The longest I can theoretically think is justified is the death of the author. The idea to keep works out of the public domain so that heirs or estates or businesses can live off economic rents is pretty bizarre to me, seems straight up feudal.
But on the flip side, 90+ years is really WAY too long.
Cut it to 20 years. Long enough to capture the initial buzz, but not so long that we end up with shit staying under the mouse's thumb forever.
I believe the other stories you mention are even older.
This is very much an "in principle" thing. In practice, many of these traditional stories have (sadly) become synonymous with the Disney version, so Disney's work is basically the canonical version. This gives Disney a very good sword of Damocles to hang over the heads of anyone else trying to adapt these folk stories: to my understanding if you include a single copyrightable adaptation or embellishment of the original that was written by Disney without "prior art", you're liable to be steamrollered by the lawyer army and be ruined.
This illustrates (IMO, the evils of over-long) current copyright terms rather perfectly: Disney didn't swoop in and benefit at Collodi's or his descendent's expense under the copyright rules of the time. Had current -- heavily Disney-influenced, so presumably supported and wished-for by Disney -- terms been in force then, this would have been a case of Disney swooping in and benefitting at Collodi's or his descendent's expense. Dunno what exactly this means... Besides Disney possibly being quite hypocritical.
And yes, most of Disney's older great hits about princesses and princes (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella...) are based on German folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm and first published in 1812.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_S...
For that matter, you're suggesting GCC version 3.0.3, Emacs 21.2 and all prior versions be public domain and not have any copyright or copyleft protection on it? And thus, I could take the source code for them, modify it, close source it release my own version.
Would you not have taken the photo or sold it had you known the timeframe for it's value would be limited to 20 years? I suspect that, yes, you'd still take that photo. So long as the timespan is long enough to benefit the creator (and thus, encourage creativity) but not so long as to forever lock up the creation, then I see no harm in a much shorter copyright timeframe.
Why should I care if a 20 year old compiler or text editor ends up having closed source versions? And, on the flip side, wouldn't it be neat if we had Windows XP source code in the public domain?
Now consider the fact that with a 20 year lifespan on copyright every streaming service would have access to everything published in 2001 and earlier. 1 service could give you a bonkers amount of content.
How is this different - why should I be entitled to get, for free, something someone else created and owns.
Suddenly it doesn't sound unreasonable at all.
> something someone else created and owns
The way someone should "own" an idea is exactly what's being disputed...
It's a crime to steal someone's bible even though the bible texts are (largely) in public domain.
It is not the same to compare a thing to a concept. I can copy someone's bitcoin hash all day long, but I don't own that hash simply be copying it into a text document. Same principle.
Anyone should be able to write and sell a story about Superman or Mickey.
You made profits off the prints for 20 years, and the state enforced those rights. You didn't pay for them, at most you paid a token fee to register the copyrights.
That's the bargain of copyright, I think. Yes, some folks lose control after a period, but everyone else is enriched.
Excuse me, I've got to go order a Miskatonic University sweatshirt.
That's a very idealized version. You most likely did pay taxes on any income made and you payed a lawyer to enforce your right, if necessary. The only thing the state did was to write those laws down once and offer a judge and jury, in case of a violation.
Also, you didn't pay for any of your other rights. I don't see why copyright should be special in that regard.
I'm fine with 20 years, but that argument in particular is rather weak.
Nope. The judge and jury are backed by the bailiff who forecloses on you if you don't pay the judgement, and by the police who jails you if you resist the taking of your assets, and by the prison system where you end up. This whole security apparatus is behind just "writing those laws", and it does not come cheap.
If you could fork the latest version and make it closed source, then it's easy, you just add a couple useful features and now yours is "better." But if you have to start with such an ancient version and decades of technical debt you didn't even create, it would be a total waste of time. The open source one would continue getting better while you were playing catchup to even release it.
Your software argument is even better evidence that 20 years is a good idea. If the software is maintained, the new, derivative versions continue to be copyright protected. At the same time, abandonware becomes available for use without worry.
Here's another thought experiment. Assume Spiderman was first created in 2002 with the launch of the movie. It would be expiring soon. They've already made massive profits and such old movies are found for bargain-basement prices all over, so there's not a ton of money left to be made.
What does Disney have to lose? Just the idea of Spiderman himself, but would you rather see Marvel's spiderman or Warner Bros making yet another failed superhero movie? The latest Spiderman movie would still be available under copyright for another 20 years too. The only way Disney loses is if Warner Bros actually manages to make better content than disney makes. If better content COULD be made, but is stopped by copyright, this runs counter to the copyright's purpose according to the US Constitution.
Summed up, long copyright only serves to lock-in big companies and protect them from people who could do a better job with the ideas than they could. Everyone is worse off except the company's stockholders.
Have you been selling the prints for 20 years? Then sure, that's probably fine. If you didn't make enough money off those sales, encouragement to go take new photos is a good thing.
> For that matter, you're suggesting GCC version 3.0.3, Emacs 21.2 and all prior versions be public domain and not have any copyright or copyleft protection on it? And thus, I could take the source code for them, modify it, close source it release my own version.
But you also get to take any closed-source program from X years ago and it becomes public domain too. I'm comfortable with this tradeoff. Though I'd like to go further and force companies to register a copy of the source code when they register their copyright, to be released upon expiration. And we could always add specific open-source legislation...
If you really don't like 20 years we can do 30. But I think half an adult lifetime is long enough to profit off any particular work.
Yes. I could be wrong, but I feel comfortable guessing that you were sufficiently incentivized to take those photographs 20 years ago. Also, you could still sell prints!
Simply said, if you wish to profit from or enjoy the creative works that I have done beyond what I've provided, I expect some compensation.
If that term was 20 years, my photographs would never have been displayed online in the first place.
Additionally, model releases and property releases become much more difficult when someone in the photograph loses their rights for how the photograph may be used.
I firmly believe that a reduction of the copyright duration that would make it expire during the lifetime of the artist or model would have a chilling effect on hobbyist art being accessible to the public.
So the world would have to learn to somehow live with that loss. Given all the other works it would get access to in stead, I strongly suspect the world at large will find that a great bargain.
I've never (AFAIK) seen your photos even in this timeline where they are online (IIUC?), and I'm okay with that. But I'd sure love it if a bunch of stuff I know of from between 1923 and 1990 were in the public domain. So at least I would find that bargain great.
Life + 20y is is quite reasonable. 20y from publication is on the very short side for content that has a lifespan that can easily outlast its creator.
Some of the posts are suggesting that things that were published in 1990 or 2000 should be in the public domain now.
Way too long for who? I don't own any copyrights - probably never will - but why am I supposedly owed the right to use something for free that someone else created after some arbitrary amount of time?
You might be able to make a case that it is in the public's interest to only patent life-saving medicine for X number of years, but who is really harmed when the author of a book retains the rights in perpetuity?
Actually, you do own lots of copyrights. For example, you own the copyright on almost every blog post that you made. (The exceptions are things like lists of facts.) You own the copyright on every picture that you've taken or drawn.
That's the natural default. If two people don't interfere with each other's happiness, then there is no copyright. You don't need a right to copy, the owner needs a right to stop you from copying.
Why are they owed the right to a government-enforced monopoly?
Well, xyz there are good reasons but also those reasons make more sense with a time limit.
Anyone that wants to make (or accidentally makes) derivative works based on that work. This is especially apparent in the music industry.
Write a story about a prince waking a princess with a kiss an you run the very real risk of getting sued into oblivion by Disney.
We, the public, lose out on creative works because creative folk have to be VERY careful with how they approach art to try and minimize their exposure to lawsuits.
Very similar to the harm done by software patents.
As a first line argument: It's not that you are owed anything (as tshaddox says, it only applies to things already shared/published), it's that you do not owe a due to others.
As a second line, I would say that yes, if you are making money off of things you share, then society deserves the right to freely use and share it (say after 20y), even if you put DRM on it (shouldn't be a thing) and even if you didn't originally publish the source code or manuals and tools. Though compulsory requirements should probably be limited as a fraction of sales.
The amount of reward the market provides is based on the value that can be extracted from that property. If value can only be extracted while the author draws breath, the market provides much less reward --- for the author, in this lifetime.
Bear in mind that intellectual property is in some ways even more defensible than real property. The rights to real property are fundamentally secured through conquest and forcible appropriation. IPR is generated de novo, from the creators themselves.
So, to me, the opposite argument seems to apply. There's no obvious moral reason that copyright should be in any way tied to the lifespan of the author. A cultural work is no less valuable because its author happens to get hit by a bus the week after they publish; why on earth should the market for those works be asked to consider that possibility?
(This is potentially an argument against creators, in the sense that an unusually long-lived author is no more entitled to excess rewards than an unlucky bus-strike victim is entitled to fewer rewards.)
A dead author can't create new works. Their copyright persisting beyond their death prevents derivative works from being created. Copyright after death forestalls the creation of new derivative works.
Is that "worth" eliminating the "copyright-after-death" bargain? I don't know. I tend to think opening up a world of potential derivative works after the death of an author is a good gamble if the desired outcome is more works.
Curtailing copyright after death would have to be handled in a nuanced process because some people certainly have "banked on" that business model.
Morally I find the idea copyright flat wrong on the basis that it restricts human expression and culture. Pragmatically I can see a use for it. We're better off with it, even if it (and the class of "workers" who benefit repeatedly from only doing work once) is morally repugnant.
The social contract around copyright, as it sits now, has been "negotiated" significantly in favor of the owners of copyrights to the detriment of the good of society (terms that are too long, works becoming orphaned because mandatory registration was eliminated, infringement without profit motive treated the same as "piracy"). I'd like to see it brought back to a more fair arrangement.
Would fewer "primary" works be created-- maybe? (I tend to believe that almost all human expression is derivative by nature, though. There are few new ideas under the sun.)
Would more derivative works be created? Almost assuredly. There are always more "other people" to build on an earlier work that the lone creator of the work upon which derivative works are based.
I'd bet less restrictive copyright terms result in a net larger number of works.
Fewer works that require fantastic financial investment would be created under a weakened copyright regime. I still believe more works, overall, would be created.
You hope to offset that by enabling the commercialization of fan fiction. I am less hopeful about that proposal, but at least it's a coherent proposal.
I'm saying: I don't think you'll get enough commercial Spider Man fan fiction to offset the damage. But you can at least connect the dots on that argument.
Star Wars borrowed from many sources. Some inspiration and some copying. Most were obscure to most of the audience.
They didn't say most new works would be commercial. But it's plausible fewer very expensive works could benefit less expensive works.
Also the new business models adopted by those adapting to a lack of copyright may well involve more creative production. For example holding concerts instead of just selling reproductions.
I get a lot more value from recorded music than I do from live music; the idea that we should make it essentially impossible to make a living from music you only play in a studio doesn't sit well, since I like a lot of that music too.
My bigger problem here is a moral one, though. It's simple: a musician takes the time to compose and record a piece of music. I had nothing whatsoever to do with that work. What right do I have to set the terms that musician can use for their work? It's their work, not mine. If they want to charge $5,000 for a copy, that's their right; I can just listen to something else. If musicians writ large want to maximize the number of copies that are made of their work, they can do what Radiohead does and release on "pay what you want" terms. That almost nobody does this in practice is telling.
The incentive to continue wasting your life doing unprofitable concerts is not removed in a world where you can only profit via concerts. It simply changes to hoping for a future of profitable concerts, rather than hoping for a future of profitable record sales.
And while you may cling to one system becasue you like certain facets of it which might change, you also don't know what you are missing in a system without copyright. Policies always have a hidden cost.
I don't doubt the Internet's ability to produce cartoons and memes, but I wouldn't trade all of them together for Blood Meridian or Nevermind.
I seriously doubt that passionate authors would refrain themselves from writing because they've been denied a few extra bucks after their death. Many would probably be happier to know that their legacy goes on through the now possible derivative work.
Could such a restriction on copyright impact purely commercial works? I don't care. Work made just for profit has no soul anyway.
If you don't care about a work made for profit because it's soulless, then what grounds do you have to set terms for its release? It's work you by definition think is unimportant.
No they don't. They only do if you think the number of works that wouldn't be produced because creators are dissuaded from producing them by the knowledge that they wouldn't be able to profit from them after they're dead is necessarily greater than the number of new works that would now be created (and otherwise couldn't), using the newly liberated work of these creators as input.
Do you really think that? I certainly don't.
US copyright law at its inception was intended to provide a balance, incentivizing authors to create new works without infringing too far on people’s inherent right to copy and share ideas they haven’t necessarily created. See Madison (who wrote the original Copyright Clause):
“But grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar cases only, if at all; the danger being very great that the good resulting from the operation of the monopoly, will be overbalanced by the evil effect of the precedent; and it being not impossible that the monopoly itself, in its original operation, may produce more evil than good.”
I’m not really here to argue my point, I don’t think I could challenge you T or change your mind. But I wanted to splash some counter idea on this hard and growing harder IP dystopian world we find ourselves in.
Seems like a good fit - a honey-guzzling bear and ad copy for PepsiCo aren't all that far apart...
I'm absolutely stunned to see you make this claim. All work is based on prior work.
This is true for any kind of property tax is taxed or IP that expires, be it patents or land lease policies or whatever else. The less you can milk it the lower is its value. However given that we don't want to live in a necrocracy where the interests of the dead outweigh the interests of the living we've always balanced this, or we'd grant 1000 year patents.
Also as a sidenote if you look at most of humanities greatest works of art, if anything most of them obtained market value long after the creators were dead in the first place. If anything we're drowning in mediocre fiction precisely because we've commodified art.
What if the author dies shortly after creating the work, and was hoping to support their family on the proceeds?
What we call "copyright" is, as it is referred to in the constitution, a monopoly granted by the government. All your other rights are assumed to exist because it would be outlandish to say a mere government could "grant" them. They are protected by the government, or so it was intended.
Unlike real rights, Congress could pass a law setting the term of such a monopoly to zero and there would be no civil rights argument against doing so. Patents and copyright are nothing like your actual rights.
This applies to the way copyright law is authorized constitutionally in the US. YMMV.
Moving away from land ownership, you get forms of property rights that are even harder to reconcile with the idea of natural rights. Mineral rights, shipping rights, air rights, spectrum rights, toll rights, salvage rights, etc. None of these things are meaningful absent the concept of a legal system enforced by a government.
I do not think law should be calculated (it sounds too much like hiding your political values behind science) but it's worth trying - just to see what assumptions you need to make.
I am pretty sure if you traced my house's property title back far enough it was awarded by Charles II to a loyalist.
At least with IP, you can make infinite new property.
Your proposal leaves my family nothing.
Life + a decade is reasonable, IMO. Alternatively, 25yrs or life, whichever is longer.
I'd like to see "life plus" sunset over a period of years, allowing those who "banked" on that business model to still benefit while decreasing the copyright term after death until it's eventually eliminated.
Removing copyright-after-death gradually discourages the business model you describe. It makes sense, to me, to ease into that gradually.
Does the end of copyright-after-death mean some works won't be created? Maybe. Some people might not create new works if their estate can't profit after their death.
Eliminating copyright-after-death opens the door for new derivative works sooner. I think there's potential for more new works to be created with copyright ending at death. More creators can build upon the old work versus a single creator toiling at the end of their life.
I am of the camp, ultimately, that wants to see the U.S. Constitution's original copyright terms restored (and the requirement for registration and renewal). I think it will need to be a gradual process if only to allow those who have (unfairly, in my mind) lobbied for effectively infinite copyright terms to die.
But in the example GP posted, if the person knew they were near death, they very well might stop working on it since their family won't benefit.
Some people might choose not to create works for that reason.
Works will become available for masses of artists to build upon sooner if copyright ends at death.
I think the latter option will likely create more newworks than the former so I see potentially sacrificing the former as being worthy.
The Constitution doesn’t specify copyright terms; it only grants Congress the ability to set them.
You probably mean that you want to restore the terms of the US’s first copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1790 (fourteen plus fourteen years, etc.).
You're quite correct. Sorry for being sloppy when I banged-out that comment.
The large majority of people who write novels don't get any money for it and have no such expectations.
However, can't you somehow create some legal mechanism for transferring rights on death to handle the sort of scenario you describe? This is, after all, the arguments about divorce settlements (Person A is supremely financially successful, but was supported by their spouse, so their spouse is heavily rewarded by the court). So couldn't you somehow smooth that process?
I tend to think copyright lengths are arbitrary except these kinds of arguments:
1. Death of the creator(s) -- or those supporting them, or designated by the creator(s) as you've outlined. People dream up all sorts of murder plots, but it seems like those kinds of incentives could be worked out.
2. Some decline in profits or failure to make available a product. That is, once the profit declines to a certain point, or if someone takes a product out of print, it enters the public domain.
You could also specify something based on averages. Like, the median product ceases to maintain X% of profit after Y years, so that becomes your copyright length.
It’s a great read and I’m glad it was written. I’m also glad that the copyright has expired and as a result there exist free, high‐quality community‐maintained ebook editions.
[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ulysses-s-grant/personal-m...
I truly don't get it - why do you feel that you are somehow owed the free use of something someone else created with their blood and sweat?
Take Cinderella. Place her in the Wild West. Make her lose a cowboy boot at a village fete. But retain the names from the original so this heroine Cinderella. Clearly derivative, right? Also violative of Disney’s rights to Cinderella’s name and likeness.
What copyright blocks (in this instance) is our ability to start from a common source of understanding - naif with evil stepmom rescued by hot prince - to extend the story in random directions.
This block should not last in perpetuity is what many of us are saying.
In software, this would be akin to preventing forking.
Maybe verbatim unauthorized copies is all it should block? Hey, it's right there in the name, isn't it -- Copyright? It's not called "parodyright" or "derivativeright"...
How the fuck can they have any rights to her name?!? I'm fairly sure that's been the name used in English for the heroine of that story from the first English translation of the folk-tale collection of the brothers Grimm. (Or does this particular story predate even that; maybe Perrault or La Fontaine?)
Come to think of it, reminds me of life insurance: that's also a financial instrument the value of which depends on the lifespan of a specific named person.
After copyright expiration, the original author of intellectual property can create derivative works even after their copyright expires (in the same universe, etc.) or even updated revisions, which restart their copyright for the revision. Even if other could do so, I suspect the market for their derivative works will still have a preference for their works vs. others who create derivative works of the original, depending on the quality of the derivatives.
It is really hard to own land (or any other physical thing) after you've sold it but the same is not true of a novel.
What, are you going to make an exception for authors killed in grisly murders of mysterious circumstances? Imagine if instead of paying George Lucas billions for the rights to Star Wars Disney just had him killed off for a fraction of the price.
No, because the property rights ceasing to exist means that there is nothing to steal. You can use what would have been exclusive under them, but so can anyone else. Property rights aren't the right to use but the right to exclude; without the right to exclude, there is no property.
(I do think taking the author’s life into account is a dumb idea, just not for that reason.)