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> we grant a monopoly to a creator for a limited term to incentivize new work That’s a nice goal, but not entirely accurate. Copyright is intended to protect i

by dahart 5y ago

> we grant a monopoly to a creator for a limited term to incentivize new work That’s a nice goal, but not entirely accurate. Copyright is intended to protect individual works of authorship, and allow the author to leverage their work, even when they only produce a single work. > How often does ten year old software make the difference for a company taking off this year? It happens all the time in software companies! The early software foundation of a company is often integral to where it is when it starts making money. It’s common for the core ideas and algorithms to sit around for many years while the company is building marketing and payment and integrations and customer support and waiting for business to catch on. Sometimes companies wait on their patents to be granted before even starting to try to monetize some software, and it can take a couple of years just to get the patent. From a copyright perspective, it’s important to understand and recognize that business, like law, often moves very slowly. While I’m firmly in agreement that 99 years is too long, I also think 10 years is too short. And to reiterate: the term length shouldn’t be set because tech moves fast, it should be set by considering what’s long enough to recoup an investment and when it’s fair for the copiers to come take your work and use it for their own financial gains.

criddell 5y ago
> That’s a nice goal, but not entirely accurate. I based my statement on https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explained/copyright-basics/purpose-of-copyright/ https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai... > it should be set by considering what’s long enough to recoup an investment and when it’s fair for the copiers to come take your work and use it for their own financial gains I don't think we disagree really. I said the goal was to maximize overall benefit to society and I think you did too. Nobody will know if 10 years is too short until the issue is studied.
- dahart 5y ago
  > Nobody will know if 10 years is too short until the issue is studied. I disagree. Plenty of people already know 10 years is too short, and it doesn’t take a study to show it. Lots of businesses take longer than that to get established, even the very fastest-moving fastest-distributing businesses like software startups.
  - criddell 5y ago
    It might be bad for you if code you wrote ten years ago is no longer protected by copyright, but what about society in general? Maybe five new start ups can take that old software and build something better than you were able to. Would that disincentivize creators? Maybe. Would the copyright expiration make a thousand flowers bloom? That's what would need to be studied. What the net benefit or harm is, isn't obvious.
    - dahart 5y ago
      True, this is a valid point. I’m under the impression that it has been studied, though I don’t have a source off the top of my head. It’s definitely been debated vigorously and often. Anyway, keep in mind that this net benefit needs to incentivize people to get over the static friction of starting in the first place. We don’t want to make a point of handing content and ideas over to incremental producers because that will disincentivize people from trying in the first place. Also important is that part of the net benefit to society is a trickle-down argument that we need to reward the authors first in order for society to reap the net benefit. The point is not to encourage business at the fastest possible speed be letting people borrow the ideas and inventions and content of others, the point is to protect the people who do the actual original work for a reasonable period of time, and to allow for the fact that they might be less good at business than someone who’s only reselling content. Might be worth stating that study the economics of social net benefits is incredibly difficult, and can take a very, very long time, longer than you and I have left. The environment is a great example of how we’ve made disastrous business choices that were rationalized by “social benefit”, but turned out to be wrong.

by dahart 5y ago

criddell 5y ago

> That’s a nice goal, but not entirely accurate. I based my statement on https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explained/copyright-basics/purpose-of-copyright/ https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai... > it should be set by considering what’s long enough to recoup an investment and when it’s fair for the copiers to come take your work and use it for their own financial gains I don't think we disagree really. I said the goal was to maximize overall benefit to society and I think you did too. Nobody will know if 10 years is too short until the issue is studied.

dahart 5y ago
> Nobody will know if 10 years is too short until the issue is studied. I disagree. Plenty of people already know 10 years is too short, and it doesn’t take a study to show it. Lots of businesses take longer than that to get established, even the very fastest-moving fastest-distributing businesses like software startups.
- criddell 5y ago
  It might be bad for you if code you wrote ten years ago is no longer protected by copyright, but what about society in general? Maybe five new start ups can take that old software and build something better than you were able to. Would that disincentivize creators? Maybe. Would the copyright expiration make a thousand flowers bloom? That's what would need to be studied. What the net benefit or harm is, isn't obvious.
  - dahart 5y ago
    True, this is a valid point. I’m under the impression that it has been studied, though I don’t have a source off the top of my head. It’s definitely been debated vigorously and often. Anyway, keep in mind that this net benefit needs to incentivize people to get over the static friction of starting in the first place. We don’t want to make a point of handing content and ideas over to incremental producers because that will disincentivize people from trying in the first place. Also important is that part of the net benefit to society is a trickle-down argument that we need to reward the authors first in order for society to reap the net benefit. The point is not to encourage business at the fastest possible speed be letting people borrow the ideas and inventions and content of others, the point is to protect the people who do the actual original work for a reasonable period of time, and to allow for the fact that they might be less good at business than someone who’s only reselling content. Might be worth stating that study the economics of social net benefits is incredibly difficult, and can take a very, very long time, longer than you and I have left. The environment is a great example of how we’ve made disastrous business choices that were rationalized by “social benefit”, but turned out to be wrong.