not every country shares the U.S theory that the purpose of copyright is to 'promote the progress of science and useful arts' as per the framers of the Constitution, so it might be not be possible to get other countries to agree to reduce the length of copyright in the proposed way.

tzs 5y ago

Copyright isn't just one right. It's a bundle of rights. In the US those are the copying, distribution, derivative work, public performance, and public display rights. I'd like to see some consideration of setting different terms for these different rights. I don't see any reason for example that the optimal term for copying and the optimal term for derivative works must be the same. I'd also like some consideration for having the term depend on the nature of the work. I could see a case for example for the derivative work right to have a shorter term for nonfiction than for fiction. For nonfiction, what the author brings to the table is the work in researching and organizing the underlying facts. Give them long enough exclusive rights to make that monetarily worthwhile so that it gets done and we're good. For fiction, there is cultural value in having a character developed consistently over the course of several works so I'd support longer rights there for the author.

laumars 5y ago
I think there is a risk of over complicating the rules in doing all that you suggest. Baring in mind copyright law affects everyone, having something that is easy to reason with is definitely a feature rather than a problem. That all said, I do think the concept of different terms for different rights is an interesting idea that deserves more discussion.
cwkoss 5y ago
> For fiction, there is cultural value in having a character developed consistently over the course of several works so I'd support longer rights there for the author. Authors could still use trademark to denote what is 'canon'. I don't think society is worse off if some books had "Official Star Wars Canon" logos on them, and more books that lacked this logo. Right now we only get the former, which doesn't benefit anyone but the IP owner.

stonemetal12 5y ago

I would go with 10-20 years after last "use". That is to say your copyright is extended as long as you keep producing new derivative works but once it stops being a driver of new work it comes to the public domain fairly quickly.

dragonwriter 5y ago
Copyright owners notoriously work around “use it or lose it” clauses (common in rights contracts) already, adding one to the law will just prompt junk works to extend copyright. A better idea, IMO, is just to have a limited free copyright period (say, 30 years) and beyond tha copyright owners pay an annual ad valorem tax at a rate which increases over time (time holding the copyright past the 30 year mark, specifically, so someone with a 31 year old copyright in 2053 would pay the same rate as someone with a 31 year old copyright in 2075, but the former would be paying more in 2075 than the latter) on the declared value of the copyright, with the caveat that: (1) the declared value constitutes acceptance of that valuation as fair compensation for purposes of eminent domain, and (2) a list of all works with such a declaration, and their declared value, will be published, with the work itself available for inspection (deposit requirement being mandatory for extended copyright), and (3) any person may, by paying the declared value plus a fixed administrative surcharge to the Copyright Office, trigger the government exercise of eminent domain to purchase the work into the public domain. The tax assures that if it's not driving new work it comes into the public domain, the public domain purchase option and public right of exercise safeguard against underrating the value and provide a way to pull works into the public domain if there is a constituency which sees sufficient value for it.

kragen 5y ago

Copyright was a reasonable bargain when printing a book involved a large up-front investment of typesetting it and then printing all the copies that would ever be printed from that setup. It didn't affect most people, just printers. And it enabled authors to make a living from writing. It became fairly dubious in the age of photocopiers, but fortunately was little enforced, except in the USSR. A photocopier was useless without typeset or handwritten text to copy, and the copies degraded every generation, so publishing houses were still needed. Now every computer is a book-copying machine more powerful than the entire publishing industry a few decades ago: it can transmit a gigabit per second, and for a one-megabyte book, that's 125 copies a second, 10 million copies a day, 3 billion copies a year, so copyright is a constant danger to everyone. Fanfic sites are full of people sharing stories they wrote with no expectation of making money. The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago, not due to xeroxes but due to TV. The best software is free software, as copyright makes proprietary software untrustworthy, creating incentives to stuff it with malware. And, even if Elsevier were paying researchers instead of vice versa, the idea that copyright on research papers could fund research is as ludicrous as the idea that people would stop singing songs and telling stories without monopoly profits. Apps, videos, and websites constantly disappear due to (often groundless) accusations of copyright violations. Police evade accountability by playing copyrighted music, rendering any recordings of their abuses copyright violations. A friend of mine committed suicide after being prosecuted for copyright violations that might have been fair use; we'll never know. So, I would set the copyright term at zero years. Legal monopolies on preserving and sharing knowledge are not only useless in today's world, they are harmful, a monstrous menace to the integrity of the historical record and to private communication.

Zak 5y ago
> The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin are two well-known counterexamples. You'll likely counter that much of their wealth came from movies and TV, and while that's partly true, they only got those deals due to the success of their books. I agree that aspects of traditional copyright law don't mesh well with modern technology, and that academic/scientific publishers are parasites, but I'm not convinced the concept has outlived its usefulness.

dorchadas 5y ago

My personal idea would be 10 years, but renewable. However, it can only be renewed if new copies of a work are made available in decent quantities. For a book, this would mean a print run of, say, over 1000 copies. Same for reprinting a CD. This means that, while it's still copyrighted, there are copies able to buy and be acquired. And if it's popular enough to still be relevant 10 years later, it should still be being reproduced. This can extend indefinitely to life of creator, as long as it keeps being reprinted or reproduced like this. Basically, as soon as it becomes difficult to get, you lose copyright if another run isn't made. This works especially great for academic texts, in my opinion, as well as certain types of music etc. And if someone has a big hit, well, it'll get another print run anyway. I'd give a longer term for artwork and things like that that don't get republished in the same way, with no renewal. Or maybe something like two free renewals for these things after 10 years, to a maximum of 30 years or life of author, whichever is shorter.

chrismcb 5y ago

My thinking is 25 years. The main reason for this, at one point on time it was difficult to get a book on Amazon that was 25 years old. I can't find the research that claims this. But 25 years feels like a decent amount of time as well. Perhaps with an expensive extension for an additional 25 years. My personal opinion is the current length of the is unconstitutional.