4 ms·

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but th

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.

hysan 2y ago
Genuine question since I don’t know much about inheritance. Don’t things like houses, stocks, etc get taxed in certain places? Whereas I don’t think copyright does? In a way, that is similar to having to give property away upon death (can’t pay the tax, forced to get rid of it).
- lupire 2y ago
  Income is taxed, obviously. Copyright is taken away, originally after 14 years, now 70(?) years. After the death of the creator
  - xattt 2y ago
    It is amazing that modern medicine has extended authors’ afterlife by 56 years!
    - geysersam 2y ago
      Originally it was 14 years plus another 14 years of the author survived that long. Copyright in the afterlife was not a thing
  - pyuser583 2y ago
    It was interesting from 2010 to 2015 when all of the people who died in WWII and Holocaust lost their copyrights. It started with Freud, and ended when Adolph Hitler and Anne Frank lost copyright protection on the same day.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    its necessary to make sure dead authors have an incentive to keep on writing great books
    - bandrami 2y ago
      The usual steelman I hear is that Ulysses S. Grant wrote his memoirs on his deathbed because he knew the royalties after he died would take care of his family. I grant that's a marginal case but I don't know that the CBA there actually works on long copyright's side.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        Taking copyright away on death is a bad method, and that's a reasonable argument against it. It should be a fixed term that isn't very long. And if that term ends before death and they want more money then great, write something new. I think most people objecting to copyright lasting after death are really reacting to how long it all is, and the average amount of time that is. Some of them really don't want it to go past death, but I think most of those objectors would be fine with copyright that lasts exactly 25 years no matter what.
      - ekianjo 2y ago
        you dont need copyright for that. by the time he died the family could have kept the memoirs and sold the exploitation rights to whoever wanted them. contracts are a thing.
        encomiast 2y ago
        Exactly where do "exploitation rights" come from if not copyright? Anyone who is going to enter a contract for these "exploitation rights" is going to want exclusive rights so others can't just share, republish, copy, etc. This is what copyright affords those who want to sell "exploitation rights"
        ekianjo 2y ago
        lets say a publisher secures the manuscript after buying it and the copyright is gone at the author's death. As a first mover they will make most of the money during the first publishing round. By the time copycats end up on the market most of the market for the book was captured by the first mover.
  - MiscIdeaMaker99 2y ago
    What if the author/copyright holder is a corporation?
- pyuser583 2y ago
  People who hold copyrights for profit tend create corporations to hold the copyrights, then just pass on shares in the company to their heirs. These shares are valued the same as any other shares for an opaque, non-public company, with a single owner, whose assets have very ambiguous and widely disparate values, and which has the ability to cease operations for long periods of time and still remain profitable. In other words, they’re worth whatever the owner wants them to be worth. This is just my cynical interpretation. But if you think valuing real estate is hard, try valuing copyrights.
rwasco 2y ago
Copyright is literally the opposite of property rights. Just because people call it "property rights" does not make it true. It's as false a term as calling the events of 1939-1945 "World Peace 2".
- chii 2y ago
  > Copyright is literally the opposite of property rights. Why is that? Property rights, like copyright, is merely a societal construct that have been agreed upon (via legislative processes). There are countries today that does not respect copyright (or impose their own copyright rules), just like they do so for property rights. Therefore, this copyright is _exactly_ like property rights. In fact, copyright is slightly less powerful, since they have the potential to expire unlike property rights (tho of course, under US copyright rules, the expiration seems to be getting extended every time disney starts losing theirs...).
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    Property rights solve the problem of physical goods being rivalrous. We can't both eat the same portion of food; if one person has it another doesn't. Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Many people can read the same (e-)book. There are other reasons why societies originally granted a completely artificial temporary monopoly on information: the theory that it'll incentivize the creation of more works, which is a thing the society might want more than they want the ability to copy and modify and remix it on day one. Emphasis on "might" want: it's not obvious that that's the correct tradeoff today, in a world in which we have not merely the printing press but digital information that can be trivially copied and modified, and a society of people who all have the tools at their fingertips to use that information to create and remix and do wondrous creative things with all of culture.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Not literally, but in every other sense, yes. It does. You make a great idea, and someone with more money, time, and resources will mass produce your product. They become ubiquitous with the product and the creator is now disincentized from sharing more potentially great ideas.We use copyright to make sure creators aren't disincentized. The problem isn't scarcity, but falls into the same core issue. Lots of people want thing, but the owner wants either security or compensation that it's their thing. >Emphasis on "might" want: it's not obvious that that's the correct tradeoff today I'd still say so. More so today than before where it's only gotten much more expensive to live. Now we go to people outcopying each other and the creator is simply homeless.

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.

hysan 2y ago

Genuine question since I don’t know much about inheritance. Don’t things like houses, stocks, etc get taxed in certain places? Whereas I don’t think copyright does? In a way, that is similar to having to give property away upon death (can’t pay the tax, forced to get rid of it).

lupire 2y ago
Income is taxed, obviously. Copyright is taken away, originally after 14 years, now 70(?) years. After the death of the creator
- xattt 2y ago
  It is amazing that modern medicine has extended authors’ afterlife by 56 years!
  - geysersam 2y ago
    Originally it was 14 years plus another 14 years of the author survived that long. Copyright in the afterlife was not a thing
- pyuser583 2y ago
  It was interesting from 2010 to 2015 when all of the people who died in WWII and Holocaust lost their copyrights. It started with Freud, and ended when Adolph Hitler and Anne Frank lost copyright protection on the same day.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  its necessary to make sure dead authors have an incentive to keep on writing great books
  - bandrami 2y ago
    The usual steelman I hear is that Ulysses S. Grant wrote his memoirs on his deathbed because he knew the royalties after he died would take care of his family. I grant that's a marginal case but I don't know that the CBA there actually works on long copyright's side.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Taking copyright away on death is a bad method, and that's a reasonable argument against it. It should be a fixed term that isn't very long. And if that term ends before death and they want more money then great, write something new. I think most people objecting to copyright lasting after death are really reacting to how long it all is, and the average amount of time that is. Some of them really don't want it to go past death, but I think most of those objectors would be fine with copyright that lasts exactly 25 years no matter what.
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      you dont need copyright for that. by the time he died the family could have kept the memoirs and sold the exploitation rights to whoever wanted them. contracts are a thing.
      - encomiast 2y ago
        Exactly where do "exploitation rights" come from if not copyright? Anyone who is going to enter a contract for these "exploitation rights" is going to want exclusive rights so others can't just share, republish, copy, etc. This is what copyright affords those who want to sell "exploitation rights"
        ekianjo 2y ago
        lets say a publisher secures the manuscript after buying it and the copyright is gone at the author's death. As a first mover they will make most of the money during the first publishing round. By the time copycats end up on the market most of the market for the book was captured by the first mover.
- MiscIdeaMaker99 2y ago
  What if the author/copyright holder is a corporation?
pyuser583 2y ago
People who hold copyrights for profit tend create corporations to hold the copyrights, then just pass on shares in the company to their heirs. These shares are valued the same as any other shares for an opaque, non-public company, with a single owner, whose assets have very ambiguous and widely disparate values, and which has the ability to cease operations for long periods of time and still remain profitable. In other words, they’re worth whatever the owner wants them to be worth. This is just my cynical interpretation. But if you think valuing real estate is hard, try valuing copyrights.

rwasco 2y ago

Copyright is literally the opposite of property rights. Just because people call it "property rights" does not make it true. It's as false a term as calling the events of 1939-1945 "World Peace 2".

chii 2y ago
> Copyright is literally the opposite of property rights. Why is that? Property rights, like copyright, is merely a societal construct that have been agreed upon (via legislative processes). There are countries today that does not respect copyright (or impose their own copyright rules), just like they do so for property rights. Therefore, this copyright is _exactly_ like property rights. In fact, copyright is slightly less powerful, since they have the potential to expire unlike property rights (tho of course, under US copyright rules, the expiration seems to be getting extended every time disney starts losing theirs...).
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  Property rights solve the problem of physical goods being rivalrous. We can't both eat the same portion of food; if one person has it another doesn't. Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Many people can read the same (e-)book. There are other reasons why societies originally granted a completely artificial temporary monopoly on information: the theory that it'll incentivize the creation of more works, which is a thing the society might want more than they want the ability to copy and modify and remix it on day one. Emphasis on "might" want: it's not obvious that that's the correct tradeoff today, in a world in which we have not merely the printing press but digital information that can be trivially copied and modified, and a society of people who all have the tools at their fingertips to use that information to create and remix and do wondrous creative things with all of culture.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Not literally, but in every other sense, yes. It does. You make a great idea, and someone with more money, time, and resources will mass produce your product. They become ubiquitous with the product and the creator is now disincentized from sharing more potentially great ideas.We use copyright to make sure creators aren't disincentized. The problem isn't scarcity, but falls into the same core issue. Lots of people want thing, but the owner wants either security or compensation that it's their thing. >Emphasis on "might" want: it's not obvious that that's the correct tradeoff today I'd still say so. More so today than before where it's only gotten much more expensive to live. Now we go to people outcopying each other and the creator is simply homeless.