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In addition to this, I like considering things that should be entering the public domain. Using the initial copyright length of 14 years, renewable for an addi

In addition to this, I like considering things that should be entering the public domain. Using the initial copyright length of 14 years, renewable for an additional 14, anything published in 1987 should be entering the public domain in the upcoming year. * Predator * Robocop * The Princess Bride * Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams * Watchmen, by Alan Moore * Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen These should all be open cultural works, ready for new writers to use as a basis. Ready to be used as the backdrop for new stories. Instead, they are locked universes, only containing a small number of stories.

andrewljohnson 12y ago
28 years isn't even long enough for the author to die. As a creator, I want to maintain my copyrights at least as long as I live. I say go make your own backdrops, your own universe.
- MereInterest 12y ago
  28 years is long enough for a child to be raised on newly published works, then grow up to make their own stories. The child who play-pretends as Sherlock Holmes or as The Dread Pirate Robert should be able to grow up and write those stories.
  - andrewljohnson 12y ago
    How do we know that is even beneficial? Why can't the child create her own characters? It's a warm and fuzzy statement you make, but what's the argument about why this is good, for child or society?
    - MereInterest 12y ago
      http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optimal-copyright-term-is-14-years/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optima... The purpose of copyright is explicitly stated to be "to promote the sciences and useful arts". Copyright's temporary monopoly over works is designed to compensate the author for having written them. Without public domain, there is no advancement, as future authors cannot build upon earlier works. If I ever reference the sword Excalibur, or the outlaw Robin Hood, or the raising of Lazarus, I am using cultural references. Under the reign of permanent copyright, these references, which can enrich a work considerably, would not be allowed. In 100 years, authors will not be allowed to make reference to Harry Potter, or Frodo, or Luke Skywalker, a great cultural loss.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        It's a bit pedantic of me, but I think your argument has presented has a lot of holes. You can always write original work that doesn't depend on existing cultural references, and the ability to reference things is not as limited as you suggest. I can write an publish a book tomorrow in which a character reads a Harry Potter novel and muses on the content. What I can't do is write a book featuring Harry Potter, boy wizard, as a character, unless it's some sort of parody - but in that case I may well have to expend money and legal effort on defending against a lawsuit while a court decides whether the derivative work falls within some permissible exception. Incidentally JRR Tolkien died in 1973 so you'll be able to recycle characters from Lord of the Rings to your heart's content in 29 years as long as the law doesn't change; you just won't be able to use the footage from the movies or quote the script insofar as it differs from the novel. A literary parody has been around for a few decades already, I think it's called Bored of the Rings.
      - throwawaykf05 12y ago
        > Without public domain, there is no advancement, as future authors cannot build upon earlier works. Uhh, literature does not work like technology. Authors can and do create entire universes out of whole cloth. Of course, they will be influenced by countless other works, but copyright has no bearing their unless it's a barefaced rip-off. In fact, I would guess that most creators want to create their own work rather than build on top of others'. Firstly, because of ego, because the work would be all their own. Secondly, this allows the maximum amount of creative ability without being shackled by a backstory that they had no influence on.
    - iak8god 12y ago
      Culture can't exist without reuse and adaptation. The natural state of affairs would be that anyone is free to see or listen to (etc) some content, and then make marks on paper, or patterns of bits, or sound waves that are more or less faithful copies of that. Copyright is unnatural. It's not worth hashing out the arguments for or against it, or for or against any particular length, here. But the onus is clearly on supporters of long copyright terms to show how the benefits offset the downsides of restricting everyone else's freedoms in this way.
    - SapphireSun 12y ago
      I am somewhat sympathetic to your position, but couldn't you say that about inventions? Do inventions not become richer when the culture at large is allowed to build on them (at least within a relatively short period of time)? Stories are sometimes different, but I imagine that forcing the public at large to always start from scratch (or at least from a largely static landscape of compositions) precludes a lot of good works that we can't predict in advance. e.g. sampling in electronic music either uses really old music or doesn't bother with the law until an act gets big. At the same time, an author wants to benefit from and maintain creative control over how their work is used. I'm kind of interested in the following question: If copyright expires after the author's death, why do we respect their wishes in life but not in death? Just because they won't be offended when they're dead? Or is it because we regard their ideas as property and dead people can't own things? In which case, why can't it be passed down through the family in perpetuity and thus be restricted as long as the owners wish for all time? I feel like the right balance is some reasonable fixed term rather than the life of the author since both of those scenarios feel wrong to me.
      - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
        >Do inventions not become richer when the culture at large is allowed to build on them (at least within a relatively short period of time)? // Yes, and that is what patent terms aim to do. The monopoly is there to allow inventors to profit and so to continue to develop and invent. The monopoly is initially exchanged for the explicit disclosure of the invention. Without this deal the public domain would remain sparse as in order to profit (or really 'in order to break even' in many fields of endeavour) inventors would otherwise tend to choose to keep their inventions secret and deprive the public domain of the knowledge of how the invention is worked. Now, of course the development cycle of almost all patentable things has shortened with increased technology and industrialisation. So patent terms in many areas are probably a bit too long as well. But patents protection can realistically be an order of magnitude shorter term than some current copyrights will prove to be, and certainly with no less work put in to the creation.
    - learnstats2 12y ago
      The passing along of stories through generations and evolution of those stories is one of the things that historically made us human beings. It is intrinsic to all of human culture.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    you're assuming all work finds a publisher and success in the market. There are numerous examples where the opposite occurs. For films in the US, scripts which are offered for sale are typically registered with the Writer's Guild for purposes of establishing copyright (indeed most producers will refuse to look at a script that is is not WGA-registered, in order to avoid legal disputes). But it often takes a script years to go through development and get turned into a movie - oscar-winning Dallas Buyer's Club floated around Hollywood for 20 years before production and release, and there are many other example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell#Films http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell#Films Should the writer of Dallas Buyer's Club only be allowed to receive royalties until 2020, insofar as they can be traced to the 1992 script? Meanwhile, the stories of authors who published to indifference only to see their work become popular many years later are too numerous to mention. Many artists sacrifice their economic wellbeing on the altar of their artistic endeavor, and in matters of individual copyright ownership it's not unreasonable to take that into account.
    - joelwilliamson 12y ago
      The term for royalties doesn't have to be linked to the term for copyright. If all scripts already pass through the WGA, they could impose conditions on producers for royalties even after the script is out of copyright. They could use NDAs to prevent producers from stealing scripts. If there is one thing Hollywood shows us, it is that collective bargaining is a very powerful tool.
- iak8god 12y ago
  > As a creator, I want to maintain my copyrights at least as long as I live. You are free to want whatever you like, though many other creators recognize the desirability of shorter copyright terms. However, the purpose of copyright law is not to give creators whatever they want. It is to provide limited exclusive rights in order to promote creation. This is literally written into the US Constitution: "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." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
  - andrewljohnson 12y ago
    Congress and I shall go on wanting I guess.
    - iak8god 12y ago
      Congress is corrupt and inept. More so - if possible - in this case than in general.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I don't think should should be downvoted for this. A 'life of the author' standard is inherently limited and reflective of human realities (see my comment elsewhere for a distinction between human and corporate authorship).
- briandear 12y ago
  I agree with you and don't understand the downvotes. If I create something, it doesn't belong to society and I should have the right to own what I create and use it or not use it as I see fit. Let's take the anti-copyright argument to the extreme -- I challenge everyone opposed to copyrights to make your private github repos public. It is the exact same thing. Weak IP protection leads to decreased incentive for innovation. We could take it to another extreme and eliminate private real property rights as well. I like your house, it has been in my street for years, it's a part of my street's culture, therefore I have the right to move in whenever I want. How is the written word any different than a creation made of bricks? Why would I spend years writing a novel and only get the right to benefit from it for some arbitrary amount of time? If I wrote it and I built it, then I should be the beneficiary of it. Why is that concept so objectionable? Just because someone wants to do something with Robocop, doesn't give them the right to steal the work of someone else. There IS a means to create derivative works; it's called licensing. When your startups open source all of their application code, then perhaps I might be more convinced, but until that happens, complaints about copyright are nothing more than hypocrisy. There's nothing stopping any of us from creating our own art.
  - MereInterest 12y ago
    In that case, why is there a societal obligation to protect the work? Copyright is a trade between the author and society. The author releases the work to society at large, and in exchange, society provides a means to be rewarded for releasing it. You can own a story entirely, so long as you do not release it. Then, nobody can take it from you, and you will never see those characters do anything beyond what you say they do. But if you want to share it with others, you must accept that they will eventually write things based on it.
  - iak8god 12y ago
    > We could take it to another extreme and eliminate private real property rights as well. I like your house, it has been in my street for years, it's a part of my street's culture, therefore I have the right to move in whenever I want. How is the written word any different than a creation made of bricks? This is a terrible analogy. If I take your house, I have deprived you of its use. If I make a copy of something you wrote, of what are you being deprived? Do you not still have access to your writing? You expect to profit by selling copies of your work and you task the State with preventing me from doing so, thereby limiting my freedom to do whatever I want with my own physical property (my pen and my paper). That's the nature of the copyright bargain, and everyone more or less agrees that it's a net gain for society. But do not lose track of what's going on here.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  I make my living writing copyrighted works (software). I would be happy to let all the 20+ year old stuff slip into the public domain.
  - pmalynin 12y ago
    As an indie game developer I open sourced all of my published mobile games after I realized they wouldn't make a profit.
- vpeters25 12y ago
  > 28 years isn't even long enough for the author to die It is not supposed to. If you write a great best seller on your first shot and get paid for life, would you be encouraged to try and write another one? Before copyright, artists lived under the wing of nobility which provided them with food and shelter in exchange for their creations. The problem with this system is there were not enough nobles around to finance all the starving artists. Also artists lucky enough to find a noble or king to finance them had to keep creating or get kicked out. Copyright was supposed to provide the same kind of incentive: you can live of your creation for a little while, but you have to keep creating. Then congress defined "a little while" as life + 70 years and the Supreme Court somehow agreed ... Edit: grammar Edit2: added congress to the mix
- phaemon 12y ago
  You mean like you invented the idea of "warp" for space travel? Every work of art is derived from previous works.
tzs 12y ago
That analysis is based on the assumption that the copyright term from the first US copyright act from 1790 somehow got it right for all time, even for forms of expression that had not yet been invented, and even though the economics of production and copying might vastly change. Can you justify that assumption?
- Jacqued 12y ago
  Right. And the World in general, and scientific, artistic and cultural creation in particular, have only gotten faster and faster since then, so we can only assume that copyright terms should be much shorter than originally thought up in the eighteenth century. So maybe 28 years should be a wild upper bound.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    I don't think that's true. You can create more elaborate works in less time thanks to technology, but you could sketch or compose a copyrightable work in minutes a century ago. There once was a property case which was wildly absurd on its face A camera, an ape and an unforeseen jape fell outside copyrightable space ^ 3 minutes of creative work. Refers to http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-07/internet-goes-ape-over-monkey-selfie-and-copyright-battle-it-sparked http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-07/internet-goes-ape-over... Now this is not such a great thing that it deserves protection until 2084+my remaining lifespan, but my point is that verses of this sort could have been composed and committed to paper in 3 minutes in 1814 just as easily as in 2014.
  - tzs 12y ago
    There's a interesting essay by Stephen Breyer, from before he became a Supreme Court justice, that comes to the opposite conclusion. He points out that because technology was slow in the 18th century, there was little need for copyright. When a new book was published, for example, by the time those who would make copies could set up their presses and go into production most of the market for the book had been satisfied by the original publisher. The faster things get, the stronger the case for copyright.
anigbrowl 12y ago
If only. I'm not sure how one defines what the 'right' term is - some artists don't find their audience straight away, and it would be a shame if someone's work were to become wildly popular after years of obscurity, while the author languished in poverty with no way to legally benefit. So I'm not opposed to 'life of the author' terms for individual creators. On the other hand I see no reason why a dead author's survivors should enjoy the proceeds of both the estate (if any) and economic rents for an additional average human lifespan (ie the 70 years provision in the US and other jurisdictions). Where a work is the creation of an artificial corporation - like a motion picture, which is almost never the sole creation or intellectual property of an individual - I feel a shorter term should apply. After all, a corporation enjoys full legal rights of contract etc. from the day of its 'birth,' and its 'needs' are highly attenuated compared to those of a person - typically a small annual fee to maintain registration and fulfillment of an obligation to file a tax return. Its commercial 'life' might therefore be thought of in terms of a business cycle or some standard established in law, like some multiple of the traditional 6-year laches term in equity law - a limitation on the time in which civil claims can be made. There was an interesting case about this earlier this year, in which the Supreme Court held that the doctrine of laches did not apply in copyright claims, because the statute displaces it: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/09/federal-supreme-holding.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/09/federal-supreme-holding.... ...so anything like this would have to be put in place by Congress, which means the property interest of the general public with continue to come dead last for the foreseeable future.
- MereInterest 12y ago
  I would want to have data regarding the profit made by books within the first year after publishing, and the profit made in all years afterward. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find such data from a quick google search. I would expect that the vast majority of books make the majority of their profits immediately, with relatively few sleeper hits, as you describe. I would rather not have copyrights tied to an individuals lifespan, but rather be sufficient that they catch the majority of the sleeper hits. I could conceive of an author, knowing that they have a terminal disease, writing one last book, the proceeds of which are intended as an inheritance. If copyright only lasts until the death of the author, this would be impossible. This also has the benefit of ease of use, for people writing derivative works. Comparing the current date with the date of first publication would be enough to know whether the book can be legally used as a backdrop setting.
briandear 12y ago
So create a new story. You can't copyright plot.
- MereInterest 12y ago
  There are stories that can be richer as a result of easier characterization. If a character adopts the name "King Arthur" as an alias, that immediately tells you something about the character, because King Arthur is a well-established character with well-established traits. We do not need to say that the character is lawful or just, because that is implied by the similarity to King Arthur. Similarly, I might want a character to take the name "Frodo Baggins", to imply loyalty and perseverance. However, use of that name, part of general culture for the past 77 years, would be copyright infringement.
cooper12 12y ago
The interesting part about Watchmen is that DC duped Moore out of the rights to the comics (and later made some pretty bad prequel comics), which deteriorated their relationship. You still hear him talk about it in interviews today. If I'm not mistaken a similar thing happened to the creator of batman. While public domain doesn't give Moore back his rights, I'm sure he'll rest a little easier knowing DC doesn't own his series anymore.

andrewljohnson 12y ago

28 years isn't even long enough for the author to die. As a creator, I want to maintain my copyrights at least as long as I live. I say go make your own backdrops, your own universe.

MereInterest 12y ago
28 years is long enough for a child to be raised on newly published works, then grow up to make their own stories. The child who play-pretends as Sherlock Holmes or as The Dread Pirate Robert should be able to grow up and write those stories.
- andrewljohnson 12y ago
  How do we know that is even beneficial? Why can't the child create her own characters? It's a warm and fuzzy statement you make, but what's the argument about why this is good, for child or society?
  - MereInterest 12y ago
    http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optimal-copyright-term-is-14-years/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optima... The purpose of copyright is explicitly stated to be "to promote the sciences and useful arts". Copyright's temporary monopoly over works is designed to compensate the author for having written them. Without public domain, there is no advancement, as future authors cannot build upon earlier works. If I ever reference the sword Excalibur, or the outlaw Robin Hood, or the raising of Lazarus, I am using cultural references. Under the reign of permanent copyright, these references, which can enrich a work considerably, would not be allowed. In 100 years, authors will not be allowed to make reference to Harry Potter, or Frodo, or Luke Skywalker, a great cultural loss.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      It's a bit pedantic of me, but I think your argument has presented has a lot of holes. You can always write original work that doesn't depend on existing cultural references, and the ability to reference things is not as limited as you suggest. I can write an publish a book tomorrow in which a character reads a Harry Potter novel and muses on the content. What I can't do is write a book featuring Harry Potter, boy wizard, as a character, unless it's some sort of parody - but in that case I may well have to expend money and legal effort on defending against a lawsuit while a court decides whether the derivative work falls within some permissible exception. Incidentally JRR Tolkien died in 1973 so you'll be able to recycle characters from Lord of the Rings to your heart's content in 29 years as long as the law doesn't change; you just won't be able to use the footage from the movies or quote the script insofar as it differs from the novel. A literary parody has been around for a few decades already, I think it's called Bored of the Rings.
    - throwawaykf05 12y ago
      > Without public domain, there is no advancement, as future authors cannot build upon earlier works. Uhh, literature does not work like technology. Authors can and do create entire universes out of whole cloth. Of course, they will be influenced by countless other works, but copyright has no bearing their unless it's a barefaced rip-off. In fact, I would guess that most creators want to create their own work rather than build on top of others'. Firstly, because of ego, because the work would be all their own. Secondly, this allows the maximum amount of creative ability without being shackled by a backstory that they had no influence on.
  - iak8god 12y ago
    Culture can't exist without reuse and adaptation. The natural state of affairs would be that anyone is free to see or listen to (etc) some content, and then make marks on paper, or patterns of bits, or sound waves that are more or less faithful copies of that. Copyright is unnatural. It's not worth hashing out the arguments for or against it, or for or against any particular length, here. But the onus is clearly on supporters of long copyright terms to show how the benefits offset the downsides of restricting everyone else's freedoms in this way.
  - SapphireSun 12y ago
    I am somewhat sympathetic to your position, but couldn't you say that about inventions? Do inventions not become richer when the culture at large is allowed to build on them (at least within a relatively short period of time)? Stories are sometimes different, but I imagine that forcing the public at large to always start from scratch (or at least from a largely static landscape of compositions) precludes a lot of good works that we can't predict in advance. e.g. sampling in electronic music either uses really old music or doesn't bother with the law until an act gets big. At the same time, an author wants to benefit from and maintain creative control over how their work is used. I'm kind of interested in the following question: If copyright expires after the author's death, why do we respect their wishes in life but not in death? Just because they won't be offended when they're dead? Or is it because we regard their ideas as property and dead people can't own things? In which case, why can't it be passed down through the family in perpetuity and thus be restricted as long as the owners wish for all time? I feel like the right balance is some reasonable fixed term rather than the life of the author since both of those scenarios feel wrong to me.
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      >Do inventions not become richer when the culture at large is allowed to build on them (at least within a relatively short period of time)? // Yes, and that is what patent terms aim to do. The monopoly is there to allow inventors to profit and so to continue to develop and invent. The monopoly is initially exchanged for the explicit disclosure of the invention. Without this deal the public domain would remain sparse as in order to profit (or really 'in order to break even' in many fields of endeavour) inventors would otherwise tend to choose to keep their inventions secret and deprive the public domain of the knowledge of how the invention is worked. Now, of course the development cycle of almost all patentable things has shortened with increased technology and industrialisation. So patent terms in many areas are probably a bit too long as well. But patents protection can realistically be an order of magnitude shorter term than some current copyrights will prove to be, and certainly with no less work put in to the creation.
  - learnstats2 12y ago
    The passing along of stories through generations and evolution of those stories is one of the things that historically made us human beings. It is intrinsic to all of human culture.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  you're assuming all work finds a publisher and success in the market. There are numerous examples where the opposite occurs. For films in the US, scripts which are offered for sale are typically registered with the Writer's Guild for purposes of establishing copyright (indeed most producers will refuse to look at a script that is is not WGA-registered, in order to avoid legal disputes). But it often takes a script years to go through development and get turned into a movie - oscar-winning Dallas Buyer's Club floated around Hollywood for 20 years before production and release, and there are many other example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell#Films http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell#Films Should the writer of Dallas Buyer's Club only be allowed to receive royalties until 2020, insofar as they can be traced to the 1992 script? Meanwhile, the stories of authors who published to indifference only to see their work become popular many years later are too numerous to mention. Many artists sacrifice their economic wellbeing on the altar of their artistic endeavor, and in matters of individual copyright ownership it's not unreasonable to take that into account.
  - joelwilliamson 12y ago
    The term for royalties doesn't have to be linked to the term for copyright. If all scripts already pass through the WGA, they could impose conditions on producers for royalties even after the script is out of copyright. They could use NDAs to prevent producers from stealing scripts. If there is one thing Hollywood shows us, it is that collective bargaining is a very powerful tool.
iak8god 12y ago
> As a creator, I want to maintain my copyrights at least as long as I live. You are free to want whatever you like, though many other creators recognize the desirability of shorter copyright terms. However, the purpose of copyright law is not to give creators whatever they want. It is to provide limited exclusive rights in order to promote creation. This is literally written into the US Constitution: "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." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
- andrewljohnson 12y ago
  Congress and I shall go on wanting I guess.
  - iak8god 12y ago
    Congress is corrupt and inept. More so - if possible - in this case than in general.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I don't think should should be downvoted for this. A 'life of the author' standard is inherently limited and reflective of human realities (see my comment elsewhere for a distinction between human and corporate authorship).
briandear 12y ago
I agree with you and don't understand the downvotes. If I create something, it doesn't belong to society and I should have the right to own what I create and use it or not use it as I see fit. Let's take the anti-copyright argument to the extreme -- I challenge everyone opposed to copyrights to make your private github repos public. It is the exact same thing. Weak IP protection leads to decreased incentive for innovation. We could take it to another extreme and eliminate private real property rights as well. I like your house, it has been in my street for years, it's a part of my street's culture, therefore I have the right to move in whenever I want. How is the written word any different than a creation made of bricks? Why would I spend years writing a novel and only get the right to benefit from it for some arbitrary amount of time? If I wrote it and I built it, then I should be the beneficiary of it. Why is that concept so objectionable? Just because someone wants to do something with Robocop, doesn't give them the right to steal the work of someone else. There IS a means to create derivative works; it's called licensing. When your startups open source all of their application code, then perhaps I might be more convinced, but until that happens, complaints about copyright are nothing more than hypocrisy. There's nothing stopping any of us from creating our own art.
- MereInterest 12y ago
  In that case, why is there a societal obligation to protect the work? Copyright is a trade between the author and society. The author releases the work to society at large, and in exchange, society provides a means to be rewarded for releasing it. You can own a story entirely, so long as you do not release it. Then, nobody can take it from you, and you will never see those characters do anything beyond what you say they do. But if you want to share it with others, you must accept that they will eventually write things based on it.
- iak8god 12y ago
  > We could take it to another extreme and eliminate private real property rights as well. I like your house, it has been in my street for years, it's a part of my street's culture, therefore I have the right to move in whenever I want. How is the written word any different than a creation made of bricks? This is a terrible analogy. If I take your house, I have deprived you of its use. If I make a copy of something you wrote, of what are you being deprived? Do you not still have access to your writing? You expect to profit by selling copies of your work and you task the State with preventing me from doing so, thereby limiting my freedom to do whatever I want with my own physical property (my pen and my paper). That's the nature of the copyright bargain, and everyone more or less agrees that it's a net gain for society. But do not lose track of what's going on here.
WalterBright 12y ago
I make my living writing copyrighted works (software). I would be happy to let all the 20+ year old stuff slip into the public domain.
- pmalynin 12y ago
  As an indie game developer I open sourced all of my published mobile games after I realized they wouldn't make a profit.
vpeters25 12y ago
> 28 years isn't even long enough for the author to die It is not supposed to. If you write a great best seller on your first shot and get paid for life, would you be encouraged to try and write another one? Before copyright, artists lived under the wing of nobility which provided them with food and shelter in exchange for their creations. The problem with this system is there were not enough nobles around to finance all the starving artists. Also artists lucky enough to find a noble or king to finance them had to keep creating or get kicked out. Copyright was supposed to provide the same kind of incentive: you can live of your creation for a little while, but you have to keep creating. Then congress defined "a little while" as life + 70 years and the Supreme Court somehow agreed ... Edit: grammar Edit2: added congress to the mix
phaemon 12y ago
You mean like you invented the idea of "warp" for space travel? Every work of art is derived from previous works.

tzs 12y ago

That analysis is based on the assumption that the copyright term from the first US copyright act from 1790 somehow got it right for all time, even for forms of expression that had not yet been invented, and even though the economics of production and copying might vastly change. Can you justify that assumption?

Jacqued 12y ago
Right. And the World in general, and scientific, artistic and cultural creation in particular, have only gotten faster and faster since then, so we can only assume that copyright terms should be much shorter than originally thought up in the eighteenth century. So maybe 28 years should be a wild upper bound.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I don't think that's true. You can create more elaborate works in less time thanks to technology, but you could sketch or compose a copyrightable work in minutes a century ago. There once was a property case which was wildly absurd on its face A camera, an ape and an unforeseen jape fell outside copyrightable space ^ 3 minutes of creative work. Refers to http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-07/internet-goes-ape-over-monkey-selfie-and-copyright-battle-it-sparked http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-07/internet-goes-ape-over... Now this is not such a great thing that it deserves protection until 2084+my remaining lifespan, but my point is that verses of this sort could have been composed and committed to paper in 3 minutes in 1814 just as easily as in 2014.
- tzs 12y ago
  There's a interesting essay by Stephen Breyer, from before he became a Supreme Court justice, that comes to the opposite conclusion. He points out that because technology was slow in the 18th century, there was little need for copyright. When a new book was published, for example, by the time those who would make copies could set up their presses and go into production most of the market for the book had been satisfied by the original publisher. The faster things get, the stronger the case for copyright.

anigbrowl 12y ago

If only. I'm not sure how one defines what the 'right' term is - some artists don't find their audience straight away, and it would be a shame if someone's work were to become wildly popular after years of obscurity, while the author languished in poverty with no way to legally benefit. So I'm not opposed to 'life of the author' terms for individual creators. On the other hand I see no reason why a dead author's survivors should enjoy the proceeds of both the estate (if any) and economic rents for an additional average human lifespan (ie the 70 years provision in the US and other jurisdictions). Where a work is the creation of an artificial corporation - like a motion picture, which is almost never the sole creation or intellectual property of an individual - I feel a shorter term should apply. After all, a corporation enjoys full legal rights of contract etc. from the day of its 'birth,' and its 'needs' are highly attenuated compared to those of a person - typically a small annual fee to maintain registration and fulfillment of an obligation to file a tax return. Its commercial 'life' might therefore be thought of in terms of a business cycle or some standard established in law, like some multiple of the traditional 6-year laches term in equity law - a limitation on the time in which civil claims can be made. There was an interesting case about this earlier this year, in which the Supreme Court held that the doctrine of laches did not apply in copyright claims, because the statute displaces it: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/09/federal-supreme-holding.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/09/federal-supreme-holding.... ...so anything like this would have to be put in place by Congress, which means the property interest of the general public with continue to come dead last for the foreseeable future.

MereInterest 12y ago
I would want to have data regarding the profit made by books within the first year after publishing, and the profit made in all years afterward. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find such data from a quick google search. I would expect that the vast majority of books make the majority of their profits immediately, with relatively few sleeper hits, as you describe. I would rather not have copyrights tied to an individuals lifespan, but rather be sufficient that they catch the majority of the sleeper hits. I could conceive of an author, knowing that they have a terminal disease, writing one last book, the proceeds of which are intended as an inheritance. If copyright only lasts until the death of the author, this would be impossible. This also has the benefit of ease of use, for people writing derivative works. Comparing the current date with the date of first publication would be enough to know whether the book can be legally used as a backdrop setting.

briandear 12y ago

So create a new story. You can't copyright plot.

MereInterest 12y ago
There are stories that can be richer as a result of easier characterization. If a character adopts the name "King Arthur" as an alias, that immediately tells you something about the character, because King Arthur is a well-established character with well-established traits. We do not need to say that the character is lawful or just, because that is implied by the similarity to King Arthur. Similarly, I might want a character to take the name "Frodo Baggins", to imply loyalty and perseverance. However, use of that name, part of general culture for the past 77 years, would be copyright infringement.

cooper12 12y ago

The interesting part about Watchmen is that DC duped Moore out of the rights to the comics (and later made some pretty bad prequel comics), which deteriorated their relationship. You still hear him talk about it in interviews today. If I'm not mistaken a similar thing happened to the creator of batman. While public domain doesn't give Moore back his rights, I'm sure he'll rest a little easier knowing DC doesn't own his series anymore.