6 ms·

So you cannot provide for your children then? you basically saying that on death the state should confiscate for example your house.

Scandiravian 5y ago
A copyright holder will already have earned money on it during a fixed time period. Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a different right to provide for their children more so than other professions? There's something inherently unjust in protecting the works based on the death of the original author. A 25 year old will, on average, enjoy a significantly longer period of protection than a 75 year old.
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  Why is "unjust" and wanting some thing for free is not a valid legal argument here. And TBH with all due respect trotting out rhetorical devices like "straw man" does sound like sealioning.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  So the 25yo with a wife and child finishes a book, signs with a publisher, and dies. The book sells a million copies and the publisher refuses to pay the widow and child anything because the work is now in the public domain. Justice has been done? I think a simple period of time, like 7 or 14 years, or even 50, makes more sense.
  - DnDGrognard 5y ago
    Or an author has a disabled child who will require support for life?
  - Scandiravian 5y ago
    I think I worded my original post poorly. I am completely in favour of having a fixed time for already created works regardless of the time of the authors death. In regards to your example, the publisher has a contractual obligation with the author, which is obviously part of the estate. My argument is that even if the author has a deal with a publisher for a particular book, that should not prevent others from being able to create new books, movies, games, etc based on that book. As a counter example, imagine a 25 year old, with a wife, who would have been able to create the best game ever in 2010. Unfortunately he dies in 2015. The game would have sold millions of copies if it was published, but unfortunately the character of Mickey Mouse is integral to it, so because of copyright the game cannot be made until 2024 - 58 years after Walt Disney's death and 96 years after the first appearance of the character.
  - mopsi 5y ago
    If money was already made, then it should go to descendants. However, I see no reason why further copies made after death should get taxed in favour of descendants for 70 years. What do they have to do with it anymore? What value do they provide to justify the compensation?
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      What value do they provide? Their existence is in all likelihood one of the reasons the author put pen to paper in the first place. It is rewarding the author and encouraging creative work to be able to pass on ownership of creative works just like other belongings.
  - izacus 5y ago
    The widow and child get a pension, just like all other widows of non-authors. Widows and children of other people don't get the right to receive wage from work perpetually so it's insane that we're supposed to pay wages to authors families for decades and decades.
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      Because he never got paid for his work? What you are saying is that all of the benefit goes to the publishing company, not the public. Not really. The reality of normal people is that a big part of the reason they work is in order to provide for the people they love. This is why copyright exists in the first place—to protect the motivation to produce creative work, knowing that the benefit won’t be stolen from you. Knowing that if you die, the benefit to your children is immediately forfeit actually reduces the willingness for people who aren’t misanthropes to take on that risk.
    - DnDGrognard 5y ago
      How ? Most pension systems only allow minimal contributions to third party's about £3.6k in the UK and the USA's 401 system is to be blunt a bit crap.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a different right to provide for their children more so than other professions? I'm pretty sure that people from other professions can leave their property to their children as well, and that property does not suddenly become a public good a set amount of time afterwards.
  - Scandiravian 5y ago
    I don't follow this argument. If a copyright holder can earn money for their work for a fixed period of time, they can use that income to acquire things like property Unless copyright holders are somehow prohibited from obtaining property or passing it on to their relatives I don't think that's a meaningful comparison
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      >I don't follow this argument. If a copyright holder can earn money for their work for a fixed period of time, they can use that income to acquire things like property it should be relatively clear, copyrighted works are a form of property that people have and pay taxes on, the same way that they pay taxes on stock they own, or the improvements they did to their land when they built a house on it, and so forth. It's all a form of property. >they can use that income to acquire things like property yes, if a master carpenter makes a table and never sells it they can pass it on to their children as a form of property. but they can also sell it and use the money to obtain other forms of property and pass that on to their children. Or just let them inherit the money. Not sure what the point here is, except that for a lot of people's arguments to work here it is beneficial to ignore that copyrighted works are also a form of property. Now someone will make the point that written works don't work the same as a table made by a carpenter and therefore it is unfair, even though stocks and bonds do not work the same as a small family mom and pop store which does not work the same as a table made by a carpenter which does not work the same as a painting by a famous painter which does not work exactly the same as the insurance business, and so on and so forth. The fact is that there are many forms of business and property and they do not all work exactly the same, although their local differences tend to get smoothed out by the effects of accounting. Obviously part of the way that the writing business works is formed by the laws and regulations pertaining to it. You would like to change that, but it seems disingenuous to argue that it should be changed because copyrighted works are not property. They function like property now that the owners lose after a variable amount of time, and even if the changes you wanted would be put in place they would still function like property - but with much less time before being changed to a public good.

Scandiravian 5y ago

A copyright holder will already have earned money on it during a fixed time period. Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a different right to provide for their children more so than other professions? There's something inherently unjust in protecting the works based on the death of the original author. A 25 year old will, on average, enjoy a significantly longer period of protection than a 75 year old.

DnDGrognard 5y ago
Why is "unjust" and wanting some thing for free is not a valid legal argument here. And TBH with all due respect trotting out rhetorical devices like "straw man" does sound like sealioning.
jtbayly 5y ago
So the 25yo with a wife and child finishes a book, signs with a publisher, and dies. The book sells a million copies and the publisher refuses to pay the widow and child anything because the work is now in the public domain. Justice has been done? I think a simple period of time, like 7 or 14 years, or even 50, makes more sense.
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  Or an author has a disabled child who will require support for life?
- Scandiravian 5y ago
  I think I worded my original post poorly. I am completely in favour of having a fixed time for already created works regardless of the time of the authors death. In regards to your example, the publisher has a contractual obligation with the author, which is obviously part of the estate. My argument is that even if the author has a deal with a publisher for a particular book, that should not prevent others from being able to create new books, movies, games, etc based on that book. As a counter example, imagine a 25 year old, with a wife, who would have been able to create the best game ever in 2010. Unfortunately he dies in 2015. The game would have sold millions of copies if it was published, but unfortunately the character of Mickey Mouse is integral to it, so because of copyright the game cannot be made until 2024 - 58 years after Walt Disney's death and 96 years after the first appearance of the character.
- mopsi 5y ago
  If money was already made, then it should go to descendants. However, I see no reason why further copies made after death should get taxed in favour of descendants for 70 years. What do they have to do with it anymore? What value do they provide to justify the compensation?
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    What value do they provide? Their existence is in all likelihood one of the reasons the author put pen to paper in the first place. It is rewarding the author and encouraging creative work to be able to pass on ownership of creative works just like other belongings.
- izacus 5y ago
  The widow and child get a pension, just like all other widows of non-authors. Widows and children of other people don't get the right to receive wage from work perpetually so it's insane that we're supposed to pay wages to authors families for decades and decades.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Because he never got paid for his work? What you are saying is that all of the benefit goes to the publishing company, not the public. Not really. The reality of normal people is that a big part of the reason they work is in order to provide for the people they love. This is why copyright exists in the first place—to protect the motivation to produce creative work, knowing that the benefit won’t be stolen from you. Knowing that if you die, the benefit to your children is immediately forfeit actually reduces the willingness for people who aren’t misanthropes to take on that risk.
  - DnDGrognard 5y ago
    How ? Most pension systems only allow minimal contributions to third party's about £3.6k in the UK and the USA's 401 system is to be blunt a bit crap.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>Your argument is a straw man. Why should author's have a different right to provide for their children more so than other professions? I'm pretty sure that people from other professions can leave their property to their children as well, and that property does not suddenly become a public good a set amount of time afterwards.
- Scandiravian 5y ago
  I don't follow this argument. If a copyright holder can earn money for their work for a fixed period of time, they can use that income to acquire things like property Unless copyright holders are somehow prohibited from obtaining property or passing it on to their relatives I don't think that's a meaningful comparison
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >I don't follow this argument. If a copyright holder can earn money for their work for a fixed period of time, they can use that income to acquire things like property it should be relatively clear, copyrighted works are a form of property that people have and pay taxes on, the same way that they pay taxes on stock they own, or the improvements they did to their land when they built a house on it, and so forth. It's all a form of property. >they can use that income to acquire things like property yes, if a master carpenter makes a table and never sells it they can pass it on to their children as a form of property. but they can also sell it and use the money to obtain other forms of property and pass that on to their children. Or just let them inherit the money. Not sure what the point here is, except that for a lot of people's arguments to work here it is beneficial to ignore that copyrighted works are also a form of property. Now someone will make the point that written works don't work the same as a table made by a carpenter and therefore it is unfair, even though stocks and bonds do not work the same as a small family mom and pop store which does not work the same as a table made by a carpenter which does not work the same as a painting by a famous painter which does not work exactly the same as the insurance business, and so on and so forth. The fact is that there are many forms of business and property and they do not all work exactly the same, although their local differences tend to get smoothed out by the effects of accounting. Obviously part of the way that the writing business works is formed by the laws and regulations pertaining to it. You would like to change that, but it seems disingenuous to argue that it should be changed because copyrighted works are not property. They function like property now that the owners lose after a variable amount of time, and even if the changes you wanted would be put in place they would still function like property - but with much less time before being changed to a public good.