8 ms·
What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?
by mattl 5y ago
What do you think is reasonable? 14? 24? 50?
- jcranmer 5y agoOne of the rights that copyright protects is the right to make derivative works--such as sequels and film adaptations. If you consider that someone like Terry Pratchett can productively write a literary universe for decades, it feels to me like the best answer is around 30-50 years.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoIsn't that trademark? IOW, when Steamboat Willie's copyright expires, it doesn't give you the right to make a new Mickey Mouse film. Disney still has a trademark on Mickey.
- jcranmer 5y agoNo, trademark is entirely different IP. Copyright very explicitly protects the right to make derivative works. (See 17 USC §106 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106) for the full list of what copyright actually protects.)
- bryanlarsen 5y agoBut if your copyright has expired, you can still prevent derivative works via trademark. Disney has trademarked Mickey Mouse.
- Fordec 5y ago50%+1 of a standard living persons actionable career. Do assuming 18 to 70. That makes 52/2 = 26 and +1 = 27. For sake of even numbers, you can fight over 25 or 30. I don't mind either way, both are far better than the current status.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoMaybe 10 years. We are moving at breakneck speed in just about every corner, but copyright protections. A decade is forever in today's world.
- sovnade 5y agoBut there's plenty of things made 10 years ago that are still very relevant and still generating money for the creators. I think that's the concern.
- mattl 5y agoYeah. New Order are still making good money from Blue Monday from 1983, and clearly there’s a lot of interest in The Beatles still. Maybe a shorter period of time with an option to extend it like a snooze feature on an alarm clock.
- mnsc 5y agoBut does having a work enter public domain automatically mean that eg New Order will stop getting paid for streams via legitimate services like Spotify?
- iamben 5y agoHonestly, I don't mind the idea that you the creator, personally, holds the copyright for life. If I write a song in my 20s that sets the world on fire and I can still live a good life at 80 off the back of it, great. The minute I sell that copyright to someone else (or it's inherited), a time limit begins to apply. Perhaps here you move into the '20 years' or something category.
- toast0 5y agoFor popular works, tracking the life of the creator is doable. For less popular works, figuring out who the creator is can be rather difficult. And then figuring out if they're alive isn't always easy either. The screen actors guild has somewhat of a highlander policy, but if I release something Copyright My Name, there's hundreds or thousands of people it could be, including a Pulitzer Prize winning author who will likely predecease me.
- vineyardmike 5y agoThats what registration is for. We know the "true" authors/owners of most patents, so why not copyrights.
- ben_w 5y agoNot OP, but I think it makes very little difference whatever number you pick between “none” and “forever”. Earlier this year a few authors whose work I enjoy tweeted furiously about this topic. Similar arguments may apply to audio and visual copyright. If, for example, copyright lasted 14 years, then The Atrocity Archives (Stross) would already be public domain, which reduces incentive to create more in the series (not sure why, I would have expected new novels have new copyright, but I trust an author to know what their own motivations are, and I refuse to second-guess). Now, these various authors on Twitter argued that being an author is poorly paid (it is), and that they would like to offer someone an inheritance comparable to a widow/er pension. I can sympathise with that. But, sales in most things decline over time. Sequels more, apparently (I wouldn’t know, one of the authors tweeted that). If income falls off exponentially with time, half the income for some specific work will be in the first x-months, 75% in 2x months, 99.9% in 10x months — I’m saying months rather than years because of how fast best-seller lists change, I don’t have real data. Conversely, the reason for such a decline is that almost all the people who care will have bought the work soon after it is published. Making copyright last 100(average of all x) fails to harm society by preventing the work from becoming public domain, but only by the same[2] as it fails to help creative people commercialise their creativity, and for exactly the same reason: almost nobody cares any more. This remains true even if the income curve isn’t exponential, as the benefit to society is simply not having to pay for it[3]. Certainly I’m not rushing out to download some copy of inter-war music, radio broadcasts of whatever category, or newspapers; and I don’t even know if that’s for lack of money because I don’t care. I suspect I’m not alone in not caring. Indeed, I only oppose zero/infinite duration because of the edge cases. The point of copyright is to give creators an incentive at all besides the default of creative people being patronised or commissioned. This is already a thing — furry art by commission; stories[0] and YouTubers supported on Patreon. As this is not the status quo, if we switched to “no copyright” I expect this will break stuff and bankrupt people who have come to rely on it (this also means I oppose sudden changes in general). If copyright was infinite, all works world eventually become lost in a legal quagmire of e.g. mergers and acquisitions where the actual owner ceases to be known. [0] https://www.patreon.com/HamboneHFY https://www.patreon.com/HamboneHFY [1] except where the income per unit is too small to process ($0.001 per person times US population is still a lot of money). [2] or losing track of who owns it, or [1]
- ncallaway 5y agoThe original Copyright Act of 14 years, with an option to extend an additional 14 years, seems reasonable to me.
- loceng 5y agoI've liked the suggestion of an increasing annual cost, perhaps double, every year past a certain baseline - so if the work is valuable enough, productive financially, then the owners can afford to retain/maintain full control over it.
- ncallaway 5y agoReally, one of the major issues for old and abandoned work is that it can be impossible to figure out who the rights holders are for a particular work. A step of active renewal by the rights holder would at least create a public registry of the current owner for a particular right.
- natechols 5y agoThis is a constant problem, publishers go out of business all the time. I have a lot of photocopied sheet music that cannot be purchased anywhere, at any price, but it will be decades before any of it can be legally shared. Just ridiculous artificial scarcity - I wonder how the composers would feel about it.
- jedberg 5y agoI realize it creates a legal quagmire to have abandoned works and I think registration should be required to solve that. That being said, what in reality would happen if you release that sheet music? If it's abandoned, there wouldn't be anyone to come after you for it. You could just put it up online for free and then honor DMCA takedowns from people who can prove they are the rights holder.
- ncallaway 5y ago
- danielrpa 5y ago25 years
- keeglin 5y agoI was going to go with 10 years. I mean, nobody cared about Madonna's "Ray Of Light" beyond 1999. On the other hand, artists - like Dolly Parton - have made long careers out of songwriting that have carried them into their senior years, so it's a balance. Clearly 99 years is absurd. Maybe 20 years is the balance to strike. Dolly would still be doing just fine with that term.
- siver_john 5y agoAs the patron saint of my state, I'd also point out that she has used the money from her music to invest in other things. She is quite a shrewd business woman and I think even with 10 years she would have been fine. Though I think 20 years is reasonable enough.
- Al-Khwarizmi 5y agoLife of the author+0 years. Most people expect to inherit money and property from their parents but not to be paid for work their parents did years ago. I don't see why children of authors should have different expectations.
- C19is20 5y agoIs it the kids combining or the companies that bought the golden goose?
- LanceH 5y agoCreates the odd incentive for people to die.
- devcpp 5y agoAnd also to not die, since they earn money for their children. It's the reverse of the usual inheritance situation, where the state and the kids both want the person to die.
- vineyardmike 5y agoMaybe timeleft = (AVG_LIFE_EXPECTANCY - currAge) or till death if currAge > avglife
- jimbob45 5y agoIMHO you have to start with the justification. The previous justification was to incentivize creators by protecting their financial interests and the interests of their offspring. It’s very clear to see that those interests are no longer being met when you sell your blockbuster song to a record company for $500. IMHO make copyright non-transferable and make corporate copyright 14 years with an application to double. That way it works for the little guy without big guys abusing it (e.g. Disney).
- DenisM 5y agoCopyright should be taxed every year based on the cumulative earnings for the first 10 years. This allows the rights holders to milk the bulk of the profit and yet quickly pass the orphaned works to the public domain - both benefitting the development of arts and sciences as stipulated by the US constitution. Heck, even taxing works for $1 a piece per year would free up a huge number of orphans.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoHonestly I think we should just work at doing away with the concept. The idea of it was to encourage the creation of works by providing a limited term of artificial scarcity so said works could participate in the market. But in the information age, where copying information is as close to free as makes no odds, I think that makes a lot less sense than it used to. That's without even considering that giant corporations have subverted this system and exploited many producers of works while profiting well past the deaths of the creators. It is my opinion that we need an alternative mechanism for funding the creation of information-works that doesn't rely on artificial scarcity.
- splitstud 5y agoThen we would be well advised to listen to the creators of such work, who largely tend to describe the type of system you want to do away with.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoI don't think that follows. If we listen to car manufacturers we should replace our cars every year. Creators who make a lot of money with the current system are incentivized to perpetuate it, and some of those who don't make much imagine that they someday might.
- pie_flavor 5y agoYou have said it was originally to help out the market, and you have said copying information is now nearly free, but you forgot to say how or why the first part is incongruous with the second. Why does it make less sense than it used to? Which of our new capabilities could be leveraged by a new system?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoYou used to have to recoup the costs of publishing as well as fund the author. Binding books was and is not free, but copying bits effectively is.