3 ms·

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 i

by 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.
angersock 15y ago
Several years would still give you nine or ten under copyright. Anyways, if you can't move product in a few years, you should be trying something new.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Avshalom 15y ago
  Hopefully this will be less of a problem going forward with ebooks but the internet is full of stories of writers with several profitable books published who ended up sitting on novels for years when the horror market collapsed, good well edited books that went on to be profitable when "Urban Fantasy" started selling. Or just a case of publishers not wanting to publish more than X books a year from a given writer, regardless of output. Those are books of course. Movie scripts are notorious for floating around Hollywood for years, sometimes decades.
randomdata 15y ago
Copyright was setup by the people to give incentive to create new works for the people. If you can rest on the work you did decades ago, there leaves no reason to continue with the arts†, which goes against the whole spirit of copyright in the first place. † Assuming profit is the driving motivator, as copyright does.
- roc 15y ago
  I think you're putting too much emphasis on trying to maximize output from each individual creator. When, in every case I've ever heard or read of, creators already go as fast as they can (provided they can afford to live off their creations). And, further, despite those efforts very few find subsequent success. So worrying that creators might sit by the proverbial poolside instead of creating new works seems silly to me and completely at odds with reality, even under our current copyright regime where copyright is effectively perpetual. What I take into consideration when thinking about copyright terms, is trying to balance a reasonable time from which a creator can make a living off their work (given what we know about how creation happens), against a reasonable time before which others can try to make their living from that work. As that is also what the public domain is about: freeing up old works for others to extend, adapt and interpret in their own attempt to make a living. And along those lines, it's worth recognizing that there's a very real risk to the rate of 'new' creation that would come from shorter copyright terms. Should Mickey Mouse fall out of copyright, wouldn't the corporate incentive be to put Mickey Mouse into every children's work? (Particularly given the state of our risk-averse creative industries.) The 'new' works we got might well start looking even more familiar than they do today.
  - jberryman 15y ago
    > So worrying that creators might sit by the proverbial poolside instead of creating new works seems silly to me and completely at odds with reality... It seems equally silly to worry about squeezing every ounce of profitability out of every work of art that we can think of, and for every edge case. Artists will keep creating whether copyright is infinite or only 14 years. Maybe 22.7 years is optimal, but this is a boring discussion to have
  - 15y ago

by roc 15y ago

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.

angersock 15y ago

Several years would still give you nine or ten under copyright. Anyways, if you can't move product in a few years, you should be trying something new.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Avshalom 15y ago
Hopefully this will be less of a problem going forward with ebooks but the internet is full of stories of writers with several profitable books published who ended up sitting on novels for years when the horror market collapsed, good well edited books that went on to be profitable when "Urban Fantasy" started selling. Or just a case of publishers not wanting to publish more than X books a year from a given writer, regardless of output. Those are books of course. Movie scripts are notorious for floating around Hollywood for years, sometimes decades.

randomdata 15y ago

Copyright was setup by the people to give incentive to create new works for the people. If you can rest on the work you did decades ago, there leaves no reason to continue with the arts†, which goes against the whole spirit of copyright in the first place. † Assuming profit is the driving motivator, as copyright does.

roc 15y ago
I think you're putting too much emphasis on trying to maximize output from each individual creator. When, in every case I've ever heard or read of, creators already go as fast as they can (provided they can afford to live off their creations). And, further, despite those efforts very few find subsequent success. So worrying that creators might sit by the proverbial poolside instead of creating new works seems silly to me and completely at odds with reality, even under our current copyright regime where copyright is effectively perpetual. What I take into consideration when thinking about copyright terms, is trying to balance a reasonable time from which a creator can make a living off their work (given what we know about how creation happens), against a reasonable time before which others can try to make their living from that work. As that is also what the public domain is about: freeing up old works for others to extend, adapt and interpret in their own attempt to make a living. And along those lines, it's worth recognizing that there's a very real risk to the rate of 'new' creation that would come from shorter copyright terms. Should Mickey Mouse fall out of copyright, wouldn't the corporate incentive be to put Mickey Mouse into every children's work? (Particularly given the state of our risk-averse creative industries.) The 'new' works we got might well start looking even more familiar than they do today.
- jberryman 15y ago
  > So worrying that creators might sit by the proverbial poolside instead of creating new works seems silly to me and completely at odds with reality... It seems equally silly to worry about squeezing every ounce of profitability out of every work of art that we can think of, and for every edge case. Artists will keep creating whether copyright is infinite or only 14 years. Maybe 22.7 years is optimal, but this is a boring discussion to have
- 15y ago