4 ms·

It makes no sense to link the duration of the copyright work to the life of the author. Say some one writes a book and then promptly gets hit by a car. Why shou

by x0054 13y ago

It makes no sense to link the duration of the copyright work to the life of the author. Say some one writes a book and then promptly gets hit by a car. Why should their book have less of a copyright term then a book written by and author that goes on to live for 80 more years. Copyright term should be set number of years after first publication. 20-30 years would be reasonable. Copyright is absolutely necessary to allow authors to make money from their work. Short term rights, 10-30 years of so, benefit the authors the most. Long terms of 100+ years only favor the distributors.

charleslmunger 13y ago
I think part of the theory behind the "life of the author" is that there shouldn't be a disincentive to produce your work now. If you're a creator of some kind, you might not publish a book you're writing until you think it'll be ready. In single-author creative endeavors, like book publishing, you want to encourage people to create all they can before they get hit by a bus.
phaemon 13y ago
> Copyright is absolutely necessary to allow authors to make money from their work No it isn't. Writers can sell books. They can write for magazines and journals. They can write for TV. They can write for radio. They can write plays. Etc. None of these things require copyright.
- x0054 13y ago
  Ok, let's look at the world with no Copyright:: Books: Writer writes a book, self publishes it, and starts selling it. It starts selling really well. Big company comes along, buys one copy of the book, and starts publishing copies of it all over the place. They publicize the book, make money from it, and pay nothing to the author. Magazines and Journals: Magazine comes out. I take it, scan it, remove all the advertisement, and completely legally post it online for free. No one buys the magazine, because why should they. No one even looks at the advertisement in the magazine, so they cant make money from that either. TV and Radio are the same. Plays: Writer rights a play, sends it to a play producer, producer likes the play, produces it, pays the writer nothing, because, why should he, it's not like the writer has rights in his work. Open Source Software: You, as a programer, write some great open source software. Company comes a long, takes the software, incorporates it into their closed source project, improves it, and NEVER redistributes the code. Because they don't have to. After all, OSS is only a thing because under the copyright law you can release things under a given license. Hmm, does not look like such a good world, to me at least. People should really think about these things before screaming "death to copyright." Do copyright laws need to be changed so the copyright term is some kind of fixed, reasonable time period. Yes. Do we need to get rid of it all together. NO! Remember, life is about balance.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    I've thought about it more than you have I suspect. I notice that the argument has moved from "absolutely necessary" to "not such a good world". But let's look at your arguments anyway: Books: so what? The author has made money from the sale of the books ("selling really well") and will continue to do so, particularly with the free publicity. They have the "authorised" copy and are first to market. How does it hurt them that someone else also makes money? Magazines and Journals: Go ahead. Do it. I assure you absolutely no-one will complain because no-one will even notice. They're disposable media. Seriously, no one will care. EDIT: Sorry, missed TV and radio: are you serious? Do you know how much TV channels pay to be the first to show a particular show? You can't possibly think that they do that just for fun, right? Radio just wants listeners...being a poor copy of another station is not going to get you listeners. Plays: ....and never gets any work again. Or just have them sign a contract up front like most working people do. OSS: Just like BSD you mean? Looks like a pretty good world to me. And who was screaming other than you? And no, not all things should be balanced: we didn't get "limited term slavery" when full slavery was abolished.
    - x0054 13y ago
      Most people on HN are either programmers or in the startup world. I'll assume that you are the same. In that case, I challenge you, if you think copyright is bad. Release ALL of your work, including all the code you have on your servers, every bit of code you have running your project, and every bit of code you have powering your business, into public domain! Today! Why not? I am sure you'll make money from it still, why shouldn't I and others try to make some money from it too. What, you don't think it's the same? Why not? Is it because you enjoy the kind of work that has automatic intellectual property protection in the form of server side code or binary compiled code? While book/music/movie authors entire final work product has to be made public in order for that author to monetize it. Yes, first to market is great. But when second to market literally means a day later in todays day and age, where is the advantage? Any way, if you really believe what you are saying, start public domain releasing all of your work, you have the option. Prove that you can make a living that way, and maybe others will follow you and the world will change. Though, something tells me you will fail, but I can be proven wrong. As to your slavery argument, ignoring the historical facts which truly resulted in the awful circumstance of "limited term slavery," the condition of being a slave or a free person is not an example of 2 extremes. Having a bunch of white people own a bunch of black people as slavery is extremely bad and evil. Not having slavery is good, it's basically norm. The other extreme would be to free all the black slaves, and give them a white person as a slave each. Clearly and evil extreme as well.

by x0054 13y ago

charleslmunger 13y ago

I think part of the theory behind the "life of the author" is that there shouldn't be a disincentive to produce your work now. If you're a creator of some kind, you might not publish a book you're writing until you think it'll be ready. In single-author creative endeavors, like book publishing, you want to encourage people to create all they can before they get hit by a bus.

phaemon 13y ago

> Copyright is absolutely necessary to allow authors to make money from their work No it isn't. Writers can sell books. They can write for magazines and journals. They can write for TV. They can write for radio. They can write plays. Etc. None of these things require copyright.

x0054 13y ago
Ok, let's look at the world with no Copyright:: Books: Writer writes a book, self publishes it, and starts selling it. It starts selling really well. Big company comes along, buys one copy of the book, and starts publishing copies of it all over the place. They publicize the book, make money from it, and pay nothing to the author. Magazines and Journals: Magazine comes out. I take it, scan it, remove all the advertisement, and completely legally post it online for free. No one buys the magazine, because why should they. No one even looks at the advertisement in the magazine, so they cant make money from that either. TV and Radio are the same. Plays: Writer rights a play, sends it to a play producer, producer likes the play, produces it, pays the writer nothing, because, why should he, it's not like the writer has rights in his work. Open Source Software: You, as a programer, write some great open source software. Company comes a long, takes the software, incorporates it into their closed source project, improves it, and NEVER redistributes the code. Because they don't have to. After all, OSS is only a thing because under the copyright law you can release things under a given license. Hmm, does not look like such a good world, to me at least. People should really think about these things before screaming "death to copyright." Do copyright laws need to be changed so the copyright term is some kind of fixed, reasonable time period. Yes. Do we need to get rid of it all together. NO! Remember, life is about balance.
- phaemon 13y ago
  I've thought about it more than you have I suspect. I notice that the argument has moved from "absolutely necessary" to "not such a good world". But let's look at your arguments anyway: Books: so what? The author has made money from the sale of the books ("selling really well") and will continue to do so, particularly with the free publicity. They have the "authorised" copy and are first to market. How does it hurt them that someone else also makes money? Magazines and Journals: Go ahead. Do it. I assure you absolutely no-one will complain because no-one will even notice. They're disposable media. Seriously, no one will care. EDIT: Sorry, missed TV and radio: are you serious? Do you know how much TV channels pay to be the first to show a particular show? You can't possibly think that they do that just for fun, right? Radio just wants listeners...being a poor copy of another station is not going to get you listeners. Plays: ....and never gets any work again. Or just have them sign a contract up front like most working people do. OSS: Just like BSD you mean? Looks like a pretty good world to me. And who was screaming other than you? And no, not all things should be balanced: we didn't get "limited term slavery" when full slavery was abolished.
  - x0054 13y ago
    Most people on HN are either programmers or in the startup world. I'll assume that you are the same. In that case, I challenge you, if you think copyright is bad. Release ALL of your work, including all the code you have on your servers, every bit of code you have running your project, and every bit of code you have powering your business, into public domain! Today! Why not? I am sure you'll make money from it still, why shouldn't I and others try to make some money from it too. What, you don't think it's the same? Why not? Is it because you enjoy the kind of work that has automatic intellectual property protection in the form of server side code or binary compiled code? While book/music/movie authors entire final work product has to be made public in order for that author to monetize it. Yes, first to market is great. But when second to market literally means a day later in todays day and age, where is the advantage? Any way, if you really believe what you are saying, start public domain releasing all of your work, you have the option. Prove that you can make a living that way, and maybe others will follow you and the world will change. Though, something tells me you will fail, but I can be proven wrong. As to your slavery argument, ignoring the historical facts which truly resulted in the awful circumstance of "limited term slavery," the condition of being a slave or a free person is not an example of 2 extremes. Having a bunch of white people own a bunch of black people as slavery is extremely bad and evil. Not having slavery is good, it's basically norm. The other extreme would be to free all the black slaves, and give them a white person as a slave each. Clearly and evil extreme as well.