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184 points by gasull 14y ago

herge 14y ago
I wonder if the period of 2009-2015 will have a bumper crop of content entering the public domain in Europe because so many young people died in the Second World War.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Depends on the country: some have explicitly extended the copyrights for people who died in the war. For example, writers who died in active service of the French military have copyright for 100 rather than 70 years postmortem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_pour_la_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_pour_la_France
  - mullingitover 14y ago
    This makes a lot of sense. By extending copyright even further after their deaths, it will incent these authors to create more posthumous works!
    - rdl 14y ago
      Presumably it was to not discourage people in the future from enlisting/responding to the draft for fear of copyright, and to avoid the "poor windows and orphans of the famous writers who died in the war". Maybe the French are different, but "will my copyright endure longer if I die" would not really be on my list of concerns in war. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the only one on the list who I've heard of.
      - _delirium 14y ago
        I think it was some kind of feeling of fairness: that, absent the war, they would've lived longer, so there should be an adjustment to make copyright expire according to when they would've "normally" died. On the other hand, that's true of any copyright system based on years postmortem: you could argue the same about someone killed by a drunk driver, or hit by lightning, or murdered. That's one reason I prefer publication-date-based systems rather than years-postmortem systems (the other reason is that death dates for lesser-known authors are often very hard to actually find, whereas publication dates are typically printed right in the book). Plus, I think the argument is weaker when duration is already life+70. If it were, say, life+0, or life+10, you might have an argument about their widow/orphan, but life+70 is already enough to cover any survivors comfortably for the rest of their own lives. Life+100 gets into territory where their great-grandkids are getting the money.
drpgq 14y ago
How much does Canada's terms differ from the US?
- _delirium 14y ago
  It's typically shorter than both the U.S. and Europe: 50 years postmortem. For example, Ernest Hemingway (died 1961) entered the public domain in Canada last year. In most of Europe (life+70) his works will enter the public domain in 2032, and in the U.S. (95 years from publication, for works published before 1978) they'll enter at staggered times starting from the 2020s. That's why this exists: http://www.gutenberg.ca/ http://www.gutenberg.ca/
njl 14y ago
There are two competing interests here. First, Disney wants to keep control of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and it doesn't feel unreasonable at all that they should. Second, the rest of the stuff that is of little commercial value but of potential cultural value should be freed from uncertain or uninterested ownership. The answer feels trivial to me, which means I'm probably missing something. Fixed term for a few decades from the creation of the work, maybe 30 years or 40 years. After that, you need to give a copy of the work to the Library of Congress, pay a nominal fee, and you get a 5 year extension. Take as many of those as you want. This greatly simplifies everything. If you find a work that is older than the base term, you look it up in the copyright extension database. If it's in there, you can find out who owns the rights to it, and try to license rights. If it isn't in there, it's public domain. If somebody doesn't stay on the ball enough to renew their rights every five years, it probably isn't all that commercially valuable, and moves into the public domain.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  That's a reasonable compromise, but copyright law for the 20th century was anything but about compromise. It was about ensuring big corporate content producers are given a default of "copyright forever" with no costs or effort on their part. After all, it is society, not the content producers, that pays the price for having no culture returned to the society that birthed it. Right up until a company like Disney finds there is no more public domain for them to take ideas from. But, like most problems we Americans have, we'll let a future generation worry about that.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > Disney wants to keep control of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and it doesn't feel unreasonable at all that they should. It feels completely unreasonable to me. There's no reason why Disney should be given an exception when others aren't. It's idiotic to suggest that they should get special treatment just because their IP is commercially valuable.
  - crpatino 14y ago
    I don't think "Disney" is capable of wanting anything, since old Walt's been dead for decades now. That's what happens when you grant personhood status to abstract entities.
simonsarris 14y ago
It saddens me a good deal that most of us can come up with very compelling arguments that un-restricting these works would benefit society, yet there seems there's very little we could do to make even a splash of change. In fact, I gander the comments here will soon be filled with of "here's how I would do it" comments, none of which will make a mote of a difference. What can we do, really? It seems insane that the reasons given hold any merit beyond a money-grab. And while I may be a bit myopic here, the "motivates content-producers" feels flimsier still than monetary arguments. Do most creative works really need even ten years of protection? Do you suppose Shakespeare would have made more plays or less if copyright existed in his day?
- lmm 14y ago
  Well, we can vote - but this is hardly the most important issue on which we vote. We could get a bit smarter, and lobby - but we're unlikely to be able to out-spend Disney. Or we can ignore the legal system and share things, which is probably the most practical and effective approach. They can't imprison us all.
- joshuahedlund 14y ago
  A lot has changed already since 1998. I don't think it is outside the realm of possibility that the current 2019 date could be allowed to lapse when it arrives, especially if we continue with raising awareness, lobbying/organizing efforts, trying to get notable/influential figures signing on to the cause, etc, for the next 6 years. That would be a depressing "starting point" of progress, to be sure, but since it only requires inaction it might be more achievable than positive copyright reform that requires action, especially since everyone disagrees on the proper action to take.
- MarkMc 14y ago
  I'm not convinced that un-restricting works would benefit society. If Disney gets to keep copyright on Snow White forever, about a third of the movie's profit will continue to be paid in tax. So the choice is between (a) letting 7-year-olds everywhere watch Snow White, and (b) having more money to pay for roads, schools and cancer research. Is option (a) necessarily better?
praptak 14y ago
To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers lack the lobbying power only makes their actions illegal, not immoral.
- martincmartin 14y ago
  Because two wrongs don't make a right.
  - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
    And trite sayings don't mean they are correct, either. The social contract in the constitution was to grant people with limited exclusivity for works they created. Patents have roughly stayed within that parameter (with exception to patent abuses on design and software). For copyright, it was originally 17 years, extendable another 17 years. Works released in 1981 (my date of birth) will expire in 120 years. I will be dead before they are in public domain. The social contract was 'reneogiated' by campaign donations, without input from the people. The supreme court found that forever extensions the way congress is implementing them as 'constitutional' and it was Congress's problem. So yes, I believe that should open up the debate on piracy as a legitimate solution.
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      There's been plenty of input from the people. The people vote every 2 years for representatives and every 6 years for senators. By and large, the people's input has been to keep the congresspeople who voted for these extensions. The reality is that most of "the people" just don't care about this issue. But they've had their input.
      - TheCapn 14y ago
mullingitover 14y ago
By 2019 it'll have been 49 years without a single work entering the public domain. And somehow I doubt that we'll even get there, the goalposts will likely get moved again before 2019. And people wonder why there's such widespread disrespect for copyright.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Only if we let them move the goalposts. We stopped SOPA, and we can stop this. Personally, I plan to spend money both money and time on this battle when it happens.
Anm 14y ago
I also agree with purchasable extensions, as long as the prices increase exponentially from a very modest price in the first renewal. Further, I think there is room to tie trademark into the process for media properties. In cases like Steamboat Willy, the character reflect a trademark for the Disney business. If it were applied as such, one might argue that a public domain version of the film (which could be seen as a product in the trademark domain) might be freely distributable but not modifiable without risking trademark infringement. This protects the free flow of information to later generations, as well as provides the company a means to protect the its brand from confusing or abusing variants/remixes. Further, registered trademarks already require regular renewal from a living person or operating business. Not sure how one would apply that music and non-fiction (or if one should even try); seems about useful as copyrighting N seconds of silence. (Obligatory: I am not a lawyer.)
mcculley 14y ago
It's only tangentially related, but I had to make a comment: http://www.economist.com/comment/1835110#comment-1835110 http://www.economist.com/comment/1835110#comment-1835110 I happily pay for my subscription to The Economist and enjoy reading it on my iPad. But they don't even allow you to select a single word in an article, which would make it possible to look things up in a dictionary. This kind of limitation to attempt enforcement of copyright is part of the whole problem right now.
- netrus 14y ago
  I doubt that they do it to prevent copying. I can access every article from the newspaper on their website as nicely formated HTML.
  - mcculley 14y ago
    You have to go out of your way when writing an iOS app to prevent selection/copy in text views. They had to at least think about it.
    - chc 14y ago
      Or they just don't use standard text views and didn't go out of their way to re-enable it. Back in the early days of OS X, you'd see a lot of controls that looked like the real thing but acted in subtly different ways because they were re-implementations to add some minor feature.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Oh, that's not a copyright thing. It's more "you must be this tall to ride this ride." The Economist is snooty; if you need to look up the words, they don't want you.
OGinparadise 14y ago
Can someone make the argument about why should Disney be forced to give up copyright to Mickey Mouse? Or The Beatles to the music they created?
- crpatino 14y ago
  Because the creations are presumably so good that will remain valuable long after the authors or any kin they'd personally care about are dead.
- seabee 14y ago
  Because releasing it into the public domain would benefit people more than it hurts Disney? That's not the right question to ask anyway. Copyright only exists insomuch as government grants it - thus they can take it away if they please, or after an arbitrary duration. You should really ask how long is reasonable for a creator's work to be protected, and just how many generations of his descendants should inherit that right.
- orionblastar 14y ago
  Our founding fathers wanted to encourage competition and innovation. Copyright was given as a temporary protection of works for the owner, and after a certain amount of time the copyright fell into the public domain and then anyone could use it for free. This allowed small businesses and individuals to be able to compete with the copyright holder, and encourage the copyright holder to keep innovating new copyrights as the old ones expired. But with the current system, copyrights never expire, and copyright holders don't innovate like they used to do. As a result our economy has gotten worse, and unemployment keeps going up, and the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is denied. The US Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 has been violated by these modern copyright laws. And I quote: "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."
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    Personally I see patents and copyrights as different, very different (I know that the expiration time are different too). There's a huge difference in innovation and benefit to the society when it comes to a Viagra patent and Mickey Mouse. It's my opinion of course.
jimhefferon 14y ago
The standard of "xx years since the death of the author" can be quite awkward when the author is not prominent. Imagine if computer code was "10 years since the death of the author" and you found something on an archive. Better is "xx years since creation."
- danielweber 14y ago
  Yes, while we can fight about the length, it should be a flat length. Young people who make works shouldn't have them last longer than old people who make works.
jimworm 14y ago
The last copyright extension might be the last Disney could push for. If they pushed it significantly further, they would lose the copyright of their older works to the Brothers Grimm. Walt Disney's first animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was published in 1937, 74 years after the death of Jacob Grimm. The Mickey Mouse copyright extension is 70 years after the death of the longest surviving creator. That said, they could lobby to increase copyright terms for post-1927 works only, or corporate works only and leave natural persons out in the cold. It's uncertain whether these moves would be too politically extreme for Disney.

184 points by gasull 14y ago

herge 14y ago

I wonder if the period of 2009-2015 will have a bumper crop of content entering the public domain in Europe because so many young people died in the Second World War.

_delirium 14y ago
Depends on the country: some have explicitly extended the copyrights for people who died in the war. For example, writers who died in active service of the French military have copyright for 100 rather than 70 years postmortem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_pour_la_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_pour_la_France
- mullingitover 14y ago
  This makes a lot of sense. By extending copyright even further after their deaths, it will incent these authors to create more posthumous works!
  - rdl 14y ago
    Presumably it was to not discourage people in the future from enlisting/responding to the draft for fear of copyright, and to avoid the "poor windows and orphans of the famous writers who died in the war". Maybe the French are different, but "will my copyright endure longer if I die" would not really be on my list of concerns in war. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the only one on the list who I've heard of.
    - _delirium 14y ago
      I think it was some kind of feeling of fairness: that, absent the war, they would've lived longer, so there should be an adjustment to make copyright expire according to when they would've "normally" died. On the other hand, that's true of any copyright system based on years postmortem: you could argue the same about someone killed by a drunk driver, or hit by lightning, or murdered. That's one reason I prefer publication-date-based systems rather than years-postmortem systems (the other reason is that death dates for lesser-known authors are often very hard to actually find, whereas publication dates are typically printed right in the book). Plus, I think the argument is weaker when duration is already life+70. If it were, say, life+0, or life+10, you might have an argument about their widow/orphan, but life+70 is already enough to cover any survivors comfortably for the rest of their own lives. Life+100 gets into territory where their great-grandkids are getting the money.

drpgq 14y ago

How much does Canada's terms differ from the US?

_delirium 14y ago
It's typically shorter than both the U.S. and Europe: 50 years postmortem. For example, Ernest Hemingway (died 1961) entered the public domain in Canada last year. In most of Europe (life+70) his works will enter the public domain in 2032, and in the U.S. (95 years from publication, for works published before 1978) they'll enter at staggered times starting from the 2020s. That's why this exists: http://www.gutenberg.ca/ http://www.gutenberg.ca/

njl 14y ago

There are two competing interests here. First, Disney wants to keep control of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and it doesn't feel unreasonable at all that they should. Second, the rest of the stuff that is of little commercial value but of potential cultural value should be freed from uncertain or uninterested ownership. The answer feels trivial to me, which means I'm probably missing something. Fixed term for a few decades from the creation of the work, maybe 30 years or 40 years. After that, you need to give a copy of the work to the Library of Congress, pay a nominal fee, and you get a 5 year extension. Take as many of those as you want. This greatly simplifies everything. If you find a work that is older than the base term, you look it up in the copyright extension database. If it's in there, you can find out who owns the rights to it, and try to license rights. If it isn't in there, it's public domain. If somebody doesn't stay on the ball enough to renew their rights every five years, it probably isn't all that commercially valuable, and moves into the public domain.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
That's a reasonable compromise, but copyright law for the 20th century was anything but about compromise. It was about ensuring big corporate content producers are given a default of "copyright forever" with no costs or effort on their part. After all, it is society, not the content producers, that pays the price for having no culture returned to the society that birthed it. Right up until a company like Disney finds there is no more public domain for them to take ideas from. But, like most problems we Americans have, we'll let a future generation worry about that.
w1ntermute 14y ago
> Disney wants to keep control of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and it doesn't feel unreasonable at all that they should. It feels completely unreasonable to me. There's no reason why Disney should be given an exception when others aren't. It's idiotic to suggest that they should get special treatment just because their IP is commercially valuable.
- crpatino 14y ago
  I don't think "Disney" is capable of wanting anything, since old Walt's been dead for decades now. That's what happens when you grant personhood status to abstract entities.

simonsarris 14y ago

It saddens me a good deal that most of us can come up with very compelling arguments that un-restricting these works would benefit society, yet there seems there's very little we could do to make even a splash of change. In fact, I gander the comments here will soon be filled with of "here's how I would do it" comments, none of which will make a mote of a difference. What can we do, really? It seems insane that the reasons given hold any merit beyond a money-grab. And while I may be a bit myopic here, the "motivates content-producers" feels flimsier still than monetary arguments. Do most creative works really need even ten years of protection? Do you suppose Shakespeare would have made more plays or less if copyright existed in his day?

lmm 14y ago
Well, we can vote - but this is hardly the most important issue on which we vote. We could get a bit smarter, and lobby - but we're unlikely to be able to out-spend Disney. Or we can ignore the legal system and share things, which is probably the most practical and effective approach. They can't imprison us all.
joshuahedlund 14y ago
A lot has changed already since 1998. I don't think it is outside the realm of possibility that the current 2019 date could be allowed to lapse when it arrives, especially if we continue with raising awareness, lobbying/organizing efforts, trying to get notable/influential figures signing on to the cause, etc, for the next 6 years. That would be a depressing "starting point" of progress, to be sure, but since it only requires inaction it might be more achievable than positive copyright reform that requires action, especially since everyone disagrees on the proper action to take.
MarkMc 14y ago
I'm not convinced that un-restricting works would benefit society. If Disney gets to keep copyright on Snow White forever, about a third of the movie's profit will continue to be paid in tax. So the choice is between (a) letting 7-year-olds everywhere watch Snow White, and (b) having more money to pay for roads, schools and cancer research. Is option (a) necessarily better?

praptak 14y ago

To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers lack the lobbying power only makes their actions illegal, not immoral.

martincmartin 14y ago
Because two wrongs don't make a right.
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
  And trite sayings don't mean they are correct, either. The social contract in the constitution was to grant people with limited exclusivity for works they created. Patents have roughly stayed within that parameter (with exception to patent abuses on design and software). For copyright, it was originally 17 years, extendable another 17 years. Works released in 1981 (my date of birth) will expire in 120 years. I will be dead before they are in public domain. The social contract was 'reneogiated' by campaign donations, without input from the people. The supreme court found that forever extensions the way congress is implementing them as 'constitutional' and it was Congress's problem. So yes, I believe that should open up the debate on piracy as a legitimate solution.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    There's been plenty of input from the people. The people vote every 2 years for representatives and every 6 years for senators. By and large, the people's input has been to keep the congresspeople who voted for these extensions. The reality is that most of "the people" just don't care about this issue. But they've had their input.
    - TheCapn 14y ago

mullingitover 14y ago

By 2019 it'll have been 49 years without a single work entering the public domain. And somehow I doubt that we'll even get there, the goalposts will likely get moved again before 2019. And people wonder why there's such widespread disrespect for copyright.

wpietri 14y ago
Only if we let them move the goalposts. We stopped SOPA, and we can stop this. Personally, I plan to spend money both money and time on this battle when it happens.

Anm 14y ago

I also agree with purchasable extensions, as long as the prices increase exponentially from a very modest price in the first renewal. Further, I think there is room to tie trademark into the process for media properties. In cases like Steamboat Willy, the character reflect a trademark for the Disney business. If it were applied as such, one might argue that a public domain version of the film (which could be seen as a product in the trademark domain) might be freely distributable but not modifiable without risking trademark infringement. This protects the free flow of information to later generations, as well as provides the company a means to protect the its brand from confusing or abusing variants/remixes. Further, registered trademarks already require regular renewal from a living person or operating business. Not sure how one would apply that music and non-fiction (or if one should even try); seems about useful as copyrighting N seconds of silence. (Obligatory: I am not a lawyer.)

mcculley 14y ago

It's only tangentially related, but I had to make a comment: http://www.economist.com/comment/1835110#comment-1835110 http://www.economist.com/comment/1835110#comment-1835110 I happily pay for my subscription to The Economist and enjoy reading it on my iPad. But they don't even allow you to select a single word in an article, which would make it possible to look things up in a dictionary. This kind of limitation to attempt enforcement of copyright is part of the whole problem right now.

netrus 14y ago
I doubt that they do it to prevent copying. I can access every article from the newspaper on their website as nicely formated HTML.
- mcculley 14y ago
  You have to go out of your way when writing an iOS app to prevent selection/copy in text views. They had to at least think about it.
  - chc 14y ago
    Or they just don't use standard text views and didn't go out of their way to re-enable it. Back in the early days of OS X, you'd see a lot of controls that looked like the real thing but acted in subtly different ways because they were re-implementations to add some minor feature.
wpietri 14y ago
Oh, that's not a copyright thing. It's more "you must be this tall to ride this ride." The Economist is snooty; if you need to look up the words, they don't want you.

OGinparadise 14y ago

Can someone make the argument about why should Disney be forced to give up copyright to Mickey Mouse? Or The Beatles to the music they created?

crpatino 14y ago
Because the creations are presumably so good that will remain valuable long after the authors or any kin they'd personally care about are dead.
seabee 14y ago
Because releasing it into the public domain would benefit people more than it hurts Disney? That's not the right question to ask anyway. Copyright only exists insomuch as government grants it - thus they can take it away if they please, or after an arbitrary duration. You should really ask how long is reasonable for a creator's work to be protected, and just how many generations of his descendants should inherit that right.
orionblastar 14y ago
Our founding fathers wanted to encourage competition and innovation. Copyright was given as a temporary protection of works for the owner, and after a certain amount of time the copyright fell into the public domain and then anyone could use it for free. This allowed small businesses and individuals to be able to compete with the copyright holder, and encourage the copyright holder to keep innovating new copyrights as the old ones expired. But with the current system, copyrights never expire, and copyright holders don't innovate like they used to do. As a result our economy has gotten worse, and unemployment keeps going up, and the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is denied. The US Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 has been violated by these modern copyright laws. And I quote: "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."
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  Personally I see patents and copyrights as different, very different (I know that the expiration time are different too). There's a huge difference in innovation and benefit to the society when it comes to a Viagra patent and Mickey Mouse. It's my opinion of course.

jimhefferon 14y ago

The standard of "xx years since the death of the author" can be quite awkward when the author is not prominent. Imagine if computer code was "10 years since the death of the author" and you found something on an archive. Better is "xx years since creation."

danielweber 14y ago
Yes, while we can fight about the length, it should be a flat length. Young people who make works shouldn't have them last longer than old people who make works.

jimworm 14y ago

The last copyright extension might be the last Disney could push for. If they pushed it significantly further, they would lose the copyright of their older works to the Brothers Grimm. Walt Disney's first animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was published in 1937, 74 years after the death of Jacob Grimm. The Mickey Mouse copyright extension is 70 years after the death of the longest surviving creator. That said, they could lobby to increase copyright terms for post-1927 works only, or corporate works only and leave natural persons out in the cold. It's uncertain whether these moves would be too politically extreme for Disney.