4 ms·

>So you think publishers only deserve to get paid for the first copy, and then all of humanity should be free to replicate and distribute their work for no cost

>So you think publishers only deserve to get paid for the first copy, and then all of humanity should be free to replicate and distribute their work for no cost? Unironically yes. Copyright is a moral evil, and "intellectual property" is a legal fiction. No one owns ideas. That being said, I'm pragmatic and realize that copyright (and patents/trademarks/etc.) can be a necessary evil as well, which is why I'd fully support lowering copyright down to 10 or 20 years or so. No reason Disney should have exclusive rights to their latest Marvel CGI-fest for longer than someone who discovers a cure for cancer would have exclusive rights to profit from their discovery.

baseballdork 4y ago
> I'd fully support lowering copyright down to 10 or 20 years or so. I agree. It should be no longer than a patent duration. Death of the author + 70 years is just an insane duration and means that works created in your lifetime will practically never enter public domain before you die.
- owlbite 4y ago
  I could go for some scheme where the first 10 years are free, and then you have to register for $x where x is a value that doubles every year. That allows the big IPs to get roughly what they want for commercially viable stuff, but also means that 99% of stuff will drop out of copyright quickly.
- beej71 4y ago
  The original term in the US was 14 years with one optional 14-year renewal. That sounds good to me. The most popular thing I've written was 27 years ago, so the initial versions would just about be in the public domain now. But the newer versions would still be copyrighted.
- jimhefferon 4y ago
  > Death of the author + 70 years is just an insane duration Also, I have had trouble finding when some authors died.
DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
> Copyright is a moral evil Please elaborate.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  >> Copyright is a moral evil > Please elaborate. I think your parent was expressing the inherent tradeoff in Copyright. On the one hand, the country has a vested interested in allowing citizens to participate in culture. That doesn't just mean consuming, but also modifying and creating using inspiration from other parts of culture. On the other hand, the country recognizes that the generation of cultural artifacts is greatly increased if creators have limited monopoly rights over their creations so they can more easily make a living creating them. I'm not sure if I would call it a "moral evil", but I can understand how one could.
- gostsamo 4y ago
  Not the GP, but the argument could be summarized as: Intellectual work takes time and effort only once when it is created. Copying information is so cheap, it is close to zero. Yet, copyright holders accumulate copyrightable material and try to earn money from it in perpetuity. This is the classic case of rent seeking where the concept of ownership is used to take value from the labor of others. I don't fully agree with this interpretation, but I won't say that I totally disagree either.
rmbyrro 4y ago
> "Intellectual property" is a legal fiction. No one owns ideas. Just to clarify: intellectual property does not protect ideas, but the way they are expressed. You can rewrite an entire book and republish it with your own words. What you cannot is copy the exact same words.
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  I tend to think more along the lines of sequel rights. The copyrighted idea is not the exact same words, but the idea of the universe of Star Wars. I think we would live in a world of superior creativity if making money off derivative works made without permission was legal. (Probably those works should be required to say “unofficial” on them or something along those lines)
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    I have a... partial counter-argument to this. Publishers would absolutely jump at the chance to screw over individual authors with "unofficial" derivative works. In fact, we know this to be the case because its how publishing used to work pre-Berne Convention. Imagine the mid-90s anime fansubbing scene, except everyone is a for-profit business who is able to obtain copyright over their translations of other people's work. It was incredibly scummy and hostile to artists in ways that would make Jeff Bezos[0] blush. There's also a related problem of dividing "official" and "unofficial" works in such a way as to be legally airtight. "Noncommercial use" is actually really narrow, because the work itself is a commercial product and its production costs money. Think about how many fan artists have Patreon campaigns these days: sure, you don't have to pay to view their work, but they are still running the same kind of business that the original/official release is using. It's the sort of thing more appropriate for the original creators to just have a blanket "I don't care about people who do X, Y, or Z" policy/license rather than peeling back the legal protections on certain creative jobs in a way that, say, the scumbags at large media conglomerates might figure out how to monetize. Or, in other words, that fanartist with a Patreon is arguably protected from corporate competition by the fact that their work is illegal but practically unprosecuted in a way you can't put into law. None of this would matter, of course, if copyright terms were limited to a short time period. All of the more onerous copyright rules I mentioned above were far more tolerable in a world where copyright on works people cared about regularly expired. If lawmakers had known that copyright terms would get blown out to life plus a tail period that is basically another life term, they probably would not have allowed derivative works to be controlled in this fashion. [0] Owner of Amazon, the company that put your local bookstore out of business and then made it incredibly easy to resell other people's books on their platform
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Unironically yes. Copyright is a moral evil, and "intellectual property" is a legal fiction. No one owns ideas. These are extreme views. That's fine! But it's why we get crap like Pearson putting NFTs on textbooks. Because reasonable objections get drowned out by fringe opposition. (Side note: all property is a legal fiction.)
xhkkffbf 4y ago
Copyright is the only way that digital workers can be paid. To put a lefty spin on it, copyright is just a form of union that allows digital workers to keep control of their work. Regular property laws protect artisans and craftspeople who work with physical things from having their work stolen so they can earn a living. Don't you feel that the writers, coders, and digital artists deserve to have some control over their work too?
- TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
  Not for life + 70 years, no. Once you share an idea you should have a chance to be compensated for your work, but it enters the collective unconscious and it becomes part of society. It's like having a child, you can raise it however you like until a certain point, but then it goes out into the world.
  - xhkkffbf 4y ago
    Sure it is for life-- and longer. If a carpenter builds a house, that house is the carpenter's forever. He/she can pass it on to their heirs and those can pass it onto their heirs. The same goes for all physical goods. And, others have pointed this out, but copyright has nothing to do with ideas. If you want to write your own book with the ideas, go to it.
    - chownie 4y ago
      The carpenter does not get a cut when their children sell the house, crucially.
- adamc 4y ago
  1) Not for work-for-hire, no. 2) 70 years is too long.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
antonymy 4y ago
I'd like it that if a work has been out of print for more than 10 years then its copyright should expire, regardless of the remaining copyright duration. Let them have their 100+ year copyright, but its forfeit if they don't bother to keep it in print. Let somebody else print it if you can't be bothered.

baseballdork 4y ago

> I'd fully support lowering copyright down to 10 or 20 years or so. I agree. It should be no longer than a patent duration. Death of the author + 70 years is just an insane duration and means that works created in your lifetime will practically never enter public domain before you die.

owlbite 4y ago
I could go for some scheme where the first 10 years are free, and then you have to register for $x where x is a value that doubles every year. That allows the big IPs to get roughly what they want for commercially viable stuff, but also means that 99% of stuff will drop out of copyright quickly.
beej71 4y ago
The original term in the US was 14 years with one optional 14-year renewal. That sounds good to me. The most popular thing I've written was 27 years ago, so the initial versions would just about be in the public domain now. But the newer versions would still be copyrighted.
jimhefferon 4y ago
> Death of the author + 70 years is just an insane duration Also, I have had trouble finding when some authors died.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago

> Copyright is a moral evil Please elaborate.

nordsieck 4y ago
>> Copyright is a moral evil > Please elaborate. I think your parent was expressing the inherent tradeoff in Copyright. On the one hand, the country has a vested interested in allowing citizens to participate in culture. That doesn't just mean consuming, but also modifying and creating using inspiration from other parts of culture. On the other hand, the country recognizes that the generation of cultural artifacts is greatly increased if creators have limited monopoly rights over their creations so they can more easily make a living creating them. I'm not sure if I would call it a "moral evil", but I can understand how one could.
gostsamo 4y ago
Not the GP, but the argument could be summarized as: Intellectual work takes time and effort only once when it is created. Copying information is so cheap, it is close to zero. Yet, copyright holders accumulate copyrightable material and try to earn money from it in perpetuity. This is the classic case of rent seeking where the concept of ownership is used to take value from the labor of others. I don't fully agree with this interpretation, but I won't say that I totally disagree either.

rmbyrro 4y ago

> "Intellectual property" is a legal fiction. No one owns ideas. Just to clarify: intellectual property does not protect ideas, but the way they are expressed. You can rewrite an entire book and republish it with your own words. What you cannot is copy the exact same words.

NineStarPoint 4y ago
I tend to think more along the lines of sequel rights. The copyrighted idea is not the exact same words, but the idea of the universe of Star Wars. I think we would live in a world of superior creativity if making money off derivative works made without permission was legal. (Probably those works should be required to say “unofficial” on them or something along those lines)
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  I have a... partial counter-argument to this. Publishers would absolutely jump at the chance to screw over individual authors with "unofficial" derivative works. In fact, we know this to be the case because its how publishing used to work pre-Berne Convention. Imagine the mid-90s anime fansubbing scene, except everyone is a for-profit business who is able to obtain copyright over their translations of other people's work. It was incredibly scummy and hostile to artists in ways that would make Jeff Bezos[0] blush. There's also a related problem of dividing "official" and "unofficial" works in such a way as to be legally airtight. "Noncommercial use" is actually really narrow, because the work itself is a commercial product and its production costs money. Think about how many fan artists have Patreon campaigns these days: sure, you don't have to pay to view their work, but they are still running the same kind of business that the original/official release is using. It's the sort of thing more appropriate for the original creators to just have a blanket "I don't care about people who do X, Y, or Z" policy/license rather than peeling back the legal protections on certain creative jobs in a way that, say, the scumbags at large media conglomerates might figure out how to monetize. Or, in other words, that fanartist with a Patreon is arguably protected from corporate competition by the fact that their work is illegal but practically unprosecuted in a way you can't put into law. None of this would matter, of course, if copyright terms were limited to a short time period. All of the more onerous copyright rules I mentioned above were far more tolerable in a world where copyright on works people cared about regularly expired. If lawmakers had known that copyright terms would get blown out to life plus a tail period that is basically another life term, they probably would not have allowed derivative works to be controlled in this fashion. [0] Owner of Amazon, the company that put your local bookstore out of business and then made it incredibly easy to resell other people's books on their platform

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> Unironically yes. Copyright is a moral evil, and "intellectual property" is a legal fiction. No one owns ideas. These are extreme views. That's fine! But it's why we get crap like Pearson putting NFTs on textbooks. Because reasonable objections get drowned out by fringe opposition. (Side note: all property is a legal fiction.)

xhkkffbf 4y ago

Copyright is the only way that digital workers can be paid. To put a lefty spin on it, copyright is just a form of union that allows digital workers to keep control of their work. Regular property laws protect artisans and craftspeople who work with physical things from having their work stolen so they can earn a living. Don't you feel that the writers, coders, and digital artists deserve to have some control over their work too?

TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
Not for life + 70 years, no. Once you share an idea you should have a chance to be compensated for your work, but it enters the collective unconscious and it becomes part of society. It's like having a child, you can raise it however you like until a certain point, but then it goes out into the world.
- xhkkffbf 4y ago
  Sure it is for life-- and longer. If a carpenter builds a house, that house is the carpenter's forever. He/she can pass it on to their heirs and those can pass it onto their heirs. The same goes for all physical goods. And, others have pointed this out, but copyright has nothing to do with ideas. If you want to write your own book with the ideas, go to it.
  - chownie 4y ago
    The carpenter does not get a cut when their children sell the house, crucially.
adamc 4y ago
1) Not for work-for-hire, no. 2) 70 years is too long.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

antonymy 4y ago

I'd like it that if a work has been out of print for more than 10 years then its copyright should expire, regardless of the remaining copyright duration. Let them have their 100+ year copyright, but its forfeit if they don't bother to keep it in print. Let somebody else print it if you can't be bothered.