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The major problem with copyright is it's too long. The vast majority of revenue from copyrighted content is made in the first couple of years, and yet we extend

The major problem with copyright is it's too long. The vast majority of revenue from copyrighted content is made in the first couple of years, and yet we extend copyright 70 years past the author's death! If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe. Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. We need to treat that monopoly power with more respect. We shouldn't be handing out generational monopolies willy-nilly. Copyright is allowed in the Constitution for "limited times" and Congress has ignored that.

jongjong 26d ago
I'm still waiting to get my first revenue from copyright content I created 10 years ago. Not everyone gets instant recognition.
pbhjpbhj 26d ago
Two years is too short because it won't protect from commercial exploition against a creators wishes.
- modeless 26d ago
  The creator is not the only person to consider here. We don't grant copyrights just to give creators a funny kind of royalty-pension they can pass to their heirs. We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public. Copyright ultimately must be judged on how well it serves the public benefit, not on how much power or wealth it gives to authors directly (at the expense of others).
  - bigstrat2003 26d ago
    > We don't grant copyrights to give authors a kind of royalty-based pension for their old age and their heirs. "We" is doing a lot of work here. I realize that it's basically impossible for an entire population to have coherent motivations, but I support copyright because I think artists have the right to control what happens with their work and to sell it if they can. I believe that this right extends, like all rights, until the end of the author's life. I don't really care one bit about encouraging the production of new works.
    - modeless 26d ago
      How about "We the people", as stated in the Constitution? The Constitution itself defines the purpose of copyright, and it is not the purpose you state.
    - chii 26d ago
      > until the end of the author's life. which is too long, and also too short - what about authors who wrote finished their book on their deathbed? Then their rights are shorter than someone young - an unfair discrimination. That's why age should be irrelevant. Copyright is useful, and should be granted. However, current copyright grants last far too long - age plus some years beyond. Not to mention corporations lobbying to increase the length right as some copyrights for some works are about to enter public domain. Therefore, copyright should be granted for a single period and end - like patents. 20 years seems to be a good middle ground, but i could hear arguments for slightly longer or shorter.
      - drdaeman 26d ago
        Same exact duration for all authors: as long as they’re around and capable of caring. It’s not the same when duration is expressed numerically, sure. But consider: no life is the same in this way (until immortality is discovered), yet all should be valued equally (or so I hope and believe). Timing life makes them unavoidably unequal - and thus differences in lifetime shouldn’t be a criteria to use for comparing rights. That’d be actual age discrimination. I suggest to rather look at it under the angle whether estates should be able to inherit author’s identity (or some of it), to continue the will.
  - t-writescode 26d ago
    > We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public Which includes giving creators royalty rights that can be passed on to their heirs, so the elder author can finish their manuscript on their deathbed as a gift to their family.
    - modeless 26d ago
      Congress has currently chosen a duration of life + 70, but my point is that it's absurdly far beyond anything necessary to encourage the production of new works. When you consider the costs of copyright monopolies to the public, it's clearly out of whack. As I said, the majority of revenue from copyrighted works happens in the first couple of years of release.
      - t-writescode 26d ago
        I completely agree that life+70 is absolutely obscene, as my response to your parent post clarifies. I moved on from that since I thought my stance was clear (14 + 14 or 28 total), and moved on to “we should still honor the copyright even if they die, because heirs matter.” NEVER have I argued for life+70 and I never will.
    - exe34 26d ago
      Has this ever happened, or is it a scenario you made up in your mind? I know a few great works were published posthumously, but most of these were because somebody thought it was really important to share, not because it was a golden goose they wanted to start... milking.
      - t-writescode 26d ago
        I don’t have a specific example; but I don’t like the idea of an author, photographer, painter, songwriter, etc’s familt losing their copyright because their plane crashed the day after they recorded a record. And again, to be clear, since apparently people think I’m defending life+70. I am abso-fucking-lutely not. I want 14+14 or raw 28 back. Edit: oh apparently I do, thanks Kagi Assistant. Otis Redding Died in a plane crash literally 3 days after recording a famous track and his family earned a LOT after his passing.
  - t43562 26d ago
    I'd rather give it to individuals than corporations at least. It's useful as a lever to protect the weak from the powerful. Perhaps it should simply not be transferable? Another alternative would be for its power to weaken over time in some way.
    - kolinko 26d ago
      Then you will prevent corporations from paying authors to create work altogether.
      - exe34 26d ago
        They can still sell the stuff for 10-20 years and make a huge profit. They just can't use it for multi-generational runaway growth.
      - r-w 26d ago
        You don't think they would still pay them for the right to publish, if not ownership of the copyright itself?
    - pbhjpbhj 25d ago
      In a recent one of these threads someone suggested that a short term starts when the work changes hands (or, I'd also say when a contract/instrument is made including it, or a payment is made allowing control). So, you could keep it to get your full X years (I like 20), or lease/sell and the work would enter the public domain sooner.
  - kolinko 26d ago
    Did you ever publish anything? First year or two it is mostlu pushing marketing/pr, and the long tail of trickle of money is where the true earnings lie. Also, for many works of art it takes more than 2 years to produce a next piece, and even if it was less, it’s not sure if it will actually sell. Anything below 5-10 years and you have literal starving authors. Anything less than 5 and you may as well abolish it altogether.
    - pydry 26d ago
      we have literal "starving authors" - they pretty much all need second jobs to survive. for the authors themselves I don't see much difference between having no copyright at all and being thrown a few pennies on their work from amazon. either way the ability to make a living from those pennies clearly isnt motivating them. the future jk rowlings of the world will still buy lottery tickets to fame and fortune whether or not she ends up being worth $20 million (weak/no copyright) or $1 billion (strong copyright).
      - IAmBroom 26d ago
        "Artists don't deserve to build wealth off of their own work" is certainly one point-of-view.
        pydry 26d ago
        that's one way to wilfully misrepresent what I said. the point of view was that they already aren't.
    - pigpop 26d ago
      If all the earnings are in the tail then what the heck is in the head? or are you talking about the case where sales are flat and it's all tail?
      - kolinko 23d ago
        Very small peak at the beginning but yes, it’s mostly a long tail. Not always and not in all fields but in most cases afaik it is how it is.
  - dageshi 26d ago
    We live in a world where there is an absolute abundance of art, music, novels. You can find it everywhere, huge amounts of it either free or very cheaply. In what way is the system as it exists currently failing to encourage the creation of new works?
    - modeless 26d ago
      It encourages creation of new works just fine, but at the expense of creating billions of tiny monopolies that last for generations, which get aggregated into huge monopolies, ultimately making ordinary people into criminals for wanting to preserve or modify the works that make up their culture. My point is that it doesn't need to do that. Copyright could still encourage creation of new works with a much shorter duration, without the downside of locking our culture up in monopolies for life + 70.
      - dageshi 26d ago
        None of that contravenes the purpose of copyright in encouraging the creation and sharing of new works. You could equally solve the issue by providing provisions for archival. Or a provision that requires a work to be freely available for sale. The creator having a monopoly on the work seems to me to encourage the creation and sharing of work as intended.
    - dvdkon 26d ago
      Most of that art is being created irrespective of copyright, though. Much of it uses exceptions to copyright and some is straight up in violation (most "fan art"/fanfiction). It's either not monetised or monetised through things like Patreon. I wouldn't say we have more "traditional" art that an author spends time creating with the vision of selling copies for years to come, than we did when copyright terms were shorter.
      - dageshi 26d ago
        I doubt that's true. Is there a lot of fan art, yes, there's also massive amounts of original works as well. There is no lack of either.
  - jonathanstrange 26d ago
    He was arguing against two years. A lifetime is fine.
  - Planktonne 26d ago
    Mandating that creators lose control and the ability to profit from their work almost immediately will absolutely not encourage the production of new works.
  - TFNA 26d ago
    What you are describing is the view of copyright set down in the US Constitution, but it doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the world. In many countries, copyright is strongly bound up with the author's moral rights.
    - joquarky 25d ago
      Who gets to define those moral rights?
      - TFNA 25d ago
        Legislation. There is a whole Wikipedia article about moral rights if you want to educate yourself.
        pbhjpbhj 25d ago
        Meta: the point of this site is conversation. You don't have to respond. With an open question like this is probably best to assume the asker means "who #in your opinion# gets too define those rights". Also, yes legislative bodies. But in eg USA that means a corp like Disney pays to draft the law and pays legislators to vote for it.
        TFNA 25d ago
        On a site like this that is very American-centric, where moral rights are not as known a thing as in other countries due to different legal traditions, it was reasonable to assume the OP was unaware that moral rights are a clearly defined concept in legislation already, not something vague and up in the air. If the OP wants to formulate their question more clearly, they can.
- psychoslave 26d ago
  Nothing is going to protect moneyless creator against multi-billion transnational greed-driven corporations equipped with lawyer armies if the law actually encourage these corporations to actually thrive and further harden the rules in their own interests. Abolishing the copyright or not is not that important if nothing is done in front of that to guarantee that every single human are granted unconditional access to decent life conditions.
t-writescode 26d ago
Original copyright was 14 years + 14 years - then it was changed to 28. I'd love to see it brought back down to that again.
TulliusCicero 26d ago
Just make it 20 years, like patents.
achempion 26d ago
You're free to release your own work with Creative Commons License (or any other license that shorten the copyright). > Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose Creative work takes a lot of effort and resources (ex: movie production, games, books (hello Knuth)) and can be easily copied/imitated in a digital age. It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well?
- chii 26d ago
  > It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well? inheritance has nothing to do with copyright. Financial assets are not monopolies. Copyright is only a valuable asset because of the granted monopoly on copying/distribution. Therefore, to reduce the value copyright has (as it currently does seem to have too much), reducing the granted terms should be sufficient. Like patents, a good 20 years seems like a sufficiently long time to recover cost of production, while letting people who are currently alive to produce derivatives of it afterwards.
  - achempion 26d ago
    Why you want to reduce value of creative work, but not a value of other assets? I think copyright should be as long as ownership of any other asset. If I spend $20m on building a house or creating a computer game, why house can be inherited indefinitely and creative work is not? I would have a monopoly on this specific building and on this specific creative work, but anyone is free to build/create anything else. If J. Rowling created Harry Potter universe, why her family can't own it indefinitely? We somehow accept this notion for other assets, but treat copyright differently. p.s. creative work is more valuable as it has something that money can't buy (authenticity, taste, sincerity, etc)
    - Ekaros 26d ago
      >If I spend $20m on building Why don't the builders get infinite royalties on use of that house? Wouldn't that also be reasonable. At least as long as it stands. I don't think that would be unfair comparison.
pmdr 26d ago
Drug patents are much more short-lived and there's arguably more money invested in drug discovery than in, say, writing a fiction novel. IMO copyright should be limited to 20-30 years. Not that LLM labs care anyway.
- mschuster91 26d ago
  > Drug patents are much more short-lived It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched. However, the counterpoint can also be made that it should be extended, as the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions, with the short patent lifetime forcing pharma companies to command absurd prices just to recoup the R&D cost. (IMHO: the system on how we research pharmaceuticals and how we fund it must be drastically reformed. The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free, it's already bad enough)
  - philipallstar 26d ago
    > It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched. I think this is an inversion of cause and effect.
  - po1nt 26d ago
    Issue of pharma development is not that you need a protection from copycats. You need to pass a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy. Most of the medications are easily copyable but would take years to be able to get to the market. See insulin prices difference in europe vs US
  - bpavuk 26d ago
    > The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free centralize all chemistry research behind the closed doors, weapon-level export controls on U.S.-made fever drugs simply because they are U.S.-made, severely control international collaboration, and so much more. the problem is that the scientific community will rightfully revolt and the rest of the world will pull ahead of the U.S. in a relatively short amount of time. plus, since open science will have been long dead in the U.S. under such conditions, random breakthroughs at a basement or a non-prestigious university will cease to exist as a concept. China and India piggybacking is the least bad thing to happen. rather, it's an indicator of how open the open science in the U.S. is
tomp 26d ago
Harry Potter copyright is still being heavily utilized (milked?) 30 years after the first book's release.
- vaylian 26d ago
  That's an outlier. Most works don't see so much public interest after such a long time.
- exitb 26d ago
  It would make sense to make it possible, but increasingly expensive to extend the copyright. It's fine for Disney to keep their successful creations, it just makes no sense to drag all other copyrighted works in existence along for the ride.
  - dns_snek 26d ago
    You want to tip the balance even more in favour of the richest corporations? Really? We're there already, considering the cost of actually enforcing your rights, but it would be bizarre to codify that into law.
- OroPla 26d ago
  But why should this be allowed? Fairy tales are still popular, but they don't have copyright either.
- modeless 26d ago
  I'm not sure what your point is. Harry Potter is in the top ten highest grossing media franchises ever. Sure, top 10 franchises make a lot of money, but they're outliers. Is it in the public interest to grant every author in the country a copyright monopoly for life + 70 so that we can ensure JK Rowling's grandchildren continue to make billions from Harry Potter? Clearly not!
- kzrdude 26d ago
  Now you are using the legislators' rationale that money is being made so we need to protect that, forgetting to weigh the cost for the community.
leonidasrup 26d ago
" Since 1990, The Walt Disney Company had lobbied for copyright extension. The legislation delayed the entry into the public domain of the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, leading detractors to the nickname "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act". In addition to Disney, California congresswoman Mary Bono (Sonny Bono's widow and Congressional successor), and the estate of composer George Gershwin supported the act. Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, said: Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- pigpop 26d ago
  An excellent reminder that intelligence isn't a requirement to be a member of congress.
  - littlecorner 25d ago
    The requirement is money and connections
cromka 26d ago
> and yet we extend copyright 70 That's an americocentric view. Copyrights are shorter around the world. In fact, iirc, US has some of the longest ones.
- wallst07 26d ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_... Might want to check your facts mate.
  - cromka 25d ago
    "For some categories of works, the minimum duration is shorter: for example, the minimum term for applied art is 25 years, while movies have a minimum term of 50 years. Most countries have opted for a longer term of protection, as permitted." However, I stand corrected because I was under impression they expired after 50 years in Europe, or less. Turns out the movies I had in mind were intentionally made available to public but this did not come as a result of copyright expiration. My bad.
philipallstar 26d ago
> If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe. If you spend five years writing a book and then get to sell it for two years, and everyone will just think "I'll get it in two years", you might not like that.
- Patryk27 26d ago
  I’m pretty sure they meant the “post death” copyright, considering the context.
- _davide_ 26d ago
  Unless you were paid during those five years
  - philipallstar 26d ago
    Who's going to pay you to work for five years for a book that has a two-year commercial window, and even for that many people won't buy it until another company that just does printing sells it for half price two years from the first published date?
    - yorwba 26d ago
      Well, if you could somehow guarantee that your book would sell enough copies in that two-year window to make a million dollars profit, it would make sense to pay you a reasonable salary for the five years it takes you to write it. It's not completely implausible that people would pay for something that could be had for cheaper soon, considering that there are grifters selling "new editions" (with a publication date in the future, to game recency-biased search algorithms) of out-of-copyright works that are available for free elsewhere. The real problem is that it's hard to predict the commercial success of a creative work, especially when it doesn't exist yet. Publishing is a hit-based where most books barely sell, but then a few make more than enough to cover the losses incurred by giving long-shot authors a chance. With much shorter copyright terms, I guess only sequels of already-popular works would get significant funding.
aa-jv 26d ago
>Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. Copyright doesn't just protect profit-generation with the property - it also ensures the original material is not altered over time. Alas, this is a very useful function of copyright and basically ensures that good works remain good, and don't get easily subverted. In this day and age, though, we've evolved better methods to ensure this alteration of original content doesn't have a negative impact (whether on the profit-making or indeed on behalf of the final user of the material). Governments could shift from enforcing the copyright monopoly, to providing an open, public, free fingerprinting service - akin to a PKI for all content - which would allow entitites to copy materials, but also allow individuals to verify immutable materials. >We shouldn't be handing out generational monopolies willy-nilly. Agreed. We should, though, be making sure the end-date is set for 'verified materials' to a period appropriate for re-verification by human means ...
- sophrosyne42 26d ago
  Copyright does no such thing. The copyright owner is free to alter or change their material at any time, or to discard it and force it to remain unused until it deteriorates and is destroyed (e.g. video game preservation is mostly done by copyright violators).
  - aa-jv 26d ago
    Of course it does, don't be myopic. There is a very good reason that we all read the same copy of Orwells' 1984: because the copyright was enforced to ensure the work was not altered. This is ++good. That the originator/owner of the copyright is still able to assert agency over their works is the end result of copyright being used effectively. That some choose to end the lifetime of their works, an entirely acceptable result of the policy mechanism. I still maintain that its utility in preserving works outweighs the history of works being lost due to originator/owner agency. I concur, however, that there are better ways to accomplish this in this day and age ... information does want to be free, after all. A public fingerprinting/attestation service would separate the two functions we care about: 1) letting creators monetise and control commercial exploitation for a limited time, and 2) giving everyone a reliable way to verify that a given copy matches a claimed original. The second does not require a multi-generational monopoly, and I am not advocating for that. I do however believe that some social mechanism for ensuring the materials I care about land on my desk un-altered, is quite important.
grishka 26d ago
Very much this. And another problem is that the US forced most of the world to adopt similar laws through various cartels, oh, sorry, trade agreements. I distinctly remember when suddenly it was no longer okay to openly sell pirated software in Russia "because we're joining WTO". I still have no idea why we joined it.
- Akronymus 26d ago
  reminds me of the DMCA which was essentially forced to be approved https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY
21asdffdsa12 26d ago
One should pay a exponential "upholding" fee doubling every year of copyright. People would be very careful with clinging to rights- when they have a yearly break even.
psychoslave 26d ago
Also the issue is that it’s time capped only instead instead of having also a profit capped threshold.
- stephen_g 26d ago
  Profit cap would be unworkable, Hollywood is already famous for creative accounting… No work would ever reach it on paper (while actually making many times more).
braiamp 26d ago
It wouldn't have mattered how long copyright is if it wasn't expanded beyond the immediate economic desincentives that it is supposed to address for the most insidious problems it causes. It should be been limited exclusively to the combined right to reproduction and distribution. Yes, that means that I could reproduce the protected work without limit, so long as don't distribute it. Also means that I could distribute the protected work so long as I do only the copies I acquired. I, like you, through for a while that length was the problem, now I've poked around enough and known about enough actual examples where shorter length wouldn't have prevented the problems that happens with copyright. The content Sony had repeatedly removed from people's libraries was well within copyright term, shorter copyright wouldn't have saved it. What would have saved it is copyright scope that never extended to controlling access to copies already sold
OkayPhysicist 25d ago
IMO, the bigger issue is all the things copyright covers. I don't think there's a particularly damning public interest in being able to publish an author's book without paying them. For art preservation reasons, the copyright limit shouldn't be indefinite, but IMO as long as somebody's around to claim ownership, and offer a legitimate means of obtaining access to a work of art, it's not a big deal for them to have a monopoly on such. But copyright covers a lot more than just the right to produce copies of a specific work. The monopoly on derivative works serves the public significantly less. IMO, this one should taper off pretty rapidly. Maybe 20 years as is, then another 20 where you lose the ability decide who can or can't use your work, but they still owe you royalties. Then there's the clusterfuck that is software. With how rapidly the world around software changes, its protections should be substantially shorter. For derivative works of source code, I'd pitch skipping the complete monopoly step entirely. You get a decade or two where people using your software owe you royalties unless you say otherwise, then nothing.

jongjong 26d ago

I'm still waiting to get my first revenue from copyright content I created 10 years ago. Not everyone gets instant recognition.

pbhjpbhj 26d ago

Two years is too short because it won't protect from commercial exploition against a creators wishes.

modeless 26d ago
The creator is not the only person to consider here. We don't grant copyrights just to give creators a funny kind of royalty-pension they can pass to their heirs. We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public. Copyright ultimately must be judged on how well it serves the public benefit, not on how much power or wealth it gives to authors directly (at the expense of others).
- bigstrat2003 26d ago
  > We don't grant copyrights to give authors a kind of royalty-based pension for their old age and their heirs. "We" is doing a lot of work here. I realize that it's basically impossible for an entire population to have coherent motivations, but I support copyright because I think artists have the right to control what happens with their work and to sell it if they can. I believe that this right extends, like all rights, until the end of the author's life. I don't really care one bit about encouraging the production of new works.
  - modeless 26d ago
    How about "We the people", as stated in the Constitution? The Constitution itself defines the purpose of copyright, and it is not the purpose you state.
  - chii 26d ago
    > until the end of the author's life. which is too long, and also too short - what about authors who wrote finished their book on their deathbed? Then their rights are shorter than someone young - an unfair discrimination. That's why age should be irrelevant. Copyright is useful, and should be granted. However, current copyright grants last far too long - age plus some years beyond. Not to mention corporations lobbying to increase the length right as some copyrights for some works are about to enter public domain. Therefore, copyright should be granted for a single period and end - like patents. 20 years seems to be a good middle ground, but i could hear arguments for slightly longer or shorter.
    - drdaeman 26d ago
      Same exact duration for all authors: as long as they’re around and capable of caring. It’s not the same when duration is expressed numerically, sure. But consider: no life is the same in this way (until immortality is discovered), yet all should be valued equally (or so I hope and believe). Timing life makes them unavoidably unequal - and thus differences in lifetime shouldn’t be a criteria to use for comparing rights. That’d be actual age discrimination. I suggest to rather look at it under the angle whether estates should be able to inherit author’s identity (or some of it), to continue the will.
- t-writescode 26d ago
  > We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public Which includes giving creators royalty rights that can be passed on to their heirs, so the elder author can finish their manuscript on their deathbed as a gift to their family.
  - modeless 26d ago
    Congress has currently chosen a duration of life + 70, but my point is that it's absurdly far beyond anything necessary to encourage the production of new works. When you consider the costs of copyright monopolies to the public, it's clearly out of whack. As I said, the majority of revenue from copyrighted works happens in the first couple of years of release.
    - t-writescode 26d ago
      I completely agree that life+70 is absolutely obscene, as my response to your parent post clarifies. I moved on from that since I thought my stance was clear (14 + 14 or 28 total), and moved on to “we should still honor the copyright even if they die, because heirs matter.” NEVER have I argued for life+70 and I never will.
  - exe34 26d ago
    Has this ever happened, or is it a scenario you made up in your mind? I know a few great works were published posthumously, but most of these were because somebody thought it was really important to share, not because it was a golden goose they wanted to start... milking.
    - t-writescode 26d ago
      I don’t have a specific example; but I don’t like the idea of an author, photographer, painter, songwriter, etc’s familt losing their copyright because their plane crashed the day after they recorded a record. And again, to be clear, since apparently people think I’m defending life+70. I am abso-fucking-lutely not. I want 14+14 or raw 28 back. Edit: oh apparently I do, thanks Kagi Assistant. Otis Redding Died in a plane crash literally 3 days after recording a famous track and his family earned a LOT after his passing.
- t43562 26d ago
  I'd rather give it to individuals than corporations at least. It's useful as a lever to protect the weak from the powerful. Perhaps it should simply not be transferable? Another alternative would be for its power to weaken over time in some way.
  - kolinko 26d ago
    Then you will prevent corporations from paying authors to create work altogether.
    - exe34 26d ago
      They can still sell the stuff for 10-20 years and make a huge profit. They just can't use it for multi-generational runaway growth.
    - r-w 26d ago
      You don't think they would still pay them for the right to publish, if not ownership of the copyright itself?
  - pbhjpbhj 25d ago
    In a recent one of these threads someone suggested that a short term starts when the work changes hands (or, I'd also say when a contract/instrument is made including it, or a payment is made allowing control). So, you could keep it to get your full X years (I like 20), or lease/sell and the work would enter the public domain sooner.
- kolinko 26d ago
  Did you ever publish anything? First year or two it is mostlu pushing marketing/pr, and the long tail of trickle of money is where the true earnings lie. Also, for many works of art it takes more than 2 years to produce a next piece, and even if it was less, it’s not sure if it will actually sell. Anything below 5-10 years and you have literal starving authors. Anything less than 5 and you may as well abolish it altogether.
  - pydry 26d ago
    we have literal "starving authors" - they pretty much all need second jobs to survive. for the authors themselves I don't see much difference between having no copyright at all and being thrown a few pennies on their work from amazon. either way the ability to make a living from those pennies clearly isnt motivating them. the future jk rowlings of the world will still buy lottery tickets to fame and fortune whether or not she ends up being worth $20 million (weak/no copyright) or $1 billion (strong copyright).
    - IAmBroom 26d ago
      "Artists don't deserve to build wealth off of their own work" is certainly one point-of-view.
      - pydry 26d ago
        that's one way to wilfully misrepresent what I said. the point of view was that they already aren't.
  - pigpop 26d ago
    If all the earnings are in the tail then what the heck is in the head? or are you talking about the case where sales are flat and it's all tail?
    - kolinko 23d ago
      Very small peak at the beginning but yes, it’s mostly a long tail. Not always and not in all fields but in most cases afaik it is how it is.
- dageshi 26d ago
  We live in a world where there is an absolute abundance of art, music, novels. You can find it everywhere, huge amounts of it either free or very cheaply. In what way is the system as it exists currently failing to encourage the creation of new works?
  - modeless 26d ago
    It encourages creation of new works just fine, but at the expense of creating billions of tiny monopolies that last for generations, which get aggregated into huge monopolies, ultimately making ordinary people into criminals for wanting to preserve or modify the works that make up their culture. My point is that it doesn't need to do that. Copyright could still encourage creation of new works with a much shorter duration, without the downside of locking our culture up in monopolies for life + 70.
    - dageshi 26d ago
      None of that contravenes the purpose of copyright in encouraging the creation and sharing of new works. You could equally solve the issue by providing provisions for archival. Or a provision that requires a work to be freely available for sale. The creator having a monopoly on the work seems to me to encourage the creation and sharing of work as intended.
  - dvdkon 26d ago
    Most of that art is being created irrespective of copyright, though. Much of it uses exceptions to copyright and some is straight up in violation (most "fan art"/fanfiction). It's either not monetised or monetised through things like Patreon. I wouldn't say we have more "traditional" art that an author spends time creating with the vision of selling copies for years to come, than we did when copyright terms were shorter.
    - dageshi 26d ago
      I doubt that's true. Is there a lot of fan art, yes, there's also massive amounts of original works as well. There is no lack of either.
- jonathanstrange 26d ago
  He was arguing against two years. A lifetime is fine.
- Planktonne 26d ago
  Mandating that creators lose control and the ability to profit from their work almost immediately will absolutely not encourage the production of new works.
- TFNA 26d ago
  What you are describing is the view of copyright set down in the US Constitution, but it doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the world. In many countries, copyright is strongly bound up with the author's moral rights.
  - joquarky 25d ago
    Who gets to define those moral rights?
    - TFNA 25d ago
      Legislation. There is a whole Wikipedia article about moral rights if you want to educate yourself.
      - pbhjpbhj 25d ago
        Meta: the point of this site is conversation. You don't have to respond. With an open question like this is probably best to assume the asker means "who #in your opinion# gets too define those rights". Also, yes legislative bodies. But in eg USA that means a corp like Disney pays to draft the law and pays legislators to vote for it.
        TFNA 25d ago
        On a site like this that is very American-centric, where moral rights are not as known a thing as in other countries due to different legal traditions, it was reasonable to assume the OP was unaware that moral rights are a clearly defined concept in legislation already, not something vague and up in the air. If the OP wants to formulate their question more clearly, they can.
psychoslave 26d ago
Nothing is going to protect moneyless creator against multi-billion transnational greed-driven corporations equipped with lawyer armies if the law actually encourage these corporations to actually thrive and further harden the rules in their own interests. Abolishing the copyright or not is not that important if nothing is done in front of that to guarantee that every single human are granted unconditional access to decent life conditions.

t-writescode 26d ago

Original copyright was 14 years + 14 years - then it was changed to 28. I'd love to see it brought back down to that again.

TulliusCicero 26d ago

Just make it 20 years, like patents.

achempion 26d ago

You're free to release your own work with Creative Commons License (or any other license that shorten the copyright). > Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose Creative work takes a lot of effort and resources (ex: movie production, games, books (hello Knuth)) and can be easily copied/imitated in a digital age. It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well?

chii 26d ago
> It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well? inheritance has nothing to do with copyright. Financial assets are not monopolies. Copyright is only a valuable asset because of the granted monopoly on copying/distribution. Therefore, to reduce the value copyright has (as it currently does seem to have too much), reducing the granted terms should be sufficient. Like patents, a good 20 years seems like a sufficiently long time to recover cost of production, while letting people who are currently alive to produce derivatives of it afterwards.
- achempion 26d ago
  Why you want to reduce value of creative work, but not a value of other assets? I think copyright should be as long as ownership of any other asset. If I spend $20m on building a house or creating a computer game, why house can be inherited indefinitely and creative work is not? I would have a monopoly on this specific building and on this specific creative work, but anyone is free to build/create anything else. If J. Rowling created Harry Potter universe, why her family can't own it indefinitely? We somehow accept this notion for other assets, but treat copyright differently. p.s. creative work is more valuable as it has something that money can't buy (authenticity, taste, sincerity, etc)
  - Ekaros 26d ago
    >If I spend $20m on building Why don't the builders get infinite royalties on use of that house? Wouldn't that also be reasonable. At least as long as it stands. I don't think that would be unfair comparison.

pmdr 26d ago

Drug patents are much more short-lived and there's arguably more money invested in drug discovery than in, say, writing a fiction novel. IMO copyright should be limited to 20-30 years. Not that LLM labs care anyway.

mschuster91 26d ago
> Drug patents are much more short-lived It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched. However, the counterpoint can also be made that it should be extended, as the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions, with the short patent lifetime forcing pharma companies to command absurd prices just to recoup the R&D cost. (IMHO: the system on how we research pharmaceuticals and how we fund it must be drastically reformed. The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free, it's already bad enough)
- philipallstar 26d ago
  > It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched. I think this is an inversion of cause and effect.
- po1nt 26d ago
  Issue of pharma development is not that you need a protection from copycats. You need to pass a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy. Most of the medications are easily copyable but would take years to be able to get to the market. See insulin prices difference in europe vs US
- bpavuk 26d ago
  > The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free centralize all chemistry research behind the closed doors, weapon-level export controls on U.S.-made fever drugs simply because they are U.S.-made, severely control international collaboration, and so much more. the problem is that the scientific community will rightfully revolt and the rest of the world will pull ahead of the U.S. in a relatively short amount of time. plus, since open science will have been long dead in the U.S. under such conditions, random breakthroughs at a basement or a non-prestigious university will cease to exist as a concept. China and India piggybacking is the least bad thing to happen. rather, it's an indicator of how open the open science in the U.S. is

tomp 26d ago

Harry Potter copyright is still being heavily utilized (milked?) 30 years after the first book's release.

vaylian 26d ago
That's an outlier. Most works don't see so much public interest after such a long time.
exitb 26d ago
It would make sense to make it possible, but increasingly expensive to extend the copyright. It's fine for Disney to keep their successful creations, it just makes no sense to drag all other copyrighted works in existence along for the ride.
- dns_snek 26d ago
  You want to tip the balance even more in favour of the richest corporations? Really? We're there already, considering the cost of actually enforcing your rights, but it would be bizarre to codify that into law.
OroPla 26d ago
But why should this be allowed? Fairy tales are still popular, but they don't have copyright either.
modeless 26d ago
I'm not sure what your point is. Harry Potter is in the top ten highest grossing media franchises ever. Sure, top 10 franchises make a lot of money, but they're outliers. Is it in the public interest to grant every author in the country a copyright monopoly for life + 70 so that we can ensure JK Rowling's grandchildren continue to make billions from Harry Potter? Clearly not!
kzrdude 26d ago
Now you are using the legislators' rationale that money is being made so we need to protect that, forgetting to weigh the cost for the community.

leonidasrup 26d ago

" Since 1990, The Walt Disney Company had lobbied for copyright extension. The legislation delayed the entry into the public domain of the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, leading detractors to the nickname "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act". In addition to Disney, California congresswoman Mary Bono (Sonny Bono's widow and Congressional successor), and the estate of composer George Gershwin supported the act. Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, said: Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

pigpop 26d ago
An excellent reminder that intelligence isn't a requirement to be a member of congress.
- littlecorner 25d ago
  The requirement is money and connections

cromka 26d ago

> and yet we extend copyright 70 That's an americocentric view. Copyrights are shorter around the world. In fact, iirc, US has some of the longest ones.

wallst07 26d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_... Might want to check your facts mate.
- cromka 25d ago
  "For some categories of works, the minimum duration is shorter: for example, the minimum term for applied art is 25 years, while movies have a minimum term of 50 years. Most countries have opted for a longer term of protection, as permitted." However, I stand corrected because I was under impression they expired after 50 years in Europe, or less. Turns out the movies I had in mind were intentionally made available to public but this did not come as a result of copyright expiration. My bad.

philipallstar 26d ago

> If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe. If you spend five years writing a book and then get to sell it for two years, and everyone will just think "I'll get it in two years", you might not like that.

Patryk27 26d ago
I’m pretty sure they meant the “post death” copyright, considering the context.
_davide_ 26d ago
Unless you were paid during those five years
- philipallstar 26d ago
  Who's going to pay you to work for five years for a book that has a two-year commercial window, and even for that many people won't buy it until another company that just does printing sells it for half price two years from the first published date?
  - yorwba 26d ago
    Well, if you could somehow guarantee that your book would sell enough copies in that two-year window to make a million dollars profit, it would make sense to pay you a reasonable salary for the five years it takes you to write it. It's not completely implausible that people would pay for something that could be had for cheaper soon, considering that there are grifters selling "new editions" (with a publication date in the future, to game recency-biased search algorithms) of out-of-copyright works that are available for free elsewhere. The real problem is that it's hard to predict the commercial success of a creative work, especially when it doesn't exist yet. Publishing is a hit-based where most books barely sell, but then a few make more than enough to cover the losses incurred by giving long-shot authors a chance. With much shorter copyright terms, I guess only sequels of already-popular works would get significant funding.

aa-jv 26d ago

>Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. Copyright doesn't just protect profit-generation with the property - it also ensures the original material is not altered over time. Alas, this is a very useful function of copyright and basically ensures that good works remain good, and don't get easily subverted. In this day and age, though, we've evolved better methods to ensure this alteration of original content doesn't have a negative impact (whether on the profit-making or indeed on behalf of the final user of the material). Governments could shift from enforcing the copyright monopoly, to providing an open, public, free fingerprinting service - akin to a PKI for all content - which would allow entitites to copy materials, but also allow individuals to verify immutable materials. >We shouldn't be handing out generational monopolies willy-nilly. Agreed. We should, though, be making sure the end-date is set for 'verified materials' to a period appropriate for re-verification by human means ...

sophrosyne42 26d ago
Copyright does no such thing. The copyright owner is free to alter or change their material at any time, or to discard it and force it to remain unused until it deteriorates and is destroyed (e.g. video game preservation is mostly done by copyright violators).
- aa-jv 26d ago
  Of course it does, don't be myopic. There is a very good reason that we all read the same copy of Orwells' 1984: because the copyright was enforced to ensure the work was not altered. This is ++good. That the originator/owner of the copyright is still able to assert agency over their works is the end result of copyright being used effectively. That some choose to end the lifetime of their works, an entirely acceptable result of the policy mechanism. I still maintain that its utility in preserving works outweighs the history of works being lost due to originator/owner agency. I concur, however, that there are better ways to accomplish this in this day and age ... information does want to be free, after all. A public fingerprinting/attestation service would separate the two functions we care about: 1) letting creators monetise and control commercial exploitation for a limited time, and 2) giving everyone a reliable way to verify that a given copy matches a claimed original. The second does not require a multi-generational monopoly, and I am not advocating for that. I do however believe that some social mechanism for ensuring the materials I care about land on my desk un-altered, is quite important.

grishka 26d ago

Very much this. And another problem is that the US forced most of the world to adopt similar laws through various cartels, oh, sorry, trade agreements. I distinctly remember when suddenly it was no longer okay to openly sell pirated software in Russia "because we're joining WTO". I still have no idea why we joined it.

Akronymus 26d ago
reminds me of the DMCA which was essentially forced to be approved https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY

21asdffdsa12 26d ago

One should pay a exponential "upholding" fee doubling every year of copyright. People would be very careful with clinging to rights- when they have a yearly break even.

psychoslave 26d ago

Also the issue is that it’s time capped only instead instead of having also a profit capped threshold.

stephen_g 26d ago
Profit cap would be unworkable, Hollywood is already famous for creative accounting… No work would ever reach it on paper (while actually making many times more).

braiamp 26d ago

It wouldn't have mattered how long copyright is if it wasn't expanded beyond the immediate economic desincentives that it is supposed to address for the most insidious problems it causes. It should be been limited exclusively to the combined right to reproduction and distribution. Yes, that means that I could reproduce the protected work without limit, so long as don't distribute it. Also means that I could distribute the protected work so long as I do only the copies I acquired. I, like you, through for a while that length was the problem, now I've poked around enough and known about enough actual examples where shorter length wouldn't have prevented the problems that happens with copyright. The content Sony had repeatedly removed from people's libraries was well within copyright term, shorter copyright wouldn't have saved it. What would have saved it is copyright scope that never extended to controlling access to copies already sold

OkayPhysicist 25d ago

IMO, the bigger issue is all the things copyright covers. I don't think there's a particularly damning public interest in being able to publish an author's book without paying them. For art preservation reasons, the copyright limit shouldn't be indefinite, but IMO as long as somebody's around to claim ownership, and offer a legitimate means of obtaining access to a work of art, it's not a big deal for them to have a monopoly on such. But copyright covers a lot more than just the right to produce copies of a specific work. The monopoly on derivative works serves the public significantly less. IMO, this one should taper off pretty rapidly. Maybe 20 years as is, then another 20 where you lose the ability decide who can or can't use your work, but they still owe you royalties. Then there's the clusterfuck that is software. With how rapidly the world around software changes, its protections should be substantially shorter. For derivative works of source code, I'd pitch skipping the complete monopoly step entirely. You get a decade or two where people using your software owe you royalties unless you say otherwise, then nothing.