8 ms·

The longest I can theoretically think is justified is the death of the author. The idea to keep works out of the public domain so that heirs or estates or busin

The longest I can theoretically think is justified is the death of the author. The idea to keep works out of the public domain so that heirs or estates or businesses can live off economic rents is pretty bizarre to me, seems straight up feudal.

cogman10 5y ago
If someone writes a best seller and kicks the bucket, it'd sort of suck that someone like Disney could swoop in and make a bunch of movies without paying a dime of royalties to the author's family. Or that a bunch of publishers can have a field day republishing the best seller diluting all the work of the original publisher. But on the flip side, 90+ years is really WAY too long. Cut it to 20 years. Long enough to capture the initial buzz, but not so long that we end up with shit staying under the mouse's thumb forever.
- dlp211 5y ago
  This is exactly what Disney did do though; Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio; to become a massive corp. And now that they are a massive Corp that just can buy the rights to any copyrighted material locking out competitors. Imagine if others had the chance to compete.
  - troupe 5y ago
    Disney doesn't own the rights to Pinocchio. You are free to make your own movie with book version of the the characters and the story. Carlo Collodi was dead by 1890 so Disney definitely didn't "swoop in" and benefit at his or his descendent's expense. I believe the other stories you mention are even older.
    - superluserdo 5y ago
      >Disney doesn't own the rights to Pinocchio. You are free to make your own movie with book version of the the characters and the story. This is very much an "in principle" thing. In practice, many of these traditional stories have (sadly) become synonymous with the Disney version, so Disney's work is basically the canonical version. This gives Disney a very good sword of Damocles to hang over the heads of anyone else trying to adapt these folk stories: to my understanding if you include a single copyrightable adaptation or embellishment of the original that was written by Disney without "prior art", you're liable to be steamrollered by the lawyer army and be ruined.
      - judge2020 5y ago
        Pinocchio was just fine in the Shrek movies, and I imagine Eisner wasn't happy that Universal of all people used him (as, only a few years prior, Universal poached a bunch of imagineers and made The Lost Continent, which copied a lot of elements of 'Beastly Kingdom', the original name for Animal Kingdom), so it must have took a lot of lawyers saying "this is a bad idea" when Eisner surely suggested they sue over using Pinocchio.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Disney doesn't own the rights to Pinocchio. [...] Carlo Collodi was dead by 1890 so Disney definitely didn't "swoop in" and benefit at his or his descendent's expense. This illustrates (IMO, the evils of over-long) current copyright terms rather perfectly: Disney didn't swoop in and benefit at Collodi's or his descendent's expense under the copyright rules of the time. Had current -- heavily Disney-influenced, so presumably supported and wished-for by Disney -- terms been in force then, this would have been a case of Disney swooping in and benefitting at Collodi's or his descendent's expense. Dunno what exactly this means... Besides Disney possibly being quite hypocritical. And yes, most of Disney's older great hits about princesses and princes (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella...) are based on German folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm and first published in 1812.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Companies can (and have) make their own versions of all those. What they can't use is disney's representation of those characters.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    They did that via public domain usage; the OP is making the point that extending it just to "death of author" will allow Disney to continue to do this. Nowadays, they surely can just buy the rights to stuff they want, but that's a completely separate issue and not one that copyright law is meant to address.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  I'd rather do away with it entirely, but under capitalism, I would reduce it to 7-10 years though initially it was 14 years. https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/ https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/
- commoner 5y ago
  20 years is a reasonable length for copyrights, since many patents in the U.S. also expire after 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_S...
  - shagie 5y ago
    I have photographs that I took 20 years ago that I occasionally sell a print of. You are suggesting that that material now be part of the public domain? For that matter, you're suggesting GCC version 3.0.3, Emacs 21.2 and all prior versions be public domain and not have any copyright or copyleft protection on it? And thus, I could take the source code for them, modify it, close source it release my own version.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      > You are suggesting that that material now be part of the public domain? Yes. I could be wrong, but I feel comfortable guessing that you were sufficiently incentivized to take those photographs 20 years ago. Also, you could still sell prints!
    - cogman10 5y ago
      Absolutely. Would you not have taken the photo or sold it had you known the timeframe for it's value would be limited to 20 years? I suspect that, yes, you'd still take that photo. So long as the timespan is long enough to benefit the creator (and thus, encourage creativity) but not so long as to forever lock up the creation, then I see no harm in a much shorter copyright timeframe. Why should I care if a 20 year old compiler or text editor ends up having closed source versions? And, on the flip side, wouldn't it be neat if we had Windows XP source code in the public domain? Now consider the fact that with a 20 year lifespan on copyright every streaming service would have access to everything published in 2001 and earlier. 1 service could give you a bonkers amount of content.
      - ejb999 5y ago
        why limit it to books or other creative creations - if you buy a house, you get exclusive use for 20 years - after that, other people just get to move into the unused bedrooms - after all, your kids are probably grown by now and you don't need them anymore. How is this different - why should I be entitled to get, for free, something someone else created and owns.
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>90+ years is really WAY too long. Way too long for who? I don't own any copyrights - probably never will - but why am I supposedly owed the right to use something for free that someone else created after some arbitrary amount of time? You might be able to make a case that it is in the public's interest to only patent life-saving medicine for X number of years, but who is really harmed when the author of a book retains the rights in perpetuity?
  - phlakaton 5y ago
    Who is harmed? Creators. Consumers. Anyone who ever pined for access to something out of print, or in a vault, or otherwise squatted on for no productive reason. Anyone who ever had to guess what they could sample or what they could not; what would be legally considered derivative of some decades-old musical expression (many of which resemble each other superficially) and what would not.
  - anamax 5y ago
    > I don't own any copyrights - probably never will Actually, you do own lots of copyrights. For example, you own the copyright on almost every blog post that you made. (The exceptions are things like lists of facts.) You own the copyright on every picture that you've taken or drawn.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > why am I supposedly owed the right to use something for free that someone else created after some arbitrary amount of time That's the natural default. If two people don't interfere with each other's happiness, then there is no copyright. You don't need a right to copy, the owner needs a right to stop you from copying. Why are they owed the right to a government-enforced monopoly? Well, xyz there are good reasons but also those reasons make more sense with a time limit.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    > who is really harmed when the author of a book retains the rights in perpetuity? Anyone that wants to make (or accidentally makes) derivative works based on that work. This is especially apparent in the music industry. Write a story about a prince waking a princess with a kiss an you run the very real risk of getting sued into oblivion by Disney. We, the public, lose out on creative works because creative folk have to be VERY careful with how they approach art to try and minimize their exposure to lawsuits. Very similar to the harm done by software patents.
- anothernewdude 5y ago
  That's precisely how Disney started.
markdown 5y ago
I spend years writing a novel. My wife contributes to this novel by keeping me fed, clothed, and sheltered while I write it. The day it's published, I die. Your proposal leaves my family nothing. Life + a decade is reasonable, IMO. Alternatively, 25yrs or life, whichever is longer.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  Dead creators can't create new works. The primary purpose of copyright, to my mind, is to incent the creation of new works for the ultimate benefit of humanity. I'd like to see "life plus" sunset over a period of years, allowing those who "banked" on that business model to still benefit while decreasing the copyright term after death until it's eventually eliminated. Removing copyright-after-death gradually discourages the business model you describe. It makes sense, to me, to ease into that gradually. Does the end of copyright-after-death mean some works won't be created? Maybe. Some people might not create new works if their estate can't profit after their death. Eliminating copyright-after-death opens the door for new derivative works sooner. I think there's potential for more new works to be created with copyright ending at death. More creators can build upon the old work versus a single creator toiling at the end of their life. I am of the camp, ultimately, that wants to see the U.S. Constitution's original copyright terms restored (and the requirement for registration and renewal). I think it will need to be a gradual process if only to allow those who have (unfairly, in my mind) lobbied for effectively infinite copyright terms to die.
  - xur17 5y ago
    > Dead creators can't create new works. The primary purpose of copyright, to my mind, is to incent the creation of new works for the ultimate benefit of humanity. But in the example GP posted, if the person knew they were near death, they very well might stop working on it since their family won't benefit.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      Yes. I said that in the 4th paragraph of my parent comment. Some people might choose not to create works for that reason. Works will become available for masses of artists to build upon sooner if copyright ends at death. I think the latter option will likely create more newworks than the former so I see potentially sacrificing the former as being worthy.
vanviegen 5y ago
Doesn't the same apply to property in general? Should children be allowed to inherit a house, but not intellectual property rights? What if the author dies shortly after creating the work, and was hoping to support their family on the proceeds?
- Zigurd 5y ago
  The people who wrote the clause of the US constitution that enables the government to grant a temporary monopoly to authors and inventors argued over whether to do so. It was not like ownership of land, structures, etc. The phrase "intellectual property" dates to the 19th c. and was not initially widely used. What we call "copyright" is, as it is referred to in the constitution, a monopoly granted by the government. All your other rights are assumed to exist because it would be outlandish to say a mere government could "grant" them. They are protected by the government, or so it was intended. Unlike real rights, Congress could pass a law setting the term of such a monopoly to zero and there would be no civil rights argument against doing so. Patents and copyright are nothing like your actual rights. This applies to the way copyright law is authorized constitutionally in the US. YMMV.
  - dodobirdlord 5y ago
    Outside of portable material property, the idea of property rights as natural rights is pretty fanciful. Land ownership is a good example of a property right that was understood to be government-originated even in the system of English Common Law relied upon by the authors of the Constitution. At the time that the United States split from Great Britain it was understood that land ownership rested with the monarch, that land could at the discretion of the monarch be held in "freehold" by entities other than the monarch, but that the monarch retained certain rights on account of its fundamental ownership of all land, such as the power of eminent domain, or the fact that any property for which a freeholder could not be identifier would revert to the control of the crown. The authors of the Constitution understood that going forward such rights were held by the new federal government, or by the governments of the several States. Moving away from land ownership, you get forms of property rights that are even harder to reconcile with the idea of natural rights. Mineral rights, shipping rights, air rights, spectrum rights, toll rights, salvage rights, etc. None of these things are meaningful absent the concept of a legal system enforced by a government.
smilbandit 5y ago
Death of the author and spouse. No need for it to transfer any farther then that.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Not sure why even involve spouse. The money generated and save is in the estate, spouce and others are free to use the money how they want.
xwdv 5y ago
How naive. This encourages killing off an author with a hitman so you can swoop in and steal extremely valuable intellectual property. What, are you going to make an exception for authors killed in grisly murders of mysterious circumstances? Imagine if instead of paying George Lucas billions for the rights to Star Wars Disney just had him killed off for a fraction of the price.
- petters 5y ago
  Disney would have made much less off Star Wars if it were in the public domain.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > This encourages killing off an author with a hitman so you can swoop in and steal extremely valuable intellectual property. No, because the property rights ceasing to exist means that there is nothing to steal. You can use what would have been exclusive under them, but so can anyone else. Property rights aren't the right to use but the right to exclude; without the right to exclude, there is no property. (I do think taking the author’s life into account is a dumb idea, just not for that reason.)
jimbob45 5y ago
Alright, how's this for an intermediate compromise: instead of 70 + life, make it 70 - remainder of life. That way, people who die the second their book is submitted are still able to leave something for their children but people who live a very long amount of time for whatever reason aren't unjustly rewarded solely for living a long time.
dahart 5y ago
How should works created by groups of people or companies be handled?
goto11 5y ago
How about real estate and land ownership? Shouldn't that revert to the public domain after a set number of years?
- bediger4000 5y ago
  Doesn't that happen in Hawaii today? I think a lot of land is leased for a long period, and ultimately reverts back to the real owners.
- jonathlee 5y ago
  Intellectual property and physical property are entirely different. Intellectual property can be shared/multiplied/given away indefinitely while still being retained by the originator while physical property cannot. After copyright expiration, the original author of intellectual property can create derivative works even after their copyright expires (in the same universe, etc.) or even updated revisions, which restart their copyright for the revision. Even if other could do so, I suspect the market for their derivative works will still have a preference for their works vs. others who create derivative works of the original, depending on the quality of the derivatives. It is really hard to own land (or any other physical thing) after you've sold it but the same is not true of a novel.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  That's effectively how land ownership works in many Asian countries. Every holder of land is effectively leasing it from the public for a set number of years (100 years or whatever). Land sales for indeterminate times (in "fee simple") place an unfair burden on future generations, by denying to them the public benefits of increasing land values. It's effectively a hidden form of debt to a bunch of private rent seekers.
tptacek 5y ago
This doesn't even make conceptual sense. An author chooses to divert their working time to producing a piece of content (say, about a honey-guzzling bear) with the expectation that they'll be rewarded by the market for doing so, which is why they don't instead divert all their efforts into writing ad copy for PepsiCo. The amount of reward the market provides is based on the value that can be extracted from that property. If value can only be extracted while the author draws breath, the market provides much less reward --- for the author, in this lifetime. Bear in mind that intellectual property is in some ways even more defensible than real property. The rights to real property are fundamentally secured through conquest and forcible appropriation. IPR is generated de novo, from the creators themselves. So, to me, the opposite argument seems to apply. There's no obvious moral reason that copyright should be in any way tied to the lifespan of the author. A cultural work is no less valuable because its author happens to get hit by a bus the week after they publish; why on earth should the market for those works be asked to consider that possibility? (This is potentially an argument against creators, in the sense that an unusually long-lived author is no more entitled to excess rewards than an unlucky bus-strike victim is entitled to fewer rewards.)
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  > There's no obvious moral reason that copyright should be in any way tied to the lifespan of the author. A dead author can't create new works. Their copyright persisting beyond their death prevents derivative works from being created. Copyright after death forestalls the creation of new derivative works. Is that "worth" eliminating the "copyright-after-death" bargain? I don't know. I tend to think opening up a world of potential derivative works after the death of an author is a good gamble if the desired outcome is more works. Curtailing copyright after death would have to be handled in a nuanced process because some people certainly have "banked on" that business model.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I'm not sure you're following. The limited monopoly on new works incentivizes authorship by providing a market for that content based on the transfer of that monopoly. It doesn't just incentivize the next work; it's the foundation of incentives for all of the work, including the first. Anything you do to make the transfer of those rights less valuable (for instance: terminating them when the original author dies) reduces the incentive for every work of authorship, from the first to the last.
morpheuskafka 5y ago
I would be okay with a fixed term allowing a short time for estates to profit, in the event someone created a work shortly before their death. I think the primary purpose should be to provide for the author, not their heirs, but I can understand how an author would feel like their effort were wasted if they died shortly after. Maybe something like a minimum term of ten years, with the ability to renew it during your life up to fifty years or so.
- ejb999 5y ago
  so an author that creates a blockbuster book at 25 years old is automatically worth more than an identical work created by a 85 year old? I truly don't get it - why do you feel that you are somehow owed the free use of something someone else created with their blood and sweat?
  - saimiam 5y ago
    You aren’t entitled to simply reprint or republish someone else’s work for profit but copyright is blocking derivative and reinterpreted works from entering the public domain. Take Cinderella. Place her in the Wild West. Make her lose a cowboy boot at a village fete. But retain the names from the original so this heroine Cinderella. Clearly derivative, right? Also violative of Disney’s rights to Cinderella’s name and likeness. What copyright blocks (in this instance) is our ability to start from a common source of understanding - naif with evil stepmom rescued by hot prince - to extend the story in random directions. This block should not last in perpetuity is what many of us are saying. In software, this would be akin to preventing forking.
    - irtigor 5y ago
      You are indeed entitled to simply reprint or republish someone else’s work for profit if it is in the public domain. Copyright blocks most derivative work (with a few exceptionns like parodies), but also blocks verbatim unauthorized copies.
      - 5y ago
rhino369 5y ago
It is less crazy when you compare to real property and personal property. Your rights to real estate never expire. I am pretty sure if you traced my house's property title back far enough it was awarded by Charles II to a loyalist. At least with IP, you can make infinite new property.
Matumio 5y ago
Someone once tried to calculate the optimal duration, and came up with 15 years: https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf I do not think law should be calculated (it sounds too much like hiding your political values behind science) but it's worth trying - just to see what assumptions you need to make.
chrismcb 5y ago
Why? Why didn't a creator try to provide for their lives ones? Sure it shouldn't last forever. But just because a best selling author dies, shouldn't mean the kids and spouse end up homeless
rambojazz 5y ago
Wouldn't that... be... the wrong incentive against keeping the author alive? (if you see what I mean)

cogman10 5y ago

If someone writes a best seller and kicks the bucket, it'd sort of suck that someone like Disney could swoop in and make a bunch of movies without paying a dime of royalties to the author's family. Or that a bunch of publishers can have a field day republishing the best seller diluting all the work of the original publisher. But on the flip side, 90+ years is really WAY too long. Cut it to 20 years. Long enough to capture the initial buzz, but not so long that we end up with shit staying under the mouse's thumb forever.

dlp211 5y ago
This is exactly what Disney did do though; Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio; to become a massive corp. And now that they are a massive Corp that just can buy the rights to any copyrighted material locking out competitors. Imagine if others had the chance to compete.
- troupe 5y ago
  Disney doesn't own the rights to Pinocchio. You are free to make your own movie with book version of the the characters and the story. Carlo Collodi was dead by 1890 so Disney definitely didn't "swoop in" and benefit at his or his descendent's expense. I believe the other stories you mention are even older.
  - superluserdo 5y ago
    >Disney doesn't own the rights to Pinocchio. You are free to make your own movie with book version of the the characters and the story. This is very much an "in principle" thing. In practice, many of these traditional stories have (sadly) become synonymous with the Disney version, so Disney's work is basically the canonical version. This gives Disney a very good sword of Damocles to hang over the heads of anyone else trying to adapt these folk stories: to my understanding if you include a single copyrightable adaptation or embellishment of the original that was written by Disney without "prior art", you're liable to be steamrollered by the lawyer army and be ruined.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Pinocchio was just fine in the Shrek movies, and I imagine Eisner wasn't happy that Universal of all people used him (as, only a few years prior, Universal poached a bunch of imagineers and made The Lost Continent, which copied a lot of elements of 'Beastly Kingdom', the original name for Animal Kingdom), so it must have took a lot of lawyers saying "this is a bad idea" when Eisner surely suggested they sue over using Pinocchio.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > Disney doesn't own the rights to Pinocchio. [...] Carlo Collodi was dead by 1890 so Disney definitely didn't "swoop in" and benefit at his or his descendent's expense. This illustrates (IMO, the evils of over-long) current copyright terms rather perfectly: Disney didn't swoop in and benefit at Collodi's or his descendent's expense under the copyright rules of the time. Had current -- heavily Disney-influenced, so presumably supported and wished-for by Disney -- terms been in force then, this would have been a case of Disney swooping in and benefitting at Collodi's or his descendent's expense. Dunno what exactly this means... Besides Disney possibly being quite hypocritical. And yes, most of Disney's older great hits about princesses and princes (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella...) are based on German folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm and first published in 1812.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Companies can (and have) make their own versions of all those. What they can't use is disney's representation of those characters.
- judge2020 5y ago
  They did that via public domain usage; the OP is making the point that extending it just to "death of author" will allow Disney to continue to do this. Nowadays, they surely can just buy the rights to stuff they want, but that's a completely separate issue and not one that copyright law is meant to address.
tehjoker 5y ago
I'd rather do away with it entirely, but under capitalism, I would reduce it to 7-10 years though initially it was 14 years. https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/ https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/
commoner 5y ago
20 years is a reasonable length for copyrights, since many patents in the U.S. also expire after 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_S...
- shagie 5y ago
  I have photographs that I took 20 years ago that I occasionally sell a print of. You are suggesting that that material now be part of the public domain? For that matter, you're suggesting GCC version 3.0.3, Emacs 21.2 and all prior versions be public domain and not have any copyright or copyleft protection on it? And thus, I could take the source code for them, modify it, close source it release my own version.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > You are suggesting that that material now be part of the public domain? Yes. I could be wrong, but I feel comfortable guessing that you were sufficiently incentivized to take those photographs 20 years ago. Also, you could still sell prints!
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Absolutely. Would you not have taken the photo or sold it had you known the timeframe for it's value would be limited to 20 years? I suspect that, yes, you'd still take that photo. So long as the timespan is long enough to benefit the creator (and thus, encourage creativity) but not so long as to forever lock up the creation, then I see no harm in a much shorter copyright timeframe. Why should I care if a 20 year old compiler or text editor ends up having closed source versions? And, on the flip side, wouldn't it be neat if we had Windows XP source code in the public domain? Now consider the fact that with a 20 year lifespan on copyright every streaming service would have access to everything published in 2001 and earlier. 1 service could give you a bonkers amount of content.
    - ejb999 5y ago
      why limit it to books or other creative creations - if you buy a house, you get exclusive use for 20 years - after that, other people just get to move into the unused bedrooms - after all, your kids are probably grown by now and you don't need them anymore. How is this different - why should I be entitled to get, for free, something someone else created and owns.
ejb999 5y ago
>>90+ years is really WAY too long. Way too long for who? I don't own any copyrights - probably never will - but why am I supposedly owed the right to use something for free that someone else created after some arbitrary amount of time? You might be able to make a case that it is in the public's interest to only patent life-saving medicine for X number of years, but who is really harmed when the author of a book retains the rights in perpetuity?
- phlakaton 5y ago
  Who is harmed? Creators. Consumers. Anyone who ever pined for access to something out of print, or in a vault, or otherwise squatted on for no productive reason. Anyone who ever had to guess what they could sample or what they could not; what would be legally considered derivative of some decades-old musical expression (many of which resemble each other superficially) and what would not.
- anamax 5y ago
  > I don't own any copyrights - probably never will Actually, you do own lots of copyrights. For example, you own the copyright on almost every blog post that you made. (The exceptions are things like lists of facts.) You own the copyright on every picture that you've taken or drawn.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > why am I supposedly owed the right to use something for free that someone else created after some arbitrary amount of time That's the natural default. If two people don't interfere with each other's happiness, then there is no copyright. You don't need a right to copy, the owner needs a right to stop you from copying. Why are they owed the right to a government-enforced monopoly? Well, xyz there are good reasons but also those reasons make more sense with a time limit.
- cogman10 5y ago
  > who is really harmed when the author of a book retains the rights in perpetuity? Anyone that wants to make (or accidentally makes) derivative works based on that work. This is especially apparent in the music industry. Write a story about a prince waking a princess with a kiss an you run the very real risk of getting sued into oblivion by Disney. We, the public, lose out on creative works because creative folk have to be VERY careful with how they approach art to try and minimize their exposure to lawsuits. Very similar to the harm done by software patents.
anothernewdude 5y ago
That's precisely how Disney started.

markdown 5y ago

I spend years writing a novel. My wife contributes to this novel by keeping me fed, clothed, and sheltered while I write it. The day it's published, I die. Your proposal leaves my family nothing. Life + a decade is reasonable, IMO. Alternatively, 25yrs or life, whichever is longer.

EvanAnderson 5y ago
Dead creators can't create new works. The primary purpose of copyright, to my mind, is to incent the creation of new works for the ultimate benefit of humanity. I'd like to see "life plus" sunset over a period of years, allowing those who "banked" on that business model to still benefit while decreasing the copyright term after death until it's eventually eliminated. Removing copyright-after-death gradually discourages the business model you describe. It makes sense, to me, to ease into that gradually. Does the end of copyright-after-death mean some works won't be created? Maybe. Some people might not create new works if their estate can't profit after their death. Eliminating copyright-after-death opens the door for new derivative works sooner. I think there's potential for more new works to be created with copyright ending at death. More creators can build upon the old work versus a single creator toiling at the end of their life. I am of the camp, ultimately, that wants to see the U.S. Constitution's original copyright terms restored (and the requirement for registration and renewal). I think it will need to be a gradual process if only to allow those who have (unfairly, in my mind) lobbied for effectively infinite copyright terms to die.
- xur17 5y ago
  > Dead creators can't create new works. The primary purpose of copyright, to my mind, is to incent the creation of new works for the ultimate benefit of humanity. But in the example GP posted, if the person knew they were near death, they very well might stop working on it since their family won't benefit.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    Yes. I said that in the 4th paragraph of my parent comment. Some people might choose not to create works for that reason. Works will become available for masses of artists to build upon sooner if copyright ends at death. I think the latter option will likely create more newworks than the former so I see potentially sacrificing the former as being worthy.

vanviegen 5y ago

Doesn't the same apply to property in general? Should children be allowed to inherit a house, but not intellectual property rights? What if the author dies shortly after creating the work, and was hoping to support their family on the proceeds?

Zigurd 5y ago
The people who wrote the clause of the US constitution that enables the government to grant a temporary monopoly to authors and inventors argued over whether to do so. It was not like ownership of land, structures, etc. The phrase "intellectual property" dates to the 19th c. and was not initially widely used. What we call "copyright" is, as it is referred to in the constitution, a monopoly granted by the government. All your other rights are assumed to exist because it would be outlandish to say a mere government could "grant" them. They are protected by the government, or so it was intended. Unlike real rights, Congress could pass a law setting the term of such a monopoly to zero and there would be no civil rights argument against doing so. Patents and copyright are nothing like your actual rights. This applies to the way copyright law is authorized constitutionally in the US. YMMV.
- dodobirdlord 5y ago
  Outside of portable material property, the idea of property rights as natural rights is pretty fanciful. Land ownership is a good example of a property right that was understood to be government-originated even in the system of English Common Law relied upon by the authors of the Constitution. At the time that the United States split from Great Britain it was understood that land ownership rested with the monarch, that land could at the discretion of the monarch be held in "freehold" by entities other than the monarch, but that the monarch retained certain rights on account of its fundamental ownership of all land, such as the power of eminent domain, or the fact that any property for which a freeholder could not be identifier would revert to the control of the crown. The authors of the Constitution understood that going forward such rights were held by the new federal government, or by the governments of the several States. Moving away from land ownership, you get forms of property rights that are even harder to reconcile with the idea of natural rights. Mineral rights, shipping rights, air rights, spectrum rights, toll rights, salvage rights, etc. None of these things are meaningful absent the concept of a legal system enforced by a government.

smilbandit 5y ago

Death of the author and spouse. No need for it to transfer any farther then that.

Ekaros 5y ago
Not sure why even involve spouse. The money generated and save is in the estate, spouce and others are free to use the money how they want.

xwdv 5y ago

How naive. This encourages killing off an author with a hitman so you can swoop in and steal extremely valuable intellectual property. What, are you going to make an exception for authors killed in grisly murders of mysterious circumstances? Imagine if instead of paying George Lucas billions for the rights to Star Wars Disney just had him killed off for a fraction of the price.

petters 5y ago
Disney would have made much less off Star Wars if it were in the public domain.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> This encourages killing off an author with a hitman so you can swoop in and steal extremely valuable intellectual property. No, because the property rights ceasing to exist means that there is nothing to steal. You can use what would have been exclusive under them, but so can anyone else. Property rights aren't the right to use but the right to exclude; without the right to exclude, there is no property. (I do think taking the author’s life into account is a dumb idea, just not for that reason.)

jimbob45 5y ago

Alright, how's this for an intermediate compromise: instead of 70 + life, make it 70 - remainder of life. That way, people who die the second their book is submitted are still able to leave something for their children but people who live a very long amount of time for whatever reason aren't unjustly rewarded solely for living a long time.

dahart 5y ago

How should works created by groups of people or companies be handled?

goto11 5y ago

How about real estate and land ownership? Shouldn't that revert to the public domain after a set number of years?

bediger4000 5y ago
Doesn't that happen in Hawaii today? I think a lot of land is leased for a long period, and ultimately reverts back to the real owners.
jonathlee 5y ago
Intellectual property and physical property are entirely different. Intellectual property can be shared/multiplied/given away indefinitely while still being retained by the originator while physical property cannot. After copyright expiration, the original author of intellectual property can create derivative works even after their copyright expires (in the same universe, etc.) or even updated revisions, which restart their copyright for the revision. Even if other could do so, I suspect the market for their derivative works will still have a preference for their works vs. others who create derivative works of the original, depending on the quality of the derivatives. It is really hard to own land (or any other physical thing) after you've sold it but the same is not true of a novel.
zozbot234 5y ago
That's effectively how land ownership works in many Asian countries. Every holder of land is effectively leasing it from the public for a set number of years (100 years or whatever). Land sales for indeterminate times (in "fee simple") place an unfair burden on future generations, by denying to them the public benefits of increasing land values. It's effectively a hidden form of debt to a bunch of private rent seekers.

tptacek 5y ago

This doesn't even make conceptual sense. An author chooses to divert their working time to producing a piece of content (say, about a honey-guzzling bear) with the expectation that they'll be rewarded by the market for doing so, which is why they don't instead divert all their efforts into writing ad copy for PepsiCo. The amount of reward the market provides is based on the value that can be extracted from that property. If value can only be extracted while the author draws breath, the market provides much less reward --- for the author, in this lifetime. Bear in mind that intellectual property is in some ways even more defensible than real property. The rights to real property are fundamentally secured through conquest and forcible appropriation. IPR is generated de novo, from the creators themselves. So, to me, the opposite argument seems to apply. There's no obvious moral reason that copyright should be in any way tied to the lifespan of the author. A cultural work is no less valuable because its author happens to get hit by a bus the week after they publish; why on earth should the market for those works be asked to consider that possibility? (This is potentially an argument against creators, in the sense that an unusually long-lived author is no more entitled to excess rewards than an unlucky bus-strike victim is entitled to fewer rewards.)

EvanAnderson 5y ago
> There's no obvious moral reason that copyright should be in any way tied to the lifespan of the author. A dead author can't create new works. Their copyright persisting beyond their death prevents derivative works from being created. Copyright after death forestalls the creation of new derivative works. Is that "worth" eliminating the "copyright-after-death" bargain? I don't know. I tend to think opening up a world of potential derivative works after the death of an author is a good gamble if the desired outcome is more works. Curtailing copyright after death would have to be handled in a nuanced process because some people certainly have "banked on" that business model.
- tptacek 5y ago
  I'm not sure you're following. The limited monopoly on new works incentivizes authorship by providing a market for that content based on the transfer of that monopoly. It doesn't just incentivize the next work; it's the foundation of incentives for all of the work, including the first. Anything you do to make the transfer of those rights less valuable (for instance: terminating them when the original author dies) reduces the incentive for every work of authorship, from the first to the last.

morpheuskafka 5y ago

I would be okay with a fixed term allowing a short time for estates to profit, in the event someone created a work shortly before their death. I think the primary purpose should be to provide for the author, not their heirs, but I can understand how an author would feel like their effort were wasted if they died shortly after. Maybe something like a minimum term of ten years, with the ability to renew it during your life up to fifty years or so.

ejb999 5y ago
so an author that creates a blockbuster book at 25 years old is automatically worth more than an identical work created by a 85 year old? I truly don't get it - why do you feel that you are somehow owed the free use of something someone else created with their blood and sweat?
- saimiam 5y ago
  You aren’t entitled to simply reprint or republish someone else’s work for profit but copyright is blocking derivative and reinterpreted works from entering the public domain. Take Cinderella. Place her in the Wild West. Make her lose a cowboy boot at a village fete. But retain the names from the original so this heroine Cinderella. Clearly derivative, right? Also violative of Disney’s rights to Cinderella’s name and likeness. What copyright blocks (in this instance) is our ability to start from a common source of understanding - naif with evil stepmom rescued by hot prince - to extend the story in random directions. This block should not last in perpetuity is what many of us are saying. In software, this would be akin to preventing forking.
  - irtigor 5y ago
    You are indeed entitled to simply reprint or republish someone else’s work for profit if it is in the public domain. Copyright blocks most derivative work (with a few exceptionns like parodies), but also blocks verbatim unauthorized copies.
    - 5y ago

rhino369 5y ago

It is less crazy when you compare to real property and personal property. Your rights to real estate never expire. I am pretty sure if you traced my house's property title back far enough it was awarded by Charles II to a loyalist. At least with IP, you can make infinite new property.

Matumio 5y ago

Someone once tried to calculate the optimal duration, and came up with 15 years: https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf I do not think law should be calculated (it sounds too much like hiding your political values behind science) but it's worth trying - just to see what assumptions you need to make.

chrismcb 5y ago

Why? Why didn't a creator try to provide for their lives ones? Sure it shouldn't last forever. But just because a best selling author dies, shouldn't mean the kids and spouse end up homeless

rambojazz 5y ago

Wouldn't that... be... the wrong incentive against keeping the author alive? (if you see what I mean)