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Comment by tiles | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, is there historical evidence of whether short-term copyright protection (14 years) allowed greater innovation in society than no copyright, or the current artist life + 70 (no doubt)? In an ideal legal system, what would be the best approach to copyright?

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I ran across an interesting piece which looks at history and the impact of copyright law. It contrasts England and Germany and looks at growth and publishing during the industrial revolution.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,...

I don't think strict 14 year copyright was in effect anywhere where industrialized printing and reproduction was also extant.

On the other hand, there have been documented instances where simply ignoring copyright led to economic boom. There have been plenty of recent articles on that.

Hmm how would you know if simply ignoring copyright isn't just killing the goose for the golden eggs? If patents and copyrights really do promote innovation, you could be stunting innovation for the long term, even if you could put already-made discoveries to good use in the short term. It'd have been nice to see what specific examples of recent articles you're talking about.

Yes. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" details a significant number of cases dating as far back as the Statute of Anne and as recently as modern developing nations.

In every single case, the evidence shows that the absence of Copyright has spurred more creativity and cultural expression than its presence. Moreover, the shorter the Copyright, the greater the quantity of expression.

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