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> doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time? The whole thing that allows copyright in the US is in the Constitution: > To promote the Progre
by mlyle 2y ago
> doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time?
The whole thing that allows copyright in the US is in the Constitution:
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed.
This was probably a little short, in my opinion. 25+20 seems reasonable; most works have no commercial value after 25 years, and 45 years is already a long time to keep things that have become cultural touchstones locked up. The present legal regime of life of the author plus 70 years is clearly excessive.
> but we are talking automatically putting copyrighted/licensed material in the public domain
This already happens: just after an unreasonably long period of time.
> which isn't GPL compatible.
Code which is in the public domain is freely compatible with code under the GPL.
The whole point is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Stuff kept locked away beyond its useful commercial life is no longer promoting progress (the authors have already gotten paid anything they're going to get). Indeed, most of present works borrow deeply from the public domain but the authors seek to only return the same favor to future authors in a few generations.
How long should Nintendo be able to rent-seek and convince/force the same people to buy the original Super Mario Bros. over and over again? Should that be done in 2030, or 2080? What about operating systems of the 1980s-- should they be locked up to 2090, even though no one will sell them to you?
At some point, there are substantial impediments to legitimate archival and research purposes; to keeping existing important systems working; and to allowing the free exploration and creativity that comes from remixing and building upon past works.
- account42 2y ago> The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed. > This was probably a little short Strongly disagree. And for anything that's distributed digitally it's an eternity. The goal should be that as an adult you can build on the things you grew up with as a child. Anything longer than that is absurd. Remember that copyright is an infringement on your right to free speech so should need extraordinary evidence for that any additional second of the copyright term actually fulfils its constitutional purpose. You don't need to allow maximum commercial exploitation to encourage more works. In fact I would question if commercial exploitation is something that needs to be made possible at all considering that humans are naturally driven to be creative and we have a giant corpus of creative works to fall back on which can now be copied and distributed easier than ever. The current terms that won't even let your grandchildren benefit from the work your generation funded are an outright affront to the spirit of the constitution. At this point we would be better off scrapping the whole concept of copyright.
- mlyle 2y ago> And for anything that's distributed digitally it's an eternity. On the flip side, there's a fair bit of fiction, etc, where the same author has been acting as steward of the series for 35 years. Having them still get proceeds from book 1 is an important part of the calculus to continue. There's a balance to be struck here. I do think there should be a significant fee at renewal. > The current terms that won't even let your grandchildren benefit from the work your generation funded are an outright affront to the spirit of the constitution. The current terms are absurd, agreed. > At this point we would be better off scrapping the whole concept of copyright. Nah; I like there being a market to make expensive works of intellectual property, which depends upon copyright.