8 ms·

Why not follow the same system as domains? Allow for yearly renewal of copyrights. Failure to renew moves the item into the public doman regardless if it has be

• Aloha 14y ago
  I have an idea myself to solve this; Unregistered works, are granted 10 years of protection, then either must be registered or become public domain. For individuals, After registration, Artist Lifetime, then renewal every 5 years thereafter. For corporate owned/created work, registration good for 30 years, and renewal every 5 years thereafter. Possibly, work must be kept in commercial availability somewhere in the 5 year cycle or you potentially could be challenged for the right to renew. I like this system because it solves something I see as a serous problem, abandoned works.
  • geon 14y ago
    Registrations sounds like a bad idea to me. As long as you have the original publication date well documented, any registration should not be neccessary.
  • josteink 14y ago
    Before Mickey mouse and similar ilk came along, copyright was 7 years. 7. No copyright which includes anyone's lifetime (and most copyrights are held by corporations anyway) can be deemed reasonable in an age where information and culture moves 100s of times faster than it did when the term was 7 years.
    • tzs 14y ago
      > Before Mickey mouse and similar ilk came along, copyright was 7 years. 7. It was 56 years (28 year first term, which could be renewed for a second 28 year term) when Mickey Mouse was created. The shortest it has even been under Federal copyright law in the US was 28 years (14 year first term, renewable for another 14 years) under the Copyright Act of 1790.
      • josteink 14y ago
        That may be, and if so thanks for correcting me, but I think my point still remains pretty clear. Copyright was granted to benefit the public, arts and sciences. It was not created as a right to profit indefinitely to mega corps.
        • anigbrowl 14y ago
          Dude, you owe him an apology. I agree with your point but you made a major factual error and damaged your own standing in doing so. Look it up and correct your mistake rather than resorting to weasel words.
          • josteink 14y ago
            Uh. No. I've been entirely civil and I've been open about corrections. What on earth would there be to apologize anyway?
    • wpietri 14y ago
      I think individual copyright is reasonable for one's lifetime. I'd be ticked if somebody used my photos from 10 years ago for profit. Corporate or collective works, though, I agree. I think a 7-year expiration would be fine. I expect that approximately zero investment decisions on new movies or TV shows turn on the money they expect to make in year 8. And even without copyright, modern studios are adept at producing new versions and higher-end editions that would get new 7-year terms.
      • 14y ago
• ErrantX 14y ago
  The body of work that could be copyrighted is vastly larger and more diverse than domain names (which have a fairly tight technical constraint). So managing such a system would be very complex. No to mention the administrative overhead for companies and individuals to renew their work each year. But, if those problems could be overcome; interesting idea.
• mongol 14y ago
  Because there is value to society if copyrighted works become public domain after reasonable time.
• zokier 14y ago
  Renewal model would work for commercial uses of copyright. But copyright is not limited for that only. Other uses artistic control and ideological (eg. copyleft).
• sethrin 14y ago
  Why have copyright at all? More to the point, if you're going to have it, how are you going to enforce it on the Internet? The number of ways in which a high-quality digital copy of a potentially copyrighted work is nearly infinite. Some of them are legitimate: reading a properly licensed file into memory in order to consume it. Some are clearly not legitimate, and others fall into a gray area. The practical ease with which copyright may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement. Without a pervasive technical infrastructure the question of, "Can I copy these bits?" is essentially unanswerable. The duration of copyright is not nearly as large of a problem as enforcement -- the current system doesn't seem to work too well. To a first approximation, there is no such thing as copyright of a digital work. So why should that change, and how do you plan to do that?
  • mratzloff 14y ago
    The practical ease with which laws against murder may be violated is in itself an argument against its rigid enforcement. If you have a problem with copyright in and of itself, make a case based on that. The logical conclusion of your argument as it stands, however, is "laws may be violated so we should have no laws".
    • visakanv 14y ago
      My interpretation of his stance is- "there's not much point having a law if it's technically being violated all the time, and it's exploited by those with power and authority to suit their own ends". He's not promoting lawlessness, he's recognizing it as the current state of affairs, and suggesting that we address it differently.
      • duck 14y ago
        With that logic you could say the same thing about speed limits.
        • habitue 14y ago
          Yes, actually, there are lots of places with much higher speed limits on the highways. Good point.
• MereInterest 14y ago
  Except that things in the common culture should be able to be built upon, and expanded. I do need not seek out the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle if I should desire to write a Sherlock Holmes book. It has become part of the common culture. Similarly, I should not need permission to make my own animations involving Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, or any other of the creations from the early 20th century. It is not only the artificial scarcity of creative works that makes lengthy copyright so obscene, but also the inability to build upon earlier works.