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I generally think that copyright should have to be extended every 5 years for an escalating fee. Part of the scheme is that to extend the copyright, you must li

I generally think that copyright should have to be extended every 5 years for an escalating fee. Part of the scheme is that to extend the copyright, you must list contact information for the current owners of the copyright. All these numbers below are purely examples of the kind of scaling I think should exist So, from creation 0-5 years everything is automatically instantly copyrighted (as it is today). 5-10 years you must manually extend the copyright and it costs $500/work. 10-15 years it should cost $5,000/work. 15-20 years $100,000/work. 20-25 years $500,000/work, etc. By the time we're at 50 years, an additional 5 years registration should cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and would only be done for the _most_ important properties (like The Mouse). (In my ideal world, these fees would go into an arts fund in the federal government that could be used to encourage the creation of less financially viable arts, like local theatre programs, arts education for children, etc) In such a scheme if a work is particularly valuable (either because it's being mass distributed, or because it has value in not being mass distributed), then the owner could maintain the copyright, but it would just be totally financially non-viable for these kinds of abandoned games to remain locked up. There'd be absolutely no business case for it.

dontlaugh 3y ago
Or even simpler: 5 years and you can extend it twice. That’s it.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  I would be totally fine with that, but I think it would be...not politically viable. This scheme is basically my compromise that I think could be able to survive in some form. I think your proposal is a better version of copyright, but I think as a starting point for a legislative discussion it probably doesn't get a conversation off the ground
- tptacek 3y ago
  That would be a shorter term of copyright than has ever existed in the United States.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    What one country has done in the past doesn’t have to limit what any country does in the future.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Sure, but at this point why pretend we're discussing a copyright reform? You're effectively asking for abolition.
      - dontlaugh 3y ago
        15 years is much longer than 0, that’s a silly thing to say.
        tptacek 3y ago
        I think I'm trying to say that you're as likely to get abolition as you are a term of copyright shorter than has ever existed in the US, so why not shoot for the moon?
        mrob 3y ago
        Because it's not clear that short copyright terms are harmful. Modern copyright shouldn't make us lose sight of the goal of promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts". 15 years is a reasonable starting point for achieving that aim. If it's still too long it could always be further reduced later.
        tptacek 3y ago
        You're as likely to get abolition as you are to get a 15 year copyright, which is ~1/4 what copyright was in 1909.
        ncallaway 3y ago
        To be fair, at the founding it was 14+14, so 15 years absolute isn’t without precedent. But I agree about the modern political situation around copyright.
mcast 3y ago
It would probably make more sense for copyright fees to be proportional to the revenue the company makes. Disney paying $500 to license Mickey Mouse after 5 years while making millions isn't equitable for a small business copyrighting a toy brand for instance.
- henry2023 3y ago
  Why a small Toy brand needs copyright after 25+ years? what benefit society gets out of that?
- ncallaway 3y ago
  I'd be open to there being an additional cost based on total revenue earned, but the scale should be the fixed costs, with significant additional revenue just moving that number up. I think the goal for the financial cost of the extension to be roughly equal to the "harm" caused to the rest of society for locking it up. So, I think making the scale in some way proportional to revenue could be a rough proxy for "how popular is this thing", which is then a rough proxy for "how much does it harm society to lock it up for 5 more years". That said, I'm more interested in being equitable to _society_, rather than being equitable to _creator_. Copyright should be just good enough of a deal that it encourages creative works. It doesn't need to do more than that.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
When Marvel releases a new movie, some absurdly large chunk of revenue is earned in the first 5 years. Why allow them to extend it at all? Even 5 years is excessive, give them 18 months. Disallow it entirely for any work that was ever released with DRM. And since we're talking video games, I'm not certain that online games count as being DRM-free... if it can't be 100% self-hosted, no copyright for you. What Blizzard did to bnetd was shameful
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  > Why allow them to extend it at all? Marvel's an interesting choice, because the comic book depiction of Iron Man (for example) came out in the 60's, and almost certainly didn't make anywhere near the kind of money that the movies did. I'm not generally opposed to copyright holders getting some revenue from the later adaption of their work, especially in situations like that. 5 years is cutting it really close for your typical film adaption of a book: the first Twilight and Harry Potter movies came out 4 years after their books, and I could definitely see movie studios just waiting an extra year to cut out the original authors. My ideal world would see original authors retaining these kinds of royalties for prolonged periods of time (maybe 40 years or the life of the author, whichever's longer), but losing their monopoly rights in a much shorter timespan: basically, for the first 5-10 years copyright works the way it does today, but beyond that anybody's allowed to make derivative works, in exchange for some legally-mandated revenue slice.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > the first Twilight and Harry Potter movies came out 4 years after their books, and I could definitely see movie studios just waiting an extra year to cut out the original authors. So Rowling only gets to be some 8 figure millionaire instead of a 10 figure billionaire? That's so unfair. > My ideal world would see original authors retaining these kinds of royalties for prolonged periods of time ( The prolonged period of time should be 18 months. I don't think the concept of "royalties for adapting someone else's work" is severable from the concept of copyright. These things are either the same, or royalties are some subset of copyright. Even just re-typesetting a book is an adaptation as far as these things are concerned.
101008 3y ago
so let's say I wrote a book that I like it, some people like it but it was far from a success -and I want to prevent from being copied, I have to pay $100k after 15 years? In publishing times that's not much, books published in 2008 would have to pay that to avoid being copied and distributed freely.
- jstanley 3y ago
  Well, yeah, that's exactly the point. To stop you from being able to prevent it from being copied!
  - dmonitor 3y ago
    I could see some negative patterns cropping up with this. Author writes book, publisher sits on it until the 5 years are up and then they can publish without royalties to the author. Same would happen for a movie script or the like. Publishers just turn into scavenging hyenas waiting for copyrights to expire
    - bdowling 3y ago
      Here's an even more problematic example: 1. Author publishes a dozen novels over the first 20 years of his/her career. All of them are good, but none of them sell well. 2. Author does not pay the copyright renewal fees because they are too expensive. Anyone can now copy those books and pay nothing. 3. Author's next book is well-received. The author is hailed as a genius and there is suddenly a ton of interest in the author's earlier works. 4. Everyone but the author makes money on the author's older works. Edit: The point here is that when a work is successful, which is rare, it is unfair for everyone other than the author, who is most responsible for the work, to profit from it.
      - snvzz 3y ago
        Copyright is supposed to be an incentive to creating things, with the ultimate benefit of an eventual richer public domain. Yet the author in your scenario didn't lack the motivation. Under the proposed system, he'd also be more likely to be encouraged to continue creating new works, rather than just retiring because of the one successful book.
Aardwolf 3y ago
This system may create weird incentives though. Say I make an indie game to sell on steam, earning a meager but acceptable income from it, and I want to provide it 15 years of patches and updates (not unseen in indie games). Does updating it with a new patch adding a few features count as a new work or the same one? Or should I instead not do updates, but make a "part 2" instead since that's a new work? But then it's not the same game anymore and it may be a worse experience for players to have to get two separate games, rather than one improved one!
- xtracto 3y ago
  Right, your example got me thinking about Dwarf Fortress, which was initially released on 2006 (according to Wikipedia). By GP's assessment they would have to pay $100,000 a year to preserve their copyright? Seems a bit harsh, I think.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    $100,000 for 5 years (though, again, my specific numeric suggestions were mostly an example placeholder, not the result of considered thinking about what exact values make the most economic sense). It's also not clear to me that continued updates wouldn't reset the term. So, if they wanted to maintain a copyright on the 2006 version of DF (v0.21.93.19a, released August 2006), they would need to pay $500 in 2011, and $5,000 in 2016, and $100k in 2021, for a total payment to the unitd sates treasury of $105,500. However, even if they paid nothing the latest release (50.09, released June 28, 2023) would remain under copyright automatically and for free until June 28, 2028. So they _could_ choose to let the community have access to the oldest versions of DF under public domain, while retaining copyright on the most recent versions. Or they could choose to pay to keep even the initial versions locked up. I'd also probably want to make sure that the legislative language ensured that you didn't have to pay the copyright registration on each patch release. So, if the DF team paid for the initial version to remain under copyright, _all_ the patch versions would retain that same copyright status without needing to be individually paid for. That seems like an implementation detail for the legislation that would be important to get right, but I didn't feel it was important to specify in the proposal.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
As a sometimes-author and indie game dev, I find the sound of that to be exhausting. Tiny companies, and individuals especially, find it hard enough to deal with weird regulations and costs. Like, some retired Grandma who writes popular mysteries is going to have to pay the government regularly to keep amazon from selling thousands of copies of her work without having to pay her? Everyone who makes a side project game on itch.io has to keep it online forever, or they lose rights to it forever?
- concordDance 3y ago
  This balances the good of people being able to see/read/play the work against the good of incentivising future people to make more of it. Grandma can make money from her new mysteries and get some from the first five years without needing to charge. As it is, many works are being irreparably lost to time.
  - EatingWithForks 3y ago
    What happens if grandma became disabled and is living off the residuals of her books 10 years ago published? Should old artists just die in poverty like the good old days then?
    - californical 3y ago
      This is such an edge case that it makes me think that maybe copyright isn’t the solution that grandma needs. And by their proposal, the first couple extensions would be extremely cheap. It could be a simple form on some copyright.gov website to register your work.
      - EatingWithForks 3y ago
        The edge case is actually quite common-- many authors mostly survive off their entire body of work, not just the works published recently. This was an issue in e.g. Disney, who refused to pay royalties to Star Wars books published many many years ago because they claimed to have purchased assets but not liabilities. One of the authors who was suing for royalties needed the money for cancer treatments. Bad look. 5k/work is not cheap. That's how much publishers may pay for a book. 15k/work is prohibitively expensive for books.
adamc 3y ago
On many levels, this would not work well. A quick example: Stories written for children typically do not generate as much revenue per year. They make up for that, eventually (if they are popular) because they are new to every new cohort of children, so that stories like "The Pokey Little Puppy" get sold for decades before falling out of favor. Your scheme would make writing children's stories less attractive. In general, overly clever schemes like this often do not work as anticipated.
- concordDance 3y ago
  > Your scheme would make writing children's stories less attractive. Honestly, this is fine. We already have tens of thousands of good children's stories, let those who do it for love of the art or the exceptional ones (like Rowlin make more if they want.
  - adamc 3y ago
    No, it's not fine. Children are important, and worthy of getting new stories that address their needs. In general, judging which categories don't need the protection of copyright amounts to deciding which categories of readers don't matter. It's elitist and unhelpful.
    - lovehashbrowns 3y ago
      Wouldn’t this scheme benefit children? Imagine growing up on Arthur and hitting early adulthood as its copyright expires and being able to contribute to the Arthur universe you grew up on. Conversely, I wonder how many people know Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is public domain and different from the version Disney has had since the 50s. The way things are now, I couldn’t make anything related to most of the things I grew up with because everything being pushed on children is owned by a corporation.
      - adamc 3y ago
        The issue with Alice's Adventures is separate from copyright. Many (most) people have never read Lewis Carroll; being in the public domain doesn't change that, and there is no giant profit in publishing books in the public domain, so they aren't going to get a big promotional budget.
elektrontamer 3y ago
A government getting ungodly sums of money to do a very complicated task when they can't even manage the simplest tasks without corruption or mismanagement?
- ncallaway 3y ago
  How is maintaining a simple registry a "very complicated" task. Secretaries of State in every state do this. This is the kind of nuts and bolts operations that governments are actually equipped to handle.
  - elektrontamer 3y ago
    The part where they redistribute it. There's no way that money isn't going to government cronies in my country no matter which party is in power.
    - ncallaway 3y ago
      Oh, you were complaining about the parenthetical statement where I suggested my ideal use would be for it to go to the arts? That's fine, it's a parenthetical because I don't think it would survive the actual proposal because of concerns like yours. I think the US government is able to do a decent job of funding the arts, but I'm aware a lot of people don't agree, so I'd definitely expect that in the end the funds would just pay for the administration of the program itself, and the excess would go into the treasury and general fund.
      - elektrontamer 3y ago
        Fair enough.
michaelmrose 3y ago
"The mouse" isn't an abstract entity you can copyright instead you would have to copyright countless actual works and the price to keep hundreds or thousands of individual works would be essentially billions to keep "the mouse". While this is an interesting concept if the practical effect is to end most copyrights within 20 years wouldn't it be simpler just to do that?
- ncallaway 3y ago
  See this comment where I briefly mention the same thing in relation to software: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36671647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36671647 > I'd also probably want to make sure that the legislative language ensured that you didn't have to pay the copyright registration on each patch release. So, if the DF team paid for the initial version to remain under copyright, _all_ the patch versions would retain that same copyright status without needing to be individually paid for. That seems like an implementation detail for the legislation that would be important to get right, but I didn't feel it was important to specify in the proposal.
tryptophan 3y ago
I think first 5 years should be free, then the author declares the value of their work to be X and pays a yearly tax of 0.05 * X to keep for copyright for as long as they want. To make sure they dont put a low X, have anyone be able to buy the copyright from the author for X. If someone wants to buy, author can raise X to keep their copyright. This is a nice system because it is naturally progressive and balanced, huge corps with billion $ IP will finally start paying a ton to have the gov keep enforcing their copyrights.
- tnecniv 3y ago
  The problem with a lot of these systems is that copyrighting happens at the time of creation whether you register or not. If you don’t register, it may be harder to prove someone is violating your copyright in court, but it is still the IP of the creator (or employer of the creator if a contract was signed). I guess you could argue that if you haven’t bothered filing for copyright after 5 years the value is approximately $0, but that poses the following problem: Let’s say I make a web comic that’s basically worthless for 5 years. Then, after 8 years Jimmy Fallon or some other late night show sees it and shows it on the air. Overnight, my old comics, which I have implicitly valued at $0.00 or close to $0.00, become incredibly popular. Disney or an IP troll or whoever can come along and then buy my early comics for pennies before I realize what happened and I get nothing.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  I don't think this was very well thought out. The only way this would be a nice system is that it would icentivise everyone to make everything free and open source, or don't create anything at all, since if you create siomething with the intention to get value from it, anyone else can decide to take it from you simply because they are Apple and you don't have the 100k to stop them. It's already bad enough that big companies can buy smaller companies just by waving the cash at the owners, and all the Figma, Centos, etc users get to suck it. Except that it wouldn't even be nice in that sarcastic way, because what happens to copyleft in that world? I think it's critically important that the "you may have but not steal this" in GPL doesn't expire in a mere 5 years, and no one has to pay hundreds of thousands to prevent a big for-profit company from stealing something that they could have had for free anyway.
jlg23 3y ago
> In such a scheme if a work is particularly valuable (either because it's being mass distributed, or because it has value in not being mass distributed), then the owner could maintain the copyright, but it would just be totally financially non-viable for these kinds of abandoned games to remain locked up. There'd be absolutely no business case for it. Value is in they eye of the beholder. If someone makes $30/month from an indie game they developed 30 years ago, is it ok to take those 30 because they ain't 3 million? I genuinely like the idea of regularly having to renew the claim to copyright, though.
- mitchdoogle 3y ago
  Why couldn't they continue to sell the game? There are lots of works out of copyright that still make money just by virtue of the method of delivery (i.e. a bookstore selling a physical copy of Don Quixote is preferable to many people over downloading it online)
- ncallaway 3y ago
  > is it ok to take those 30 because they ain't 3 million? I don't think this is a fair stating of what would be happening. We aren't _taking_ anything from them. We are no longer _granting_ them exclusive control of the work. But copyright isn't the default state of existence. It's an agreement between author's and society. The _purpose_ of the agreement is to encourage new works entering the public domain. The current copyright term is fundamentally broken. It's _far_ longer than it needs to be to encourage the creation of new works. Answer me this: would be the person who developed their indie game 30 years ago not have developed it because they knew that it would no longer be producing $30/month 30 years hence? I sincerely doubt it. The term should be _just_ long enough to encourage the creation of new works *and not longer*. Further, the author could...release a sequel to the game, which might make $30/month for another 30 years. Perhaps this might also encourage the creation of new works > they developed 30 years ago Interestingly, the original copyright law written by the founders was 14 years, with an optional 14 year extension. So the founding father's response would've been: "Yes! Of course! They already had 28 years to profit off their work! It's time for the public to get to enjoy this...indie game? What's an indie game?"
ta988 3y ago
So every broke artist that cannot afford the fees would not benefit from their work once it becomes recognized way later in their life? that sound pretty bad.
- cogman10 3y ago
  How often does this really happen? Becoming an artist that makes it big is like winning the lottery. It almost never happens in the modern era because we are flooded with extremely talented artists that have no differentiation between them. But further, those "make it late" artists are almost certainly making the majority of their money on their later works. And if we get into the nitty gritty of art, it's super common that the rights to those early works are long sold for $.10. It's unlikely the original artist could see any sort of monetary benefit. On the flip side, media protection is a huge racket that is primarily a detriment to society. It stops media companies from innovating (just keep making mice videos), encourages nasty behavior (Like Disney's vault, where they purposefully lock away media so they can re-release it every n years, for a limited time only), and ultimately limits creativity. Consider how often we hear the story of a youtube video getting taken down because someone hummed something that sounded too close to copyrighted material. That is an active harm to art that is very common.
- owisd 3y ago
  The vast majority of artists make all the money they’re ever going to make off their copyright in the first few years, so seems like a fair trade to end perpetual corporate copyright if an extremely tiny number of bleeding heart edge cases lose out.
pickingdinner 3y ago
That won't work, because most copyrighted material is worthless, and we can't predict what retains value in the long run, and most don't. Mickey is a rare example of value surviving to the point it was worth (in dollars) protecting. That's why I prefer a flat tax. 15% goes to the copyright/patent distribution system. Anyone can copy and profit off anything, but just pays 15% into the system. The system then pays out based on the rules and registration information. Public domain is then redefined as whatever is tax free. And, you can also buy anything directly from the government. Prices are determined by market value if it's a physical product. For digital goods, some rules may have to be defined, and maybe rules to define rules defined. Copies of songs could all just be 25 cents, etc. Books 2.99. But this is to own a copy (defined as having a copy on your system plus having paid for it). Just listening to a copy could be free. At least this is the direction I wish the world were headed.
LeFantome 3y ago
You do not need to charge that much. If nobody is monetizing it, nobody is going to maintain the copyright. Patents work similarly. Monetization does not need to happen every year though. Think Disney vault and how they would keep classic movies out of distribution intentionally to keep them valuable. This complicates the “legally available” test somewhat. Charging a nominal fee to maintain copyright is a good test though. It makes sure that “somebody” still considers themselves the owner and makes sure they care more than zero.

dontlaugh 3y ago

Or even simpler: 5 years and you can extend it twice. That’s it.

ncallaway 3y ago
I would be totally fine with that, but I think it would be...not politically viable. This scheme is basically my compromise that I think could be able to survive in some form. I think your proposal is a better version of copyright, but I think as a starting point for a legislative discussion it probably doesn't get a conversation off the ground
tptacek 3y ago
That would be a shorter term of copyright than has ever existed in the United States.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  What one country has done in the past doesn’t have to limit what any country does in the future.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Sure, but at this point why pretend we're discussing a copyright reform? You're effectively asking for abolition.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      15 years is much longer than 0, that’s a silly thing to say.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        I think I'm trying to say that you're as likely to get abolition as you are a term of copyright shorter than has ever existed in the US, so why not shoot for the moon?
        mrob 3y ago
        Because it's not clear that short copyright terms are harmful. Modern copyright shouldn't make us lose sight of the goal of promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts". 15 years is a reasonable starting point for achieving that aim. If it's still too long it could always be further reduced later.
        tptacek 3y ago
        You're as likely to get abolition as you are to get a 15 year copyright, which is ~1/4 what copyright was in 1909.
        ncallaway 3y ago
        To be fair, at the founding it was 14+14, so 15 years absolute isn’t without precedent. But I agree about the modern political situation around copyright.

mcast 3y ago

It would probably make more sense for copyright fees to be proportional to the revenue the company makes. Disney paying $500 to license Mickey Mouse after 5 years while making millions isn't equitable for a small business copyrighting a toy brand for instance.

henry2023 3y ago
Why a small Toy brand needs copyright after 25+ years? what benefit society gets out of that?
ncallaway 3y ago
I'd be open to there being an additional cost based on total revenue earned, but the scale should be the fixed costs, with significant additional revenue just moving that number up. I think the goal for the financial cost of the extension to be roughly equal to the "harm" caused to the rest of society for locking it up. So, I think making the scale in some way proportional to revenue could be a rough proxy for "how popular is this thing", which is then a rough proxy for "how much does it harm society to lock it up for 5 more years". That said, I'm more interested in being equitable to _society_, rather than being equitable to _creator_. Copyright should be just good enough of a deal that it encourages creative works. It doesn't need to do more than that.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

When Marvel releases a new movie, some absurdly large chunk of revenue is earned in the first 5 years. Why allow them to extend it at all? Even 5 years is excessive, give them 18 months. Disallow it entirely for any work that was ever released with DRM. And since we're talking video games, I'm not certain that online games count as being DRM-free... if it can't be 100% self-hosted, no copyright for you. What Blizzard did to bnetd was shameful

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
> Why allow them to extend it at all? Marvel's an interesting choice, because the comic book depiction of Iron Man (for example) came out in the 60's, and almost certainly didn't make anywhere near the kind of money that the movies did. I'm not generally opposed to copyright holders getting some revenue from the later adaption of their work, especially in situations like that. 5 years is cutting it really close for your typical film adaption of a book: the first Twilight and Harry Potter movies came out 4 years after their books, and I could definitely see movie studios just waiting an extra year to cut out the original authors. My ideal world would see original authors retaining these kinds of royalties for prolonged periods of time (maybe 40 years or the life of the author, whichever's longer), but losing their monopoly rights in a much shorter timespan: basically, for the first 5-10 years copyright works the way it does today, but beyond that anybody's allowed to make derivative works, in exchange for some legally-mandated revenue slice.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > the first Twilight and Harry Potter movies came out 4 years after their books, and I could definitely see movie studios just waiting an extra year to cut out the original authors. So Rowling only gets to be some 8 figure millionaire instead of a 10 figure billionaire? That's so unfair. > My ideal world would see original authors retaining these kinds of royalties for prolonged periods of time ( The prolonged period of time should be 18 months. I don't think the concept of "royalties for adapting someone else's work" is severable from the concept of copyright. These things are either the same, or royalties are some subset of copyright. Even just re-typesetting a book is an adaptation as far as these things are concerned.

101008 3y ago

so let's say I wrote a book that I like it, some people like it but it was far from a success -and I want to prevent from being copied, I have to pay $100k after 15 years? In publishing times that's not much, books published in 2008 would have to pay that to avoid being copied and distributed freely.

jstanley 3y ago
Well, yeah, that's exactly the point. To stop you from being able to prevent it from being copied!
- dmonitor 3y ago
  I could see some negative patterns cropping up with this. Author writes book, publisher sits on it until the 5 years are up and then they can publish without royalties to the author. Same would happen for a movie script or the like. Publishers just turn into scavenging hyenas waiting for copyrights to expire
  - bdowling 3y ago
    Here's an even more problematic example: 1. Author publishes a dozen novels over the first 20 years of his/her career. All of them are good, but none of them sell well. 2. Author does not pay the copyright renewal fees because they are too expensive. Anyone can now copy those books and pay nothing. 3. Author's next book is well-received. The author is hailed as a genius and there is suddenly a ton of interest in the author's earlier works. 4. Everyone but the author makes money on the author's older works. Edit: The point here is that when a work is successful, which is rare, it is unfair for everyone other than the author, who is most responsible for the work, to profit from it.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      Copyright is supposed to be an incentive to creating things, with the ultimate benefit of an eventual richer public domain. Yet the author in your scenario didn't lack the motivation. Under the proposed system, he'd also be more likely to be encouraged to continue creating new works, rather than just retiring because of the one successful book.

Aardwolf 3y ago

This system may create weird incentives though. Say I make an indie game to sell on steam, earning a meager but acceptable income from it, and I want to provide it 15 years of patches and updates (not unseen in indie games). Does updating it with a new patch adding a few features count as a new work or the same one? Or should I instead not do updates, but make a "part 2" instead since that's a new work? But then it's not the same game anymore and it may be a worse experience for players to have to get two separate games, rather than one improved one!

xtracto 3y ago
Right, your example got me thinking about Dwarf Fortress, which was initially released on 2006 (according to Wikipedia). By GP's assessment they would have to pay $100,000 a year to preserve their copyright? Seems a bit harsh, I think.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  $100,000 for 5 years (though, again, my specific numeric suggestions were mostly an example placeholder, not the result of considered thinking about what exact values make the most economic sense). It's also not clear to me that continued updates wouldn't reset the term. So, if they wanted to maintain a copyright on the 2006 version of DF (v0.21.93.19a, released August 2006), they would need to pay $500 in 2011, and $5,000 in 2016, and $100k in 2021, for a total payment to the unitd sates treasury of $105,500. However, even if they paid nothing the latest release (50.09, released June 28, 2023) would remain under copyright automatically and for free until June 28, 2028. So they _could_ choose to let the community have access to the oldest versions of DF under public domain, while retaining copyright on the most recent versions. Or they could choose to pay to keep even the initial versions locked up. I'd also probably want to make sure that the legislative language ensured that you didn't have to pay the copyright registration on each patch release. So, if the DF team paid for the initial version to remain under copyright, _all_ the patch versions would retain that same copyright status without needing to be individually paid for. That seems like an implementation detail for the legislation that would be important to get right, but I didn't feel it was important to specify in the proposal.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

As a sometimes-author and indie game dev, I find the sound of that to be exhausting. Tiny companies, and individuals especially, find it hard enough to deal with weird regulations and costs. Like, some retired Grandma who writes popular mysteries is going to have to pay the government regularly to keep amazon from selling thousands of copies of her work without having to pay her? Everyone who makes a side project game on itch.io has to keep it online forever, or they lose rights to it forever?

concordDance 3y ago
This balances the good of people being able to see/read/play the work against the good of incentivising future people to make more of it. Grandma can make money from her new mysteries and get some from the first five years without needing to charge. As it is, many works are being irreparably lost to time.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  What happens if grandma became disabled and is living off the residuals of her books 10 years ago published? Should old artists just die in poverty like the good old days then?
  - californical 3y ago
    This is such an edge case that it makes me think that maybe copyright isn’t the solution that grandma needs. And by their proposal, the first couple extensions would be extremely cheap. It could be a simple form on some copyright.gov website to register your work.
    - EatingWithForks 3y ago
      The edge case is actually quite common-- many authors mostly survive off their entire body of work, not just the works published recently. This was an issue in e.g. Disney, who refused to pay royalties to Star Wars books published many many years ago because they claimed to have purchased assets but not liabilities. One of the authors who was suing for royalties needed the money for cancer treatments. Bad look. 5k/work is not cheap. That's how much publishers may pay for a book. 15k/work is prohibitively expensive for books.

adamc 3y ago

On many levels, this would not work well. A quick example: Stories written for children typically do not generate as much revenue per year. They make up for that, eventually (if they are popular) because they are new to every new cohort of children, so that stories like "The Pokey Little Puppy" get sold for decades before falling out of favor. Your scheme would make writing children's stories less attractive. In general, overly clever schemes like this often do not work as anticipated.

concordDance 3y ago
> Your scheme would make writing children's stories less attractive. Honestly, this is fine. We already have tens of thousands of good children's stories, let those who do it for love of the art or the exceptional ones (like Rowlin make more if they want.
- adamc 3y ago
  No, it's not fine. Children are important, and worthy of getting new stories that address their needs. In general, judging which categories don't need the protection of copyright amounts to deciding which categories of readers don't matter. It's elitist and unhelpful.
  - lovehashbrowns 3y ago
    Wouldn’t this scheme benefit children? Imagine growing up on Arthur and hitting early adulthood as its copyright expires and being able to contribute to the Arthur universe you grew up on. Conversely, I wonder how many people know Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is public domain and different from the version Disney has had since the 50s. The way things are now, I couldn’t make anything related to most of the things I grew up with because everything being pushed on children is owned by a corporation.
    - adamc 3y ago
      The issue with Alice's Adventures is separate from copyright. Many (most) people have never read Lewis Carroll; being in the public domain doesn't change that, and there is no giant profit in publishing books in the public domain, so they aren't going to get a big promotional budget.

elektrontamer 3y ago

A government getting ungodly sums of money to do a very complicated task when they can't even manage the simplest tasks without corruption or mismanagement?

ncallaway 3y ago
How is maintaining a simple registry a "very complicated" task. Secretaries of State in every state do this. This is the kind of nuts and bolts operations that governments are actually equipped to handle.
- elektrontamer 3y ago
  The part where they redistribute it. There's no way that money isn't going to government cronies in my country no matter which party is in power.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    Oh, you were complaining about the parenthetical statement where I suggested my ideal use would be for it to go to the arts? That's fine, it's a parenthetical because I don't think it would survive the actual proposal because of concerns like yours. I think the US government is able to do a decent job of funding the arts, but I'm aware a lot of people don't agree, so I'd definitely expect that in the end the funds would just pay for the administration of the program itself, and the excess would go into the treasury and general fund.
    - elektrontamer 3y ago
      Fair enough.

michaelmrose 3y ago

"The mouse" isn't an abstract entity you can copyright instead you would have to copyright countless actual works and the price to keep hundreds or thousands of individual works would be essentially billions to keep "the mouse". While this is an interesting concept if the practical effect is to end most copyrights within 20 years wouldn't it be simpler just to do that?

ncallaway 3y ago
See this comment where I briefly mention the same thing in relation to software: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36671647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36671647 > I'd also probably want to make sure that the legislative language ensured that you didn't have to pay the copyright registration on each patch release. So, if the DF team paid for the initial version to remain under copyright, _all_ the patch versions would retain that same copyright status without needing to be individually paid for. That seems like an implementation detail for the legislation that would be important to get right, but I didn't feel it was important to specify in the proposal.

tryptophan 3y ago

I think first 5 years should be free, then the author declares the value of their work to be X and pays a yearly tax of 0.05 * X to keep for copyright for as long as they want. To make sure they dont put a low X, have anyone be able to buy the copyright from the author for X. If someone wants to buy, author can raise X to keep their copyright. This is a nice system because it is naturally progressive and balanced, huge corps with billion $ IP will finally start paying a ton to have the gov keep enforcing their copyrights.

tnecniv 3y ago
The problem with a lot of these systems is that copyrighting happens at the time of creation whether you register or not. If you don’t register, it may be harder to prove someone is violating your copyright in court, but it is still the IP of the creator (or employer of the creator if a contract was signed). I guess you could argue that if you haven’t bothered filing for copyright after 5 years the value is approximately $0, but that poses the following problem: Let’s say I make a web comic that’s basically worthless for 5 years. Then, after 8 years Jimmy Fallon or some other late night show sees it and shows it on the air. Overnight, my old comics, which I have implicitly valued at $0.00 or close to $0.00, become incredibly popular. Disney or an IP troll or whoever can come along and then buy my early comics for pennies before I realize what happened and I get nothing.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
I don't think this was very well thought out. The only way this would be a nice system is that it would icentivise everyone to make everything free and open source, or don't create anything at all, since if you create siomething with the intention to get value from it, anyone else can decide to take it from you simply because they are Apple and you don't have the 100k to stop them. It's already bad enough that big companies can buy smaller companies just by waving the cash at the owners, and all the Figma, Centos, etc users get to suck it. Except that it wouldn't even be nice in that sarcastic way, because what happens to copyleft in that world? I think it's critically important that the "you may have but not steal this" in GPL doesn't expire in a mere 5 years, and no one has to pay hundreds of thousands to prevent a big for-profit company from stealing something that they could have had for free anyway.

jlg23 3y ago

> In such a scheme if a work is particularly valuable (either because it's being mass distributed, or because it has value in not being mass distributed), then the owner could maintain the copyright, but it would just be totally financially non-viable for these kinds of abandoned games to remain locked up. There'd be absolutely no business case for it. Value is in they eye of the beholder. If someone makes $30/month from an indie game they developed 30 years ago, is it ok to take those 30 because they ain't 3 million? I genuinely like the idea of regularly having to renew the claim to copyright, though.

mitchdoogle 3y ago
Why couldn't they continue to sell the game? There are lots of works out of copyright that still make money just by virtue of the method of delivery (i.e. a bookstore selling a physical copy of Don Quixote is preferable to many people over downloading it online)
ncallaway 3y ago
> is it ok to take those 30 because they ain't 3 million? I don't think this is a fair stating of what would be happening. We aren't _taking_ anything from them. We are no longer _granting_ them exclusive control of the work. But copyright isn't the default state of existence. It's an agreement between author's and society. The _purpose_ of the agreement is to encourage new works entering the public domain. The current copyright term is fundamentally broken. It's _far_ longer than it needs to be to encourage the creation of new works. Answer me this: would be the person who developed their indie game 30 years ago not have developed it because they knew that it would no longer be producing $30/month 30 years hence? I sincerely doubt it. The term should be _just_ long enough to encourage the creation of new works *and not longer*. Further, the author could...release a sequel to the game, which might make $30/month for another 30 years. Perhaps this might also encourage the creation of new works > they developed 30 years ago Interestingly, the original copyright law written by the founders was 14 years, with an optional 14 year extension. So the founding father's response would've been: "Yes! Of course! They already had 28 years to profit off their work! It's time for the public to get to enjoy this...indie game? What's an indie game?"

ta988 3y ago

So every broke artist that cannot afford the fees would not benefit from their work once it becomes recognized way later in their life? that sound pretty bad.

cogman10 3y ago
How often does this really happen? Becoming an artist that makes it big is like winning the lottery. It almost never happens in the modern era because we are flooded with extremely talented artists that have no differentiation between them. But further, those "make it late" artists are almost certainly making the majority of their money on their later works. And if we get into the nitty gritty of art, it's super common that the rights to those early works are long sold for $.10. It's unlikely the original artist could see any sort of monetary benefit. On the flip side, media protection is a huge racket that is primarily a detriment to society. It stops media companies from innovating (just keep making mice videos), encourages nasty behavior (Like Disney's vault, where they purposefully lock away media so they can re-release it every n years, for a limited time only), and ultimately limits creativity. Consider how often we hear the story of a youtube video getting taken down because someone hummed something that sounded too close to copyrighted material. That is an active harm to art that is very common.
owisd 3y ago
The vast majority of artists make all the money they’re ever going to make off their copyright in the first few years, so seems like a fair trade to end perpetual corporate copyright if an extremely tiny number of bleeding heart edge cases lose out.

pickingdinner 3y ago

That won't work, because most copyrighted material is worthless, and we can't predict what retains value in the long run, and most don't. Mickey is a rare example of value surviving to the point it was worth (in dollars) protecting. That's why I prefer a flat tax. 15% goes to the copyright/patent distribution system. Anyone can copy and profit off anything, but just pays 15% into the system. The system then pays out based on the rules and registration information. Public domain is then redefined as whatever is tax free. And, you can also buy anything directly from the government. Prices are determined by market value if it's a physical product. For digital goods, some rules may have to be defined, and maybe rules to define rules defined. Copies of songs could all just be 25 cents, etc. Books 2.99. But this is to own a copy (defined as having a copy on your system plus having paid for it). Just listening to a copy could be free. At least this is the direction I wish the world were headed.

LeFantome 3y ago

You do not need to charge that much. If nobody is monetizing it, nobody is going to maintain the copyright. Patents work similarly. Monetization does not need to happen every year though. Think Disney vault and how they would keep classic movies out of distribution intentionally to keep them valuable. This complicates the “legally available” test somewhat. Charging a nominal fee to maintain copyright is a good test though. It makes sure that “somebody” still considers themselves the owner and makes sure they care more than zero.