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Comment by nextlevelwizard | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn’t want just anyone to be able to use my characters and setting for their grummy cashgrabs.

I think reasonable copyright would be 10 years or lifetime of the author which ever occurs later. This way the author would be in charge of their characters while alive and their kids would still gain from works done in the later years

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Why (and I realize this is one of those questions that sounds snide, but I do not mean it so) should a creator's kids gain from a piece of art or work of music after a creator's death?

Editing to clarify: I fully accept that copyright is a good thing to give incentives to people to make art and music and creative works, I just don't understand why that incentive should be transmissible to their kids, i.e. people who were presumably not involved in making it in the first place.

People pass lots of other things onto kids. Leaving aside debates about estate taxes etc., it's unclear that royalties from creative works should be uniquely disadvantaged.

To incentivize creative people to be productive even in their late years. Since I can only talk from my point of view; at least I would be a bit more apprehensive continuing to write and create if I knew I didn't have much time left.

I don't see why it wouldn't be reasonable for the inheritors of a author to benefit for a little while for their parent's work. 10 years feels very reasonable.

In this alternate future, HBO Time Warner maintains a force of elite counterassassins to protect their interest in George RR Martin's IP, the 10 year mark having long passed.

If you don’t want other humans to remix information you have broadcasted, then don’t broadcast in the first place. It’s not like you haven’t been using other people’s ideas in your “original” work.

So you are presumably OK with Disney, Sony, etc. grabbing a recent book and making a movie out of it without giving the original author a cent or any credit?

It's an interesting question. Maybe copyright shouldn't be shorter, but the better answer is something like a mechanical license to cover a music composition. After the first publication, anyone can remix for a set fee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_license

This is how it works now.

If someone holds a copyright, you can license it from them if they so desire. The fee is determined by your legal team and theirs.

The difference is the (generally) required licensing and the set fee.

For example, as I understand it, a playwright can basically say "I don't let high schools or colleges stage my works." With respect to book adaptations, there were actually some issues with Sorkin's script for To Kill a Mockingbird because he made some changes in Atticus Finch's character development relative to the book.

That's not how it works now, except for music. From the wikipedia article on mechanical licenses (the link I provided):

"Within copyright law within the United states, such mechanical licenses are compulsory; any party may obtain a license without permission of the license holder by paying a set license fee, that as of 2018, was set at 9.1 cents per composition or 1.75 cents per minute of composition, whichever is more, which are to go to the composition copyright holder."

Note "compulsory". There are a multitude of written and art works that are effectively copyright zombies: they are clearly within the term of copyright, but there is no clear owner to reach out to in order to license them. Hence generally out of fear of a lawsuit, they are dead as inspirations for other works.

Further, to your exact point, "if they so desire. The fee is determined by your legal team and theirs." If the author wants to be restrictive, their work will never be able to be inspirational to another work. Even if they are open to the idea, the concept that lawyers (probably) have to get involved reasonably has to diminish the number of works that are likely ever to be inspirational for other works by an enormous number.

Not OP, but I'd be fine with copyright being limited to exactly "must credit any works used that were created by other people".

But yes, abolishing copyright other than ensuring credit is given is the right move. The scenario you bring up wouldn't happen like you're thinking though. Disney or Sony would be free to make a movie using other people's art, but they'd have no legal means to enforce that people give them money to watch it, so behaving unethically would be a great way to not get any money from making it.

How can you miss read something this hard?

Even now it is perfectly fine for you to make your own original character influenced by Harry Potter or Mikey Mouse. Heck make it a Wizard Mouse called Marry Motter. Still you can't - and in my mind shouldn't - be able to write Harry Potter and the Magical Mouse.

One can simultaneously think that copyright terms are too long and that (almost certainly primarily) companies shouldn't be able to parachute in after a few years have passed and hoover up creative works and exploit them for free.

Yes. Still 10 years isn't even all that long and I think it is much more important that author hold copyright all of their life. You could probably talk me out of the 10 year extension to works made just before author died, but I don't think you can make persuasive argument why I shouldn't by default hold copyright to my creations while I am alive.

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