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Comment by michael_dorfman | Hacker News Reader

It promotes creativity by enlarging the possible payout one can receive for one's labors. Writing a book may take several years, and it's not always the first book that succeeds. Capping the potential upside is definitely going to discourage writing works that will take a large investment of time and research.

And let's not even talk about all of the books that only became popular more than twenty years after initial publication. Imagine Tolkien in retirement on a modest pension while his books are suddenly bestsellers...

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In the XVII century, copyright in Spain was a period of ten years long, since the first edition, not renewable. I'm talking of a country notorious for its steep geography and bad communications, at a period of both dangerous colonisation, wars and abject poverty. That century is now known as the Spanish Golden Age of Literature.

History has proven that, past a point, money does not seem to translate into creativeness. Cultures almost always have their most creative periods at times of social and intellectual changes (say, XIX-XX century Germany) and when intellectual work is regarded as prestigious and respected by the public (physics on America post-Einstein/WW2).

The economics of copyright in 17th-century Spain aren't really translatable to the modern world, though.

If you were a publisher, how much would you be willing to pay an author for the rights to publish a book if you knew you'd be able to publish your own edition of it in ten years anyway? Why would you bother buying rights to new publications at all, if there was more money to be made printing up new editions of the earlier Harry Potter books?

All that authors have to sell is the right to publish their works for the maximum copyright period. If you drastically reduce the maximum copyright period you'll drastically reduce the value of what they're selling, and the effort-to-reward ratio for most authors (even good ones) is, I think, already quite high enough.

I read somewhere that most content ceases to be profitable at about 10, 15 years past release. I'm sorry, I'm not able to find it now, but if that's true, it would mean that publishers would indeed have an incentive. The benefits from printing new editions of old books wouldn't be much in comparison, being more competition. I do, indeed, think it's true.

I somewhat feel sorry for the authors, but I think they'll manage. Being a writer is already a respected and highly-sought status, even though the pay is poor. Either way, I wouldn't claim copyright durations of ten years. But we can't stay like this eternally.

So we're agreed that ten years is too short? Personally I have no problem with it lasting for the author's entire life, I think we gain more than we lose by that. And perhaps ten years beyond the death of the author (not to be confused with the Death of the Author) just so there isn't an unseemly orgy of cut-rate new editions every time an author dies.

I do agree, though, that the copyright term should be set sensibly and never changed, and not regularly extended at the behest of Disney. That's a real problem.

> It promotes creativity by enlarging the possible payout one can receive for one's labors.

That may be, but remember that this all comes at a cost. Copyright is essentially theft. All art is based upon that past. No one exists in a vacuum and all works are created in a context of deep history and culture that belongs to all of us. When we are denied the right to copy or make derivatives of a work it robs us of part of our culture. People in Afghanistan can legally print and read that Salinger book but we cannot. Is that right?

Tolkien is probably a bad example. I'm pretty sure his main motivation in writing was his exploration with language and not fat royalties. Furthermore, both him and his wife are dead. Why the hell isn't LotR in the public domain?

Copyright is essentially theft? Only in the sense that "property is theft." Copyright is protecting the creator of a work.

Let's forget the issue of derivative works for the moment, since that's not what was at stake in the original poster's argument-- we're talking about wholesale copying. And if people in Afghanistan can legally copy a Salinger book without paying him or his publisher, then my beef is with Afghanistan, now with the fact that others can't also rip them off.

How does it rob you of a part of "our culture" if I require that I get paid for any re-publication you do of work that I create?

I'm not saying that LotR shouldn't enter the public domain someday-- but I don't think that 20 years is the right time frame.

Can I just pop in to say I'm pretty disappointed to see that all the pro-copyright comments in this thread, including many well-written ones and sensibly-argued ones like the parent, have been modded down?

> Only in the sense that "property is theft."

Copyright and property are fundamentally different things with different histories and different treatments under the law. Almost all human societies have property or at least a system of possession which excludes others. Copyright is a modern invention.

If I take your car you're out a car, but if I take a song you're singing you don't even have to know.

> How does it rob you of a part of "our culture" if I require that I get paid for any re-publication you do of work that I create?

Have you heard of Google books? It's an incredibly ambitious project where google went and scanned a bunch of library books and put them on the web where they can be searched and read. For works in the public domain you can download the full text of the book and do whatever you want with it. It's like the world's biggest library, except the only books with text are the ones from the 1920s and earlier. Everything else is just a dust jacket.

I've been reading a lot of early 20th century books. When I find a good one I can email my friend a like to a book by Upton Sinclair or H.L. Mencken. But I won't be able to do that for decades with Salinger, if ever.

Creative works don't belong to anyone, but to all of us. We grant artists a temporary monopoly to encourage them. This I can live with, but please lets actually make it temporary.

Why shouldn't LotR be in the public domain? The author is dead. Who is collecting royalties?

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