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Comment by Beldin | Hacker News Reader

> something in the realm of 20 years should be enough.

God no. Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame. Not just movies, but TV series, books, theatre, musicals, ...

Sure, copyright should be shortened, but I don't begrudge (eg.) a one hit winner making money off their hit decades layer. Life of artist is reasonable, I think. They take a gamble on a profession with risky pay-out; if it works out at least once for them, let them reap the benefits.

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Those remakes are exactly why it shouldn't last much longer. As those remakes aren't actually about the work itself, but about the brand recognition that work has in the public consciousness. It's just free advertisement that you don't get with an original work, which is why remakes and sequels are so popular, even if the connection to the original is little more than the title.

It's not the job of copyright to allow people to get lazy or companies profiting forever from the rights they bought. The goal should be to encourage original works and current copyright isn't very good at doing so.

Also it's not like the author would go completely penniless here. Just because everybody can make a StarWars doesn't mean there won't still be a George Lucas approved canon-StarWars. Slapping the authors name on your product to declare it the "Read Thing™" might still be worth a bit and might frankly be better than today's sequels that happen completely without any of the original creators being involved.

> Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame. Not just movies, but TV series, books, theatre, musicals, ...

We are getting these things anyway, except that the originals are far less accessible than they should be. Entertainment trends are cyclical.

I meant a remake of Mr. & Mrs Smith; of Twins, of "Stop or my mom will shoot"... basically of everything that turned a profit, however meager. Moreover, those remakes will be oblivious to what made the original a success. E.g., we'd get Dave Chapelle offered a Seinfeld show, much in that style, without a view to why it was (considered) funny back then, nor with tailoring it to Chapelle.

Put differently: we'd be inundated with much worse schlock than we get now.

I think 30 years is a decent base in my mind. Let it be renewed a couple times for an extra years if the owners think it’s worth it. That way most stuff flows into the public domain but some works can keep creating value for their creator.

Upvote for 30 years. Try it for a while, if creative industries aren't meaningfully damaged by the reduced IP rights, then maybe even take it down lower to like 25 or even 20 years.

> Right now, we'd be getting remakes from every piece of pop-culture that was semi-popular in the 80s-2002 time frame

That's exactly what we are getting right now though. Looking at the top ten of the box office right now, only three are not part of an existing franchise. Three of them are reboots of 80s movies, four if you count comic books. Large IP holders recognize under the current system, it is much more profitable to exploit their existing IP than to come up with new concepts. If the copyright terms were significantly shorter, the pressure to be original would be far higher.

So shitty remakes is the reason why general poor population can never have access to information and education? Gotcha.

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