6 ms·

I think that's too short. Lifetime of the author or a min. 50 years would make sense to me. Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for surviving d

by adamc 2y ago

I think that's too short. Lifetime of the author or a min. 50 years would make sense to me. Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable. The crazy long Disney thing, though, is what it is because of lobbying muscle.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ronsor 2y ago
I think that's still too long when copyright was originally supposed to be a compromise between society and the author, not a indefinite guarantee for an author. I understand the concern of providing for family, but keep in mind that the average person works continuously to provide for their family and has to be responsible enough to save money. It is not society's responsibility to ensure that; and alternatively if it is to be society's responsibility, there are better mechanisms than copyright.
- account42 2y ago
  Exactly, copyright was never meant to be a retirement plan or to act as wellfare for orphans.
lolinder 2y ago
> Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable. I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to continue to make money after you are dead. Earn enough during your lifetime to provide for your surviving daughters, sure, but I don't like the idea of someone being able to posthumously put a gag on people's ability to express themselves just so that their kids can get a nice inheritance.
- seizethecheese 2y ago
  Perhaps not, but the point of copyright is to provide incentive for creating work. Since earning beyond the grave is an incentive, there’s an argument to protect it (within limit). Another example is Grant’s autobiography, which he wrote as he was dying of throat cancer. No way he would have done that without copyright.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > No way he would have done that without copyright. Why not? For centuries people wrote books so that they would have a legacy and be remembered. They wrote because they felt it was the right thing to do, or because they wanted to control the narrative around their lives. Do you have any specific reason to believe that Grant wrote his autobiography to provide for his successors, rather than just to have written it? I understand the theory about incentivizing people to create, but honestly I'm not convinced that what we get from that deal is worth it. Too often it feels like extended copyright creates a similar set of incentives to advertising—sure, we get more works, but the best works would have been written even with a much shorter copyright because the author had something they wanted to say. The works that are being incentivized by long copyrights are the ones that we could do without.
    - Quillbert182 2y ago
      Grant wrote his autobiography pretty much entirely out of desperation to provide for his family after his death. He had lost everything he had in a Ponzi scheme and was heavily in debt as he was dying from cancer, and the autobiography was his last chance to make money for his family.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        I stand corrected. That said, at the time of Grant's writing copyright in the US was 28 years (with an optional extension for another 14 if the author lived long enough), which means that OP's proposal of 25 years would likely have been sufficient to motivate Grant.
        seizethecheese 2y ago
        Yes. This is the correct synthesis. Copyright is good for one generation and bad beyond that.
  - WillDaSilva 2y ago
    > No way he would have done that without copyright. Was his creation of his autobiography primarily motivated by money? I would assume not.
bdangubic 2y ago
his daughters were in their mid to late 20’s - wtf does he need to support them from his grave
- lolinder 2y ago
  To be fair to him, this was an era where their ability to support themselves was limited—if not in practice at least by strong cultural stigma. The same cannot be said of most people today, and I therefore agree that it's a bad argument for long copyright terms in a modern context.
modeless 2y ago
Authors can provide for their children the same way the rest of us do. With the money they made while they were working.
- seizethecheese 2y ago
  All of us working in development of any kind create value well into the future with our work. The only question is whether you monetize immediately with wages or with ownership
- lolinder 2y ago
  I agree, with the caveat that a literary work can be seen as an asset that has value which pays out over time. It takes a large investment upfront and then pays out slowly. So having a limited ability to pass on that asset if you die prematurely seems only fair—you'd have the same option if you were building something physical—but we shouldn't use inheritance as an argument for longer copyright. The question of how long someone should be allowed to earn money from a work should be orthogonal from the question of whether that right to earn money should be inheritable. This is the flaw in life plus 70—it assumes that copyright should last indefinitely during one's lifetime and then provide for successors. I'd rather see a flat rate for how long we're comfortable locking up a work in copyright, successors or otherwise.
  - modeless 2y ago
    > It takes a large investment upfront and then pays out slowly Does it really? Sure, timeless classics pay out over a long period of time but they are by far the exception. I'll wager that the vast majority of copyrighted works make the vast majority of their money in the first decade. So why do we need essentially perpetual copyright? (Essentially perpetual because almost none of the works created in my lifetime will ever pass out of copyright before I die)
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > the vast majority of their money in the first decade. So why do we need essentially perpetual copyright? I agree. I think OP's proposal of a fixed term of 25 years is more than reasonable. All I'm saying is that it should be inheritable and not based on when the author dies.
Brybry 2y ago
The problem that I see is not the Mark Twains but the vast majority of other authors. Their works go out of print but they're still copyrighted so people can't legally reproduce them (for profit or otherwise). My grandfather was a published author with some success but he's dead and his stuff is no longer in print. No one in my family is going to see revenue from his work. No one outside of his generation (when he was successful) will ever have a chance to read his books as they're impossible to find now. Most books written in the 20th century are basically gone from public availability.[1][2] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-m... [2] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works_Disappeared_-_Paul_Heald.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works...
- xienze 2y ago
  > No one outside of his generation (when he was successful) will ever have a chance to read his books as they're impossible to find now. Does the family not have rights to those works? A copy of the books? Scan them and release them copyright free if you want the world to see them.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago
Drug parents are only 10 - 20 years, and it works great. The creator gets to make enough money to finance their next drug, and the public gets cheaper generics after a decade or two. There's no reason any other IP should be longer.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Agreed. I think lifetime of the author, or moderate fixed term in the case of untimely death or corporate copyright, is perfectly reasonable. 10-20 years is way too short, it does not give enough consideration to the author's rights.
shiroiushi 2y ago
>Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable. Why is that reasonable? Why should someone's daughters get a free ride instead of having to work for a living like everyone else?
- poulpy123 2y ago
  Are you in favor of forbidding inheritance to everyone or just for authors ?
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    We're not talking about inheritance of real property or money, we're talking about "IP rights" or "royalties". The two are not the same. Why should someone's kid get money from their parent's book decades after it's been published? No other profession has this perk.
    - redwall_hp 2y ago
      And, sure, why not. Let's have a 100% inheritance tax beyond a maybe a couple million in protected assets. If we want to pretend to have a meritocratic system, then we can't have that joke of a loophole creating dynastic wealth. Either we have a system where people earn wealth on merit, or we have a feudal aristocracy with extra steps. It can't be both.
    - poulpy123 2y ago
      Why should someone's kid get the house from their parents decades after it's been built? The issue of inheritance is the same for physical and immaterial assets

by adamc 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ronsor 2y ago

I think that's still too long when copyright was originally supposed to be a compromise between society and the author, not a indefinite guarantee for an author. I understand the concern of providing for family, but keep in mind that the average person works continuously to provide for their family and has to be responsible enough to save money. It is not society's responsibility to ensure that; and alternatively if it is to be society's responsibility, there are better mechanisms than copyright.

account42 2y ago
Exactly, copyright was never meant to be a retirement plan or to act as wellfare for orphans.

lolinder 2y ago

> Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable. I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to continue to make money after you are dead. Earn enough during your lifetime to provide for your surviving daughters, sure, but I don't like the idea of someone being able to posthumously put a gag on people's ability to express themselves just so that their kids can get a nice inheritance.

seizethecheese 2y ago
Perhaps not, but the point of copyright is to provide incentive for creating work. Since earning beyond the grave is an incentive, there’s an argument to protect it (within limit). Another example is Grant’s autobiography, which he wrote as he was dying of throat cancer. No way he would have done that without copyright.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > No way he would have done that without copyright. Why not? For centuries people wrote books so that they would have a legacy and be remembered. They wrote because they felt it was the right thing to do, or because they wanted to control the narrative around their lives. Do you have any specific reason to believe that Grant wrote his autobiography to provide for his successors, rather than just to have written it? I understand the theory about incentivizing people to create, but honestly I'm not convinced that what we get from that deal is worth it. Too often it feels like extended copyright creates a similar set of incentives to advertising—sure, we get more works, but the best works would have been written even with a much shorter copyright because the author had something they wanted to say. The works that are being incentivized by long copyrights are the ones that we could do without.
  - Quillbert182 2y ago
    Grant wrote his autobiography pretty much entirely out of desperation to provide for his family after his death. He had lost everything he had in a Ponzi scheme and was heavily in debt as he was dying from cancer, and the autobiography was his last chance to make money for his family.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      I stand corrected. That said, at the time of Grant's writing copyright in the US was 28 years (with an optional extension for another 14 if the author lived long enough), which means that OP's proposal of 25 years would likely have been sufficient to motivate Grant.
      - seizethecheese 2y ago
        Yes. This is the correct synthesis. Copyright is good for one generation and bad beyond that.
- WillDaSilva 2y ago
  > No way he would have done that without copyright. Was his creation of his autobiography primarily motivated by money? I would assume not.

bdangubic 2y ago

his daughters were in their mid to late 20’s - wtf does he need to support them from his grave

lolinder 2y ago
To be fair to him, this was an era where their ability to support themselves was limited—if not in practice at least by strong cultural stigma. The same cannot be said of most people today, and I therefore agree that it's a bad argument for long copyright terms in a modern context.

modeless 2y ago

Authors can provide for their children the same way the rest of us do. With the money they made while they were working.

seizethecheese 2y ago
All of us working in development of any kind create value well into the future with our work. The only question is whether you monetize immediately with wages or with ownership
lolinder 2y ago
I agree, with the caveat that a literary work can be seen as an asset that has value which pays out over time. It takes a large investment upfront and then pays out slowly. So having a limited ability to pass on that asset if you die prematurely seems only fair—you'd have the same option if you were building something physical—but we shouldn't use inheritance as an argument for longer copyright. The question of how long someone should be allowed to earn money from a work should be orthogonal from the question of whether that right to earn money should be inheritable. This is the flaw in life plus 70—it assumes that copyright should last indefinitely during one's lifetime and then provide for successors. I'd rather see a flat rate for how long we're comfortable locking up a work in copyright, successors or otherwise.
- modeless 2y ago
  > It takes a large investment upfront and then pays out slowly Does it really? Sure, timeless classics pay out over a long period of time but they are by far the exception. I'll wager that the vast majority of copyrighted works make the vast majority of their money in the first decade. So why do we need essentially perpetual copyright? (Essentially perpetual because almost none of the works created in my lifetime will ever pass out of copyright before I die)
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > the vast majority of their money in the first decade. So why do we need essentially perpetual copyright? I agree. I think OP's proposal of a fixed term of 25 years is more than reasonable. All I'm saying is that it should be inheritable and not based on when the author dies.

Brybry 2y ago

The problem that I see is not the Mark Twains but the vast majority of other authors. Their works go out of print but they're still copyrighted so people can't legally reproduce them (for profit or otherwise). My grandfather was a published author with some success but he's dead and his stuff is no longer in print. No one in my family is going to see revenue from his work. No one outside of his generation (when he was successful) will ever have a chance to read his books as they're impossible to find now. Most books written in the 20th century are basically gone from public availability.[1][2] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-m... [2] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works_Disappeared_-_Paul_Heald.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/How_Copyright_Keeps_Works...

xienze 2y ago
> No one outside of his generation (when he was successful) will ever have a chance to read his books as they're impossible to find now. Does the family not have rights to those works? A copy of the books? Scan them and release them copyright free if you want the world to see them.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago

Drug parents are only 10 - 20 years, and it works great. The creator gets to make enough money to finance their next drug, and the public gets cheaper generics after a decade or two. There's no reason any other IP should be longer.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

Agreed. I think lifetime of the author, or moderate fixed term in the case of untimely death or corporate copyright, is perfectly reasonable. 10-20 years is way too short, it does not give enough consideration to the author's rights.

shiroiushi 2y ago

>Mark Twain, for example, was worried about providing for surviving daughters. I think that's reasonable. Why is that reasonable? Why should someone's daughters get a free ride instead of having to work for a living like everyone else?

poulpy123 2y ago
Are you in favor of forbidding inheritance to everyone or just for authors ?
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  We're not talking about inheritance of real property or money, we're talking about "IP rights" or "royalties". The two are not the same. Why should someone's kid get money from their parent's book decades after it's been published? No other profession has this perk.
  - redwall_hp 2y ago
    And, sure, why not. Let's have a 100% inheritance tax beyond a maybe a couple million in protected assets. If we want to pretend to have a meritocratic system, then we can't have that joke of a loophole creating dynastic wealth. Either we have a system where people earn wealth on merit, or we have a feudal aristocracy with extra steps. It can't be both.
  - poulpy123 2y ago
    Why should someone's kid get the house from their parents decades after it's been built? The issue of inheritance is the same for physical and immaterial assets