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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

> There's no obvious moral reason that copyright should be in any way tied to the lifespan of the author.

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.

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I'm not sure you're following. The limited monopoly on new works incentivizes authorship by providing a market for that content based on the transfer of that monopoly. It doesn't just incentivize the next work; it's the foundation of incentives for all of the work, including the first. Anything you do to make the transfer of those rights less valuable (for instance: terminating them when the original author dies) reduces the incentive for every work of authorship, from the first to the last.

I don't think fewer works would be created under a less restrictive copyright regime. Some classes of works wouldn't be profitable anymore, but that's not a tragedy to me. (Taking away some of the profit motive sounds like a good move to me culturally but that reflects my preference in more "indie" media and less "mass market" media.)

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.

Your first two sentences literally contradict each other, unless you think that profitability has no bearing on which works get authored.

A less restrictive copyright regime (shorter terms) would enable a larger number of derivative works to be created sooner (likely when these derivative works are more culturally relevant, too).

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.

So we agree: reducing incentives on the creation of new primary works will reduce the number of primary works created, because people respond to incentives.

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 firmly believe, like I said, that nearly all human expression is derivative. It's almost all "fan fiction" when it comes down to it. There aren't very many "primary" works that can't have their influences traced back to prior works. The current copyright regime just gets to choose who is allowed to make the "fan fiction" and when.

No, sorry, that doesn't work: you're saying that by reducing incentives for primary work authorship, we'll gain more works because people will be able to work on derivative works based on existing ones. The only plausible way that could work is by allowing people to derive works from popular properties; literally: you're talking about fan fiction qua fan fiction. Star Wars. Twilight. Spider Man. Enabling people to derive new works from obscure primary works wouldn't move the needle, and wouldn't support your original argument.

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.

Recent Star Wars and Spider Man stories were just fan fiction with permission.

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.

You are free to borrow from those same works, have your superhero bit by a radioactive arthropod, or invent a coven of space witches with energy swords, and you'll be just fine.

This is a pretty common argument in fact, that places which lack copyright protections often have as much or more art. It's a very competitive endeavor no matter how low the stakes get.

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.

This argument would be more persuasive with examples. Also: touring music is notoriously non-remunerative; people think about U2's fleet of luxury busses, but the majority of acts, even ones that lots of people have heard of, barely cover gas money and the returns they'd get as the manager of a convenience store from touring --- which is work that is tremendously disruptive to actually building a life, which is why we pay long haul truck drivers so much money to do it.

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 internet itself is one commonly-used example of a "wild west" without protection and with prolific art nonetheless.

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.

Are the most enduring and popular works of fiction, of film, or of music produced primarily on the Internet, or are they released commercially with IPR protections?

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.

It depends on which kind of "works" we're talking about.

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.

It's not after their death. This is the crazymaking part of the argument. The cash flows from art received after the death of the author is factored in to the compensation the artist obtains during their life. This is basic economics.

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.

> Your first two sentences literally contradict each other

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.

I agree that tying copyrights to lifetimes doesn’t make sense, because it’s logical for copyrights to be inherited and the law shouldn’t benefit long‐lived authors over short‐lived authors. I’m not fond of the reasoning in your comment though—by my reading there’s nothing stopping it from being used to extend copyright to “forever less one day.”

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 sure what "inheritance" has to do with it. Assume an author destined to die alone. That author might be more highly compensated for a successful work in a system where copyright isn't tied to lifetime, since the work itself has more market value. That value accrues to the author in their own lifetime; immediately, in fact.

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