What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2018

I agree that America's current version of copyright is flawed, and that rights-holders hold the rights for too long. Maybe copyright should require a tax, as some have proposed. Make it a penny for the first year, doubling annually.

Information is not a scarce resource and while there are many business benefits to the current arrangement, IP on balance harms the average person.

For those that say small artists need IP to survive: how much cheaper would an artist’s health care and automobile be if both of those industries had essentially “open licenses” (in our speak) for that content. How much cheaper would a Toyota clone be if it used standard parts and didn’t change every year, where any manufacturer could produce the necessary parts?

Artists could live as well as they do now for cheaper if there were no IP laws in my opinion.

99% of "content" being churned out by amateurs is absolutely dire. Producing creative works of serious merit requires a major investment of time and resources. Many skilled and talented people really would be put off investing that effort if they knew that an advertising company could use their music for free, or a publisher could churn out paperbacks without paying a royalty.

The primary problem is clearly understood - endless copyright extensions that offer no benefit to artists, but concentrate power in the hands of a few media companies. The duration of a patent is 20 years; I think this would be a reasonable basis for copyright. Failing that, I think that "author's life + 10 years" with an orphan works clause is also reasonable. What certainly isn't reasonable is the current duration of copyright, which is effectively forever.

You act like that's a good thing... What do you believe these middles mens will do then? They will just steal instead of paying.

Theses copyrights at least force them to pay and try to create unique content instead of stealing the newest idea.

Open your TV and look at Star Wars ads. Notice anything? Where I'm from, in Quebec, but it looks like it's everywhere, Disney allowed many companies to use Star Wars to advertise their products. It's crazy. I don't care much, but do you see anything particular about these ads versus the others? No originality. They are stupid, boring and are essentially: "YOU LIKE STAR WARS, WE DO TOO, BUY OUR PRODUCT".

You know why they do this? Because it's cheap and it works. Original creation is expensive and hard. You just saved so much cash for these middle mens, it's crazy.

Okay, now what's the gain for everyone else? Now you can legally read old stuff without paying the old content creator (do it illegally then, except the moral dilemma, which you doesn't seem to have, I assure you, the legal world probably won't do much to you)? Now you can use Star Wars characters in your stuff? That's it?

The gain is minimal... for god sake, if you want to reuse, then recreate. Possibilities are endless, please, do something new instead! I read that some people aren't too happy that 2017 was essentially a year of remake/sequel in movies.

I agree that copyright has taken ridiculous and perverse forms today, but I think the old point still stands that you have to find a solid alternative for creative workers before you can abolish it.

There are changes that can be made to copyright without abolishing it; mainly restricting corporate ownership and reducing the periods to prevent rent seeking, other alterations can also be made to provide additional freedom for derivative works.

But abolishing copyright outright sorry won’t work and anyone who suggested it never has likely never worked in a creative field.

The problem with copyright is that it's often owned or assigned to companies, which are potentially immortal and are constantly lobbying politicians to extend its duration.

Why not distinguish between author-owned copyright, which could either be for a fixed duration or for life, and company-owned copyright, which would always be for a shorter period?

Now, on the other hand, if you phrase it as a renewal fee, that would go over much more smoothly. Patents, for instance, have maintenance fees required at 4, 8, and 12 years, and they double each time.

I'd love to see, as a step towards limited-duration copyrights again, an exponentially increasing scale of renewal fees. For instance, after the first 5 years, it could cost $1000 for the next 5, $10k for the next 5, $100k for the next 5, and so on. (Throw in a grace period where all existing works get 5 years from the date this is passed, so people can adapt, and have time to evaluate what to renew.)

On that scale, after 5 years, any work producing value would be worth renewing. Some works will be worth renewing for 20 years. Incredibly high-value works might be worth renewing for 30 or even 35. But there'd be a serious tradeoff there; is it worth spending that much to renew the copyright of an old work, or to create a new one that grabs people's interest?

And as a bonus, abandoned works that no longer have anyone around to care about renewing would move into the public domain.

At any time you have the option to quit paying and give your IP to public domain. Also, any IP not in the registry would automatically be in the public domain. This would solve the issue about orphan works and give some benefit from the IP to the society that enforces the IP.

The proper way to solve the problem with excess copyright is by properly limiting the duration as written in the constitution.

For copyright, on the other hand, certain franchises are worth lots of money but there is a limit to how much you can build on past works. Disney could theoretically insert Mickey Mouse into every film they make, but that grows old fast. They have to create completely new stories, characters, etc to make money.

There is very little incentive to cross license most creative works. Even where it is done fairly liberally, for example American comic books, I think you could argue that it isn't necessarily a good idea. Apparently the most lucrative approach seems to be to exploit something while it is popular, then sit on it for 20-30 years before you "reboot" it for the next generation. What the copyright lobby is protecting against is that potential "reboot". They generally don't want it to be used in the meantime.

I think this is one of the areas where the FSF gets things right. It's really misleading (and potentially dangerous) to lump "intellectual property" into a single bin. All of the things commonly referred to as IP are really different in terms of motivations of actors and consequences to society. Would anybody seriously argue for time limits on trademarks, for instance? It would be an interesting world if anyone could sell "Kellog's Corn Flakes" just because the trademark was old ;-).

It's because there is no incentive for large corporations to stop the former while there is plenty for companies to stop the latter.

Large tech companies have been fighting against patent trolling and they have the money and power to enact change.

Excerpts from a detailed Priceonomics article (https://priceonomics.com/how-mickey-mouse-evades-the-public-...):

> Even if Mickey’s copyright does expire in 2023, Disney has no less than 19 trademarks on the words “Mickey Mouse” [...]

> According a precedent set in a 1979 court case, a trademark can protect a character in the public domain as long as that character has obtained what is called “secondary meaning.” This means that the character and the company are virtually inseparable: upon seeing it, one will immediately identify it with a brand. [...]

> In other words, Disney has ingrained Mickey Mouse so deeply in its corporate identity that the character is essentially afforded legal protection for eternity, so long as Disney protects him (trademarks last indefinitely, so long as they are renewed).

Effectively unlimited copyright leaves a hole in the availability of older books, making it impossible for there to be any growth on top of them.

There is an enormous amount of Harry Potter fanfiction. You're restricted from selling it though. But, as an author of twilight fanfiction proved, when you're ready to sell you can just find and replace some names and be good to go.

As a result, we can't view those shows in their original, and as I described, iconic, format -- or sometimes, at all -- except haphazardly on syndication or through piracy.

I mean, shows that e.g. everybody would sit down at home and watch on Monday evening.

Tell me that doesn't have a cultural impact. As just one example.

Copyright is in serious need of reform. You're granted a limited monopoly, not total, perpetual control -- nor the right to remove what were public, cultural objects from public discourse.

Something similar is at risk with regard to the news and other reporting. Watch copy vanish from the Web. At a minimum, there need to be modern libraries of such content where access is guaranteed. It represents the continuity of our history.

Part of the synopsis: "... that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used."

There should be an initial period of several years (somewhere in the 7-13 range) where copyright remains free.

It's far from settled that that's the case, though.

As for typesetting, I'm not sure if it's treatment in the US, but it's not out of the question that it could be protected. For works this recent though, someone finding an original edition (whose copyright would have also lapsed) would not be difficult in most cases even if necessary.

The critically important question: how many works would be created with a perpetual copyright (under whatever terms) that would not also have been created with a 14-year or 28-year copyright? The answer seems likely to be "not many", and certainly not enough to be worth trading away the the opportunities created by the public domain to get it. The public domain also tends to inspire the creation of many works.

In talking about copyright, we're talking about trading off between two things people want: a useful and vibrant public domain with plenty of works in it, and the authorship of more works (that will eventually end up in that public domain). Trading off the former completely to get an extremely marginal increase in the number of works does not seem like a trade we should make.

Now, that said, I would be in favor of the concept of having a shorter period of exclusivity, and a somewhat longer period of exclusive commercial use, such that non-commercial derived works become permitted after that shorter period. But even the latter shouldn't be perpetual, and both should be far shorter.

> Hollywood accounting (also known as Hollywood bookkeeping) refers to the opaque or creative accounting methods used by the film, video, and television industry to budget and record profits for film projects. Expenditures can be inflated to reduce or eliminate the reported profit of the project, thereby reducing the amount which the corporation must pay in taxes and royalties or other profit-sharing agreements, as these are based on the net profit.