5 ms·

The original copyright act in the US granted protection for 14 years with an option for 14 year renewal. I think society would be much better served if we went

• roc 15y ago
  If the goal is to ensure creatives can make a living at creating things that are trivial to copy, 14 years may be too short. And registering for renewals strikes me as an unnecessary fig leaf to entrenched publishers (who else would have the money or inclination to register and pay for such?). 25 years seems fair.
  • _delirium 15y ago
    The original motivation for renewals I believe was that orphan works and abandoned/discontinued projects would lapse, since nobody would bother to renew them.
    • roc 15y ago
      Which is a reasonable goal. But I find such rules create little more than traps for the lone creator or industry outsider; someone who is already at massive disadvantage in the industry. Unnecessary bits of procedure are naught but hand-outs to those who have the time to professionally game the system. And companies [1] are highly unlikely to pass on paying a nominal fee [2] when the potential return is so high. [1] Only companies are likely to have orphan works that are even known to exist by anyone willing to appropriate them. [2] The fee must necessarily be nominal, lest you again disadvantage the lone creator/outsider.
  • m_eiman 15y ago
    What could you possibly create that will take you more than 14 years to earn back that would only be protected by copyright?
    • roc 15y ago
      The problem is that the copyright clock starts ticking the moment you've fixed an expression, not from any registration or publishing date. So a creation that is largely done but is being shopped around to publishers, or sitting in a drawer collecting small tweaks and edits is losing its monopoly. And if you erode much off 14 years, it starts to sound unnecessarily short. Just ask any writer, comedian or musician how long their original creations were kicking around before they got anyone interested in paying them for it. Several years is common for their pre-discovery work.
      • DannoHung 15y ago
        Just change it to "The moment the work is displayed, published, performed, or otherwise exhibited in a public venue under authorization from the creator" or whatever the equivalent legalese is.
        • roc 15y ago
          If copyright doesn't begin until exhibition, then the outright theft of private works is legalized. [1] You'll have reintroduced the problems that implicit copyright existing at the moment of creation was intended to solve. So to fix that, we can then either recognize the right of the author prior to publishing/exhibition with more complicated rules, or simply extend the term a little and maintain simplicity. [1] Joe writes a book. He shows it to Bob for notes. Bob publishes it under his own name. The copyright would belong to Bob.
          • sophacles 15y ago
            There is a sane middle ground. Copyright is granted upon creation, but infringement can only be pursued in cases where theft (or strongly probably) theft can be shown. Someone you don't know has the same idea? Tough cookies, you should have published. After public unveiling (registration, publication, etc), the timer starts. This puts some onus on the creator to not spread his work around willy-nilly, but allows him to shop publishers etc.
      • 15y ago
  • nextparadigms 15y ago
    20-25 years might be fine, but I still wish there were stronger fair use laws, and that people are more easily allowed to remix someone's work. Think about how much more "fan-art" could be created around more creative works, which would serve both the author by increasing the popularity of the original work through both increased awareness and loyalty from the fans, and also the public by enhancing the culture around it.
    • roc 15y ago
      I absolutely agree. In an ideal world, Fair Use should have been codified long ago, and a more-broad 'non-commercial' qualification added. That said, given the state of lobbyists and legislation in the US, I sometimes feel that it's better for all of us that they aren't being given a shot at re-writing (and thus inevitably eroding) those rights.
• digisth 15y ago
  Another thing we could do instead is index the copyright length to life expectancy. It was 14 years in 1790 (average expectancy was 35.5), which means it should be around 28 years today. It was meant to give creators a time-limited monopoly (presumably while they were actually alive); that length sounds about right to me for that.
  • bct 15y ago
    Most of that difference in life expectancy is due to lowered infant mortality, they weren't copyrighting anything anyhow.
  • astrodust 15y ago
    It really should be the life-span of the author plus some arbitrary amount, but the arbitrary part shouldn't be more than one generation. It does society no good to have your grandchildren living off your legacy without an imperative to create their own.