3 ms·
I personally like this idea, or some variant thereof. Bringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate
by glesica 14y ago
I personally like this idea, or some variant thereof. Bringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate copyright (since corporations don't necessarily ever cease to exist). Additionally, if a creator dies suddenly, his estate can still exercise his copyright. This is important for small-time creators who may be supporting families and the like.
The big counter-argument that I've heard is that movie studios (Disney especially with the "vault") still make money on movies that are decades old. But this is a fundamentally flawed argument. The point of copyright (both theoretically and in the US Constitution) is to encourage creation. So it doesn't matter if copyright doesn't maximize Disney's revenue, so long as it is enough to encourage them to make movies in the first place. A term of roughly 10-20 years should be more than enough to do that.
- toyg 14y agoIf anything, the Disney example is in favour of short terms: as it is, Disney could now just sit on their bottom and keep selling what they've produced in the 60s rather than creating new content.
- rmc 14y agoBringing the life of the author into the copyright term just muddies the waters with respect to corporate copyright (since corporations don't necessarily ever cease to exist) They've thought of that. Usually the law says "50 years from creation if the copyright is held by a company" or something like that.
- luriel 14y agoCorporate copyright is 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shorter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Duration_of_copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Sta... Can somebody please explain to me how this is not insane?