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Patents I can understand needing often to be shorter than they end up being, but personal copyright I'm not so disturbed by. When should people be able to publi

Patents I can understand needing often to be shorter than they end up being, but personal copyright I'm not so disturbed by. When should people be able to publish derivative copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls on self-published Amazon accounts without royalties going to Hemingway's estate? Works made for hire, 100 years feels like a really long time.

XorNot 11y ago
Because the idea that one individual - who is now long dead - can create a work that then should be protected for several generations of descendants is a wealth stratifier. What implicit societal value are it's modern beneficiaries creating that entitles them to that revenue?
- mattlutze 11y ago
  It's social status and worth are that value. At creator's life + 75 years, the existing law is the lifetime, sort of, of the creator's offspring, not several generations. Should I be able to take his bibliography, self-pub it on Amazon with flashy covers and take the profits from it? I'm not sure.
  - jo909 11y ago
    If you are able to figure out how to make a profit with a public domain text, you are very entitled to them.
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      If he wrote the books half a lifetime ago? What's a reasonable time, then? 10 years? 20? From when it was published, or when it was written? It can take years for a manuscript to move through editing, and many of our beloved classics did terribly their first run or two. Is it anymore fair should a publishing house go all 90's Star Wars on works their stable of authors wrote a few decades after first publication, with the authors not seeing a penny from them? 75 to, what, 150 years may indeed be too much, but the answer is not so clear as to what the alternative should be.
      - jo909 11y ago
        I don't know what time is reasonable, but I think there has to be a deadline at some point. I'm trying to argue that if after a finite X amount of time the work falls into the public domain, then very likely nobody will make very much profit from that work in its unmodified original form at all, unless they provide some sort of service that is of value. Also it opens new opportunities for _everybody_ to build upon the previous work with a unique and good fresh idea, which they can then try to market. The original author had their fair chance to make money and monetise their idea to the best of their ability. Now let's find out what other people can create from it.
        nitrogen 11y ago
        Copyright could be separated into multiple tiers that expire over time. First all rights reserved, then CC-BY-NC after 20, then CC-BY-SA with moral rights to protect living authors' reputations, then CC-BY, then CC-0.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    At creator's life + 75 years, the existing law is the lifetime, sort of, of the creator's offspring, not several generations. No, not at all. That would only be the case if authors generally died immediately after the birth of their children. If you live to see your grandchildren, which isn't exactly uncommon, they'll still have your copyright inheritance long after their parents have died. With the recent increase in lifetimes, it'll be common for great-grandchildren to have the inheritance of copyright over works for almost their whole lives.
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      It will still run out after 75 years... So, sure, the grandkids will manage the estate for a decade before it expires. It doesn't say "the lifetime of the copyright holder at expiration," unless I've missed something. If we're going to get silly, recent increases in lifetimes are also being followed by lower birth rates and parents having children older, so no it doesn't follow that three full lifetimes will be covered by these copyrights. I know copyright isn't popular here so I'll leave this be, but let's not get hyperbolic, please.
      - unprepare 11y ago
        Hmm, It's not uncommon today for grandchildren to be in there 30's when a grandparent dies. Thats around children having age also. I could easily see it being common already for an author to die at age 90, leaving children (aged ~60), grand children (aged ~30) and great-grandchildren (aged ~1) That gives all of those people 75 more years of income from the original authors work. Which leaves us with grandchildren (aged ~105), great grandchildren (aged ~75), great-great-grandchildren (aged ~45), great-great-great-grandchildren (aged ~15) once the copyright expires, if it is never extended. I'm not sure i see why the great-great-great-grandchildren of an author deserve the income from that work into their mid to late teens.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    Yes. If you can do that, so could anyone else. And Gutenberg would give it away for free, so if you can make a few cents, why not?
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    The only reasonable provision to make for the offspring of a creator is to extend the copyright term to a maximum of the creator's lifespan, plus the mean human gestation period, plus the age of legal majority. For the sake of simplicity, we'll just call it 20 years. I'm willing to support a creator's minor children until they are old enough to support themselves. I am not willing to give them a free pass for their entire lives just because they were lucky enough to be born to a popular artist. I wouldn't even let my own kids freeload off of me once they get old enough to leave home, and I actually like them. Nor do I think that an artist should be able to make something while young, and rest on the same laurels until the day they die. Certainly, they should be able to retire at the same age as the rest of us, and expect their last work to remain protected until they die, so the regular term should probably be no more than the numbers conservative retirement planners use: the 95th percentile for life expectancy from age 65, or about 35 years. So a maximum term of 35 years, and a minimum term of 20, with the term for works in between those ages ending upon the death of the creator. Works done for hire would simply have a term of 20 years. That's very reasonable, in my opinion.
plorg 11y ago
But at the same time, anyone could distribute the work for free. Self-publishing on Amazon would have to add value to the work in some way, for example in formatting it as an e-book.

XorNot 11y ago

Because the idea that one individual - who is now long dead - can create a work that then should be protected for several generations of descendants is a wealth stratifier. What implicit societal value are it's modern beneficiaries creating that entitles them to that revenue?

mattlutze 11y ago
It's social status and worth are that value. At creator's life + 75 years, the existing law is the lifetime, sort of, of the creator's offspring, not several generations. Should I be able to take his bibliography, self-pub it on Amazon with flashy covers and take the profits from it? I'm not sure.
- jo909 11y ago
  If you are able to figure out how to make a profit with a public domain text, you are very entitled to them.
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    If he wrote the books half a lifetime ago? What's a reasonable time, then? 10 years? 20? From when it was published, or when it was written? It can take years for a manuscript to move through editing, and many of our beloved classics did terribly their first run or two. Is it anymore fair should a publishing house go all 90's Star Wars on works their stable of authors wrote a few decades after first publication, with the authors not seeing a penny from them? 75 to, what, 150 years may indeed be too much, but the answer is not so clear as to what the alternative should be.
    - jo909 11y ago
      I don't know what time is reasonable, but I think there has to be a deadline at some point. I'm trying to argue that if after a finite X amount of time the work falls into the public domain, then very likely nobody will make very much profit from that work in its unmodified original form at all, unless they provide some sort of service that is of value. Also it opens new opportunities for _everybody_ to build upon the previous work with a unique and good fresh idea, which they can then try to market. The original author had their fair chance to make money and monetise their idea to the best of their ability. Now let's find out what other people can create from it.
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        Copyright could be separated into multiple tiers that expire over time. First all rights reserved, then CC-BY-NC after 20, then CC-BY-SA with moral rights to protect living authors' reputations, then CC-BY, then CC-0.
- icebraining 11y ago
  At creator's life + 75 years, the existing law is the lifetime, sort of, of the creator's offspring, not several generations. No, not at all. That would only be the case if authors generally died immediately after the birth of their children. If you live to see your grandchildren, which isn't exactly uncommon, they'll still have your copyright inheritance long after their parents have died. With the recent increase in lifetimes, it'll be common for great-grandchildren to have the inheritance of copyright over works for almost their whole lives.
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    It will still run out after 75 years... So, sure, the grandkids will manage the estate for a decade before it expires. It doesn't say "the lifetime of the copyright holder at expiration," unless I've missed something. If we're going to get silly, recent increases in lifetimes are also being followed by lower birth rates and parents having children older, so no it doesn't follow that three full lifetimes will be covered by these copyrights. I know copyright isn't popular here so I'll leave this be, but let's not get hyperbolic, please.
    - unprepare 11y ago
      Hmm, It's not uncommon today for grandchildren to be in there 30's when a grandparent dies. Thats around children having age also. I could easily see it being common already for an author to die at age 90, leaving children (aged ~60), grand children (aged ~30) and great-grandchildren (aged ~1) That gives all of those people 75 more years of income from the original authors work. Which leaves us with grandchildren (aged ~105), great grandchildren (aged ~75), great-great-grandchildren (aged ~45), great-great-great-grandchildren (aged ~15) once the copyright expires, if it is never extended. I'm not sure i see why the great-great-great-grandchildren of an author deserve the income from that work into their mid to late teens.
- Frondo 11y ago
  Yes. If you can do that, so could anyone else. And Gutenberg would give it away for free, so if you can make a few cents, why not?
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  The only reasonable provision to make for the offspring of a creator is to extend the copyright term to a maximum of the creator's lifespan, plus the mean human gestation period, plus the age of legal majority. For the sake of simplicity, we'll just call it 20 years. I'm willing to support a creator's minor children until they are old enough to support themselves. I am not willing to give them a free pass for their entire lives just because they were lucky enough to be born to a popular artist. I wouldn't even let my own kids freeload off of me once they get old enough to leave home, and I actually like them. Nor do I think that an artist should be able to make something while young, and rest on the same laurels until the day they die. Certainly, they should be able to retire at the same age as the rest of us, and expect their last work to remain protected until they die, so the regular term should probably be no more than the numbers conservative retirement planners use: the 95th percentile for life expectancy from age 65, or about 35 years. So a maximum term of 35 years, and a minimum term of 20, with the term for works in between those ages ending upon the death of the creator. Works done for hire would simply have a term of 20 years. That's very reasonable, in my opinion.

plorg 11y ago

But at the same time, anyone could distribute the work for free. Self-publishing on Amazon would have to add value to the work in some way, for example in formatting it as an e-book.