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I think a better way that might treat copyright and patents equally well is to make it a continuous act of will and treasure to keep things from the public. Rig

I think a better way that might treat copyright and patents equally well is to make it a continuous act of will and treasure to keep things from the public. Right now, the default state of a copyrighted work like you mention is essentially automatic eternal restriction. Patents, once issued (for little relative cost) remain in force for more than a decade with no effort required for upkeep. Restricting "intellectual property" from public use should require exponentially increasing effort/cost as time goes on. I think this would allow the system to automatically discover the value of the restriction, and help redistribute the cost of maintaining that restriction back to the public which provide it with the force of law to begin with. tl;dr : Each year you hold on to a copyright or patent, you should be required to pay a great deal more to the governing body that grants you that monopoly to keep it in force.

nitrogen 13y ago
I don't think this would be very good for small creators. Existing copyright giants could use their current wealth to overwhelm the market, making it impossible for an independent to get any exposure. Then they just wait for the independent to run out of copyright support money, create a derivative work, and never have to spend anything on original writing.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  It would depend on the protection being nearly free in the short term but becoming very expensive in the longer term. This would allow small upstarts to find out if a market existed and then, if true, capitalize on it and use the profits to fund continued protection as far (and only as far) as the market would bear. If they failed, the patents could not then be acquired by trolls for pennies where they would then pollute the ecosystem for decades. As far as copyrights go, this would neatly solve the orphaned work problem with the added benefit of Disney having a serious think about paying a billion dollar tax to the public in order to keep "Steamboat Willie" in the "Disney Vault".
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    I still think such a system would need a way to prevent large players from waiting out smaller creators and getting free source material that they currently have to pay big bucks for (e.g. consider J.K. Rowling).

nitrogen 13y ago

I don't think this would be very good for small creators. Existing copyright giants could use their current wealth to overwhelm the market, making it impossible for an independent to get any exposure. Then they just wait for the independent to run out of copyright support money, create a derivative work, and never have to spend anything on original writing.

noonespecial 13y ago
It would depend on the protection being nearly free in the short term but becoming very expensive in the longer term. This would allow small upstarts to find out if a market existed and then, if true, capitalize on it and use the profits to fund continued protection as far (and only as far) as the market would bear. If they failed, the patents could not then be acquired by trolls for pennies where they would then pollute the ecosystem for decades. As far as copyrights go, this would neatly solve the orphaned work problem with the added benefit of Disney having a serious think about paying a billion dollar tax to the public in order to keep "Steamboat Willie" in the "Disney Vault".
- nitrogen 13y ago
  I still think such a system would need a way to prevent large players from waiting out smaller creators and getting free source material that they currently have to pay big bucks for (e.g. consider J.K. Rowling).