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Comment by henryfjordan | Hacker News Reader

IP laws are anti-competitive and rent-seeking, that's exactly the point. I agree that the amount of time copyrights are good for is ridiculous, but I still think it's better than not having them.

Imagine if J.K.Rowling wrote the first 3 Harry Potter books but didn't see a dime because the second they got popular everyone with a printing press started selling them royalty-free. Would she have finished the series? I got to read all 7 books because J.K.Rowling was incentivized to write them by her copyright.

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The first Harry Potter book was released in 1997 and the first movie was 2001. So to satisfy that the author be compensated would not require 70 years after her death.

I think most of us agree that copyright has value but its become excessive.

IMO 30 years or the death of the author, whichever occurs sooner, is long enough for the author to benefit from their work.

There really isn't any difference in terms of incentive for the author between 30 years and the current life of the author + 70 years (or whatever the current term is).

The reason why +years exists is mostly for the case of inventors who die prematurely, so that their family can still reap the benefits. It's the same reason why widows can collect their partners' pensions.

No, that's not it. The reason is that Disney lobbied to have the copyright term extended to prevent Mickey Mouse entering the public domain. This is despite that Disney was essentially built on public domain works.

This isn't how copyright was meant to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...

CGP Grey on copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

I don't want to penalize the families of authors who die suddenly and award a windfall to corporations. 30 years is just fine, no need to discuss the author's death at all.

I think 15 years would be more than enough, certainly in most fields of copyrightable endeavor. Whether there are fields where that wouldn't be long enough, I'm not sure.

The copyright on the first Harry Potter book should have expired by now. Copyright expiration should not be merely a distant possibility that we rarely think about, as it is today.

It's interesting to me when others come up with similar conclusions independently.

There's studies of sales of works (books etc) and iirc, at least with books, the vast majority of sales are within the first several years, with income trailing after that. This has come up in discussions of zombie rights to works, where a publisher sits on something out of print without releasing new copies because the return isn't enough. It's like the textbook reason for limits on copyright terms. Last I looked at it, 30 years was more than sufficient to cover the bulk of sales in almost all cases. If you think back 30 years now, that would be works released pre 1980s and earlier. That makes intuitive sense to me.

My primary concern is all of the works that die because they're no longer commercially viable but are still locked away; I'm actually willing to make an exception for the rare blockbuster hits if it actually means everything else becomes available.

My thinking is author's life for unpublished works (to protect works-in-progress), 10 years after publication unconditionally, followed by a sequence of renewals that require some level of public availability to be granted.

Obviously, there's a lot of details to be worked out: What constitutes publication? How long is the initial unconditional period? How many renewals are allowed and how long is each? What are the actual requirements to get a renewal?

You're assuming that copyright is the only way to make money out of writing, which is simply untrue.

Okay. So using the J.K. Rowling example: provide a plausible way that she could make money off of her writing, and particularly her first risky book, in the absence of copyright.

There are a number of cases where creators of popular works have been granted substantial sums to create subsequent works through crowdsourcing.

Edit for examples.

Cyan, creator of Myst and Riven, had two very successful Kickstarter to fund new works. First, they raised $1,321,306 to make Obduction, then $1,433,161 for Firmament.

Elite: Dangerous raised £1,578,316 for a modern remake.

Yes, it works for books, too: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...

Cyan had already made Myst and Riven. This is close to the opposite of what I was asking for.

So once again: you seriously think that J.K. Rowling, a completely unknown author with a manuscript repeatedly rejected by publishing houses, is going to be able to raise sufficient funding on Kickstarter for her first work?

Crowdsourcing still relies on copyright usually, and does in the cases you mention. It's simply preording a game or a book. Without copyright there would be no need to preorder the game or book, you could simply wait until it is out and make a free copy of it.

Both Obduction and Firmament are for sale. They aren't free games.

There are plenty of freely-available works that are crowdfunded though. It's true however that the costs of making a game like Obduction and Firmament dwarf even those crowdfunding revenues. The same applies to high-budget feature films. A 100% crowdfunding approach strongly selects for lower production costs, which also means improved efficiency and a larger variety of works overall.

And how much did those titles actually cost to make? I seriously doubt either game shipped without at least 4x the kickstarter funds.

They were only able to make up the rest because they knew copyright meant they'd get paid more when they shipped via sales where as without copyright it would just be copied.

Here's an article on Elite:Dangerous saying the actual budget was 8m

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-11-elite-dangerou...

> I seriously doubt either game shipped without at least 4x the kickstarter funds.

Yes, but AAA games and e.g. feature films are among the highest-cost works to make. They're very much an exception, not the rule.

I'm not sure what your point is. I thought the point that was trying to be made is that Kickstarter is a way to fund gamedev. But AFAIK there isn't a single example of the funds from Kickstarter being sufficient funding for a single game ever, AAA or indie.

(unless the game was being made for free as a hobby and the kickstarted was just for fun and not actually funding).

Hosting workshops, personal appearances, giving lectures, being paid to write more material.

But who would host the workshops for her? Who would pay her to write more? She was rejected multiple times from multiple publishers.

I write and give away free software. People have paid to come to my workshops. They've paid me to write more.

It's sort of like why would anyone pay to attend MIT, when you can watch videos of the lectures for free on youtube? Oddly enough, MIT is doing better than ever.

MIT has an IP-equivalent in the form of the exclusive right to tell people you graduated there. Plus a regular property right in who frequents the campus, and it's known that much of the value comes from the network one forms there.

Exactly my point. The value isn't in the video of the lectures.

Her first book was also written without her receiving any money to do so.

As to revenue Patrons, Trademark, etc also work. Shakespeare for example had zero copyright protection and still wrote quite a bit.

PS: If anything the massive sums she received from the HP series discouraged her to write more.

> Her first book was also written without her receiving any money to do so.

But she owned the copyright to it, and could trade that copyright for a contract on the book. That is, she had a viable monetization mechanism if her work was good.

So once again: absent this, provide a plausible way Rowling could have made money on her first book.

If we are talking a world without copyright but all other forms of IP, patrions or merchandise.

>So once again: absent this, provide a plausible way Rowling could have made money on her first book.

The way she made money was extremely implausible.

This is like arguing we need the NBA because it provides a job for LeBron James.

Rowling is quite an outlier - 1% of 1% of 1%. While a fascinating example, it seems unoptimal to center copyright protection laws around her experience.

She's only an obvious outlier after the fact, though; protecting all authors because they are potential outliers is a perfectly valid goal.

Optimizing a system for the 1% of 1% of 1% is not the greatest good.

Not if your goal is to help the greatest number of authors, but it might be if your goal is to help the greatest number of readers. Since a single book can be enjoyed by many, it's arguably better to have a single book that is very liked than one thousand books that nobody really likes to read.

The Andy Weir example. "The Martian" was originally a blog series, and actually his 3rd book.

He created an ebook version of The Martian, freely downloadable at the time. People did give him donations though. He only added it to Kindle for $0.99, because Amazon wouldn't let him distribute it for free. It look off from there.

When people would rather give the author $0.99 to make it easy to access on Kindle, than download it for free, and it becomes a bestseller, then that is a plausible way for an author to make money.

How much did Fox pay to license the copyright?

In a world without copyright, Amazon could have just converted the book to Kindle themselves and keep the $0.99.

Most authors don't see a dime though!

In the absence of copyright, one supposes that authors would get large up-front fees for publishing, and that the fee for book 4, book 5 and so on for JK Rowling would have been quite large, so I suppose she would have done just fine. Think "Kickstarter, but for authors".

What would the fee mechanism be for her very first book? Who would pay it? Remember, this book was so risky that she was rejected by quite a number of publishers.

Copyright is also the tool of open source code licensing. How exactly would a viral license operate when, lacking copyright, the authors have nothing to license?

While true, and I am willing to work with (and contribute to) software licensed by GPL and other free software licenses, my own programs are all under the public domain, because I am against copyright. I believe in reducing rather than increasing legislation, in general, so that would mean is better to abolish copyright. Even so, if copyright is abolished and then someone does copy it and won't release the source code, someone can legally reverse engineer it anyways, give them a bad reputation, or whatever else it may be. Furthermore, abolishing copyright would not mean abolishing trademarks, so you can still refuse to grant permission to use your trademark. (I also think that in addition to abolishing copyright, patents should also be abolished. Trademarks should not be abolished, but perhaps its scope should be reduced.)

But why would the fee be quite large? Who would pay such a large fee when immediately after they publish the book, rival publishers who paid nothing could print their own versions. Even if it was a kickstarter model with decentralized payments from individuals, a large number of people would simply wait until the kickstarter was over and the book published to get it for free. Imagin that was the case with kickstarters now: How many people would pre-pay for products that have no quarantee of delivery if they knew that waiting would earn them the item for free? Again, even if there was a guarantee the product would be finished, those who wait would still get it for free.

I'm not saying this couldn't work, in theory, but I think in practice that the # of parasites has the potential to make such a model unworkable. But maybe not! I'd be perfectly happy if you're right and it worked.

The entire point of the Kickstarter model is to solve collective action problems of that kind. It's in the individual's interest to contribute, because otherwise the project might not reach its funding threshold, or might have trouble reaching the 'stretch' goal that some care about. This ensures that the 'funding' issue is solved, at least.

Who would be contributing to this Kickstarter? People who already know her, and know that her books are good? That's not where the real money is, or the measurement of market value of an author's labor; the money is in the flow of cash from consumers.

More generally, non-excludable goods do not work well within a free market system. If you want them produced, you either set up a state mechanism for funding them (which many countries do for e.g. film, by creating national film funds), or you somehow make them excludable (e.g. through copyright). The other options aren't really effective.

You're pointing to an information problem that has little to do with non-excludability. A prospective funder faces the exact same issue anyway! And crowdfunding has been used to fund many sorts of good/service provision where non-rivalry is an issue. It does appear to work quite a bit better than other market-based options.

The exact opposite would happen. No publisher would pay very much for rights to a book that they cannot defend. Once that book hits the shelves, everyone with a printing press will be copying it and selling it at cost, which will undercut the first publisher because they need to include royalties in the price. They certainly aren't going to print a million copies if they aren't sure that they can sell them before someone starts copying them, so that would naturally limit the size of launches, further driving down the value of a manuscript.

There'd be a small first-mover advantage for being the first to print a book and smaller operations not worth copying would still operate but J.K. Rowling wouldn't be a billionaire.

In this case, the "rights" would not be those of a book publisher but those of a patron/sponsor. Being among the persons or corporate entities who e.g. J.K. Rowling officially acknowledges as the "sponsors" of her work would create a lot of clout, and with that a lot of very real value. Authors used to be funded like that before the current copyright-based system became predominant; it's not just a theoretical model.

I suppose she'd be able to sell "official copies" or something akin to that, but no matter what she's still not capturing as much of the value she created if she cannot assert a copyright. There's also nothing in copyright law precluding her from also getting sponsors. If anything, copyright law makes it clearer where everyone stands and so makes connecting writers and sponsors (or employers through a work-for-hire agreement) much easier.

> she's still not capturing as much of the value she created if she cannot assert a copyright

No one's disputing that. But she's also creating a lot more value at the same time. It's a wash.

It's not a wash for her, though, which may change her decisions to actually produce the work.

If the model is so good, what is preventing her from doing it now? There is nothing in law saying you have to copyright your books, she could simply release it under creative commons. What even qualifies you to know what is best for authors and publishers? I love how so many people love volunteering other peoples work for free or propose they jump through hoop in some byzantine system to make money in a way that is acceptable to you.

> I love how so many people love volunteering other peoples work for free or propose they jump through hoop in some byzantine system to make money in a way that is acceptable to you.

Yes, that's called democracy. Copyright must be a system that is acceptable to most of us. In fact, copyright itself is more "byzantine" than just having the State issue a stipend to anyone who produces a work of art - yet must we be OK with such a solution?

Similarly, Joseph Galambos considered that people who coined words were due a royalty when they were used. Is is unfair that we decide to use that work for free instead?

In the days before the Berne convention, US publishers copied British books without paying the authors, which of course made the British authors unhappy. In some cases, because there was a bit of a first mover advantage, publishers would send their agents to London to acquire copies of the plates for popular authors as quickly as possible, and were willing to pay a fee for this.

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