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> 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

by 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

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.