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Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if there's an effort to shorten copyright (unfortunately), but the fact that things are starting to enter the public domain again is already a big win for culture.

I imagine companies like Disney would lobby pretty hard against shortening copyright. A possible middle ground would be to return to the regime where copyright had to be registered and renewed regularly, with a cost to doing so.

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The cost should be exponential. First 20 years free. Ten years more costs $10,000. Another ten $20,000. Etc.

Under this model, it would cost about $2.5M to maintain a copyright for a full century. If a work still remains valuable, you’re looking at spending millions annually on renewals, with the cost doubling every decade. It’s an incentive to innovate rather than collect royalties on the old stuff forever.

I’ve seen this and similarly structured ideas floated since the Slashdot days, and they resonate with me—but there’s never a corresponding path to actually get buy-in from legislators. Feels similar to, but distinct from, a tragedy of the commons situation—the commons would benefit from supporting something like this, but there’s no organizing to make it happen and insufficient individual incentive to do it on behalf of the general public.

Beyond the tragedy of the commons w/r/t the general public, the other problem (or maybe a specific aspect of the same problem) is that the commercial beneficiaries of shorter copyright are companies and projects that don't exist yet. It's hard for hypothetical future businesses to lobby against existing current businesses.

This scheme would seem to be of most benefit to the rich and successful, or bigger companies, while smaller companies or mid-level authors would be screwed over. especially ones who had a hit late in their career and could stand to profit off of their earlier works but didn't waste the money to keep them in copyright, not having had the money to waste.

I agree, though this could probably be prevented by ensuring one can renew copyright freely up until their death or at least well into their life. If a company is capitalizing on works that were made 30 years after an author's death, I think it would be reasonable for it to cost a pretty penny.

Such a system only benefits the exact people and companies which we don't want abusing the copyright system. Why would Disney bother paying their lawyers millions of dollars to lobby for another extension when they can pay a small (comparative to royalties they receive) fee to automatically have it extended?

Agreed, even if you add two 0’s to that number, it would still benefit Disney (et al), and skew the system negatively for smaller content creators.

Small content creators benefit almost nothing from content >20 years old anyway, rare exceptions notwithstanding. Having a real tax on the most valuable IP would be a net benefit.

You could set it up so the fee funds small grants for artists.

Unsure why this is being downvoted, perhaps because it sounds like socialism. But grants for artists or something like UBI are actually great.

Disney would benefit, but if their cost doubles each year, would it be worth it? Given the formula:

    / 0              (n < 20)
    \ 10000*2^(n-20) (n >= 20)

When 'n' reaches 30 (years) you’re already looking at ~$10 million dollars. A number like that looks like it benefits the big players, but what about 40 years? That’s ~$10.5 billion for one year. Disney’s going to have to think twice about if it’s worth it to keep paying. Add another 5 years, and now they’d be paying a third of a trillion dollars for one year. I don’t think they’d even reach that point before dropping it.

The big problem with copyright is that some things don’t make sense to have copyrighted for 20 years, but some do (depending on who you ask, this may not be true). This becomes a problem when multi-billion dollar corporations own the copyright to something. That scale of money wasn’t a thing in the late 1700s when copyright was written into the Constitution.

> This becomes a problem when multi-billion dollar corporations own the copyright to something. That scale of money wasn’t a thing in the late 1700s when copyright was written into the Constitution.

Don't be confused by the numbers; that scale of money was most definitely a thing in the 1700s. Whether you measure it in 2020 USD or bolts of cloth isn't really relevant.

If you're a small content maker but financially rely on works you've created more than 20 years ago, you're doing something wrong. Try creating something new.

The difference is that the renewal fee is a real tax on IP, whereas Disney paying lawyers mostly benefits lawyers.

I don’t mind if Disney still owns “Snow White” a century from now, if they’re paying a $100M tax to do so.

Such a fee on each copyrighted work is a huge burden even for a large corporation. They’d choose carefully what they want to retain.

Disney doesn't own Snow White, it's a public domain story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White

I don't care if Disney still owns their rendition of Snow White 100 years from now, so long as they're paying 100m a year for the privilege.

So some poor independent author who make a few thousand a year from selling a self-published book should lose his copyright after ten years if he can't cough up $10,000? That sounds downright evil and completely against the original spirit of copyright law.

Why do you think only people with the big bucks should enjoy copyright protection? Who are you trying to benefit here?

Honesty I think the world as whole would be better off as a whole. A handful of small authors not receiving royalties after two decades is a small price to pay for a world of Mickey Mouse fan fiction.

Let people declare value of their copyrighted material. They then must pay x% of it's value each year as tax for the gov protecting it. Anyone is allowed to bid on the ip and if they give a higher price, the author is allowed to raise their assessment or sell it.

Nice system that taxes huge ip and allows small authors to keep their stuff(or cash out).

Underrated proposal.

I suppose a lot of countries wouldn't even consider it, because they don't want to be kicked out of trade agreements which have imposed the life + 50 or 70 year system.

> things are starting to enter the public domain again is already a big win for culture.

Is it? It's interesting for a handful or iconic works, and it'd be interesting if copyright terms were significantly shorter, but right now, as a culture, we've mostly lost interest in things entering the public domain. We still got a Great Gatsby movie, but it was already a $2 paperback, and I assume people aren't that eager to publish fan fiction for it.

> I imagine companies like Disney would lobby pretty hard against shortening copyright.

That, and in a world with shortening copyright, they wouldn't have pushed so hard on promoting Mickey Mouse, and with Star Wars coming up on 50 years old, maybe they wouldn't have invested in the Star Wars universe when randos could make their own movies and theme park lands.

Some of this IP is more recognized and loved because of long copyright terms.

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