7 ms·

>Putting Sherlock Holmes in the public domain is probably not going to have much effect on Arthur Conan-Doyle's writing output, though, so it's probably a good

• davidw 13y ago
  > I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, but couldn't the precedent have an effect on the creative output of people alive today, based on their desire for their descendants to inherit something valuable? Fair enough, but Conan-Doyle's children are dead too. How many generations should get the benefit of something before the public at large does?
  • danielweber 13y ago
    It shouldn't be based on lifetimes or the number of generations, just a flat number of years. If I buy an annuity that pays out over 50 years, it should pay out over 50 years, whether or not I die tomorrow or I live another hundred.
• andrewfong 13y ago
  Yes, this is the rationale the Supreme Court used to justify retroactive extensions of copyright. From an economic and psychological perspective though, it gets increasingly silly as copyright gets longer and longer. We know that people discount future income, and when you get to time frames of 70-90 years, the present value of any additional income is near-zero.
  • dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Yes, this is the rationale the Supreme Court used to justify retroactive extensions of copyright. No, it isn't. Not only is the stated rationale not addressed in the key case on retroactive copyright extension -- Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) -- that decision doesn't actually justify retroactive extensions of copyright based on any kind of incentive structure. Its only discussion of incentive was in regard to setting the particular term (not its retroactive effect.)
    • andrewfong 13y ago
      Yes and no. The majority opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft clearly discusses retroactive effect: "Given the consistent placement of existing copyright holders in parity with future holders, the author of a work created in the last 170 years would reasonably comprehend, as the “this” offered her, a copyright not only for the time in place when protection is gained, but also for any renewal or extension legislated during that time. Congress could rationally seek to “promote … Progress” by including in every copyright statute an express guarantee that authors would receive the benefit of any later legislative extension of the copyright term. Nothing in the Copyright Clause bars Congress from creating the same incentive by adopting the same position as a matter of unbroken practice."[1] Stated rational by above post isn't quite the same as the point made in Eldred, but it's based on the same idea -- i.e. parity between terms for newly created works and previously created works. [1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-618.ZO.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/01-618.ZO.html
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Yes and no. The majority opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft clearly discusses retroactive effect Sure, it discusses it because that was a challenged aspect. What it doesn't do is say that the retroactive effect is justified because it creates a motivating incentive, it says that the particularly challenged retroactive extension isn't a violation of a posited quid pro quo requirement because inclusion in future extensions is justifiably viewed as part of the existing bargain based on the unbroken past history of including works created before extension in extensions.
• benjvi 13y ago
  Do you know anyone who responds to incentives like that? No? Me neither...
• rodgerd 13y ago
  You've even got a real example to draw on; U. S. Grant wrote his memoirs to provide for his wife and children.
• gweinberg 13y ago
  Not to any non-trivial extent. Given that nearly always the vast majority of royalties aree realized within a few yers of publicayion, anf given that with any reasonable discounting getting a dollar 100 years from now is worth less than getting a penny today, even without taking into account that you will be dead, there really isn't an incentive argument for long copyrights. The economic incentive effect for having a longer copyright term than about 20 years is approximately nothing.
• prawn 13y ago
  I know a few people who derive much of their living from creative enterprise. None of them at all would be put off doing what they do because their efforts wouldn't provide for generations past their own. If you write, draw, paint or create music, you do so because of some blend of being good at it and having a burning need to create.
  • eurleif 13y ago
    Taken to its logical conclusion, the "burning need to create" argument implies that creative people don't respond to economic incentives at all, and that copyright doesn't help increase creative production at all. I've seen people make that argument. But that's just not true; at the very least, making money from your creative work can mean you don't have to work a regular job, and can focus on being creative. And sometimes people work a job not to support themselves, but to create inheritance money for future generations.
    • prawn 13y ago
      Not arguing against rights for creators, but against rights that go beyond their lifetimes. I think people work to create an immediate future for their children, but I've never met anyone who's spoken of creating an inheritance for a time beyond that.
• serge2k 13y ago
  Why should their descendants get a damn thing, they didn't do the work. Copyrights should end at death, or a fixed term in the case of a corporation.