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The copyright term is automatically too long if my anyone who would benefit from it entering the public domain is dead.
We have at least one corner of the universe where we've defeated scarcity. We can't run out of music. Hell, we can't even run out of a specific recorded performance, if even the most trivial efforts of due-diligence backups are performed. We should be proud-- we're at least one step on the way towards Star Trek replicators and universal abundance.
But the current system is so tied to the idea of "markets" and "ownership" that only really make sense for scarce physical goods, that we ended up having to force everyone, under threat of law, to treat a limitless resource that's part of our shared cultural experience, like a rare physical widget that must be owned, sliced up, and sold under restrictive covenant.
We should be taking all the money going into the content business-- all the funds being spent on the production of movies, music, novels, art, potentially even software-- and use it to bankroll an enormous centralized endowment for the creative community.
This immediately silences all "but how will artists eat?" strawmen. Even if you're not a live-show performer or merchandising expert, you get paid by the endowment on a predictable stipend basis, rather than having to hope you can effectively monetize a package of "rights" while dealing with an industry full of middlemen out to rip you off.
This would ensure that many, many more artists can live their passion-- how many great but unknown bands could spend their lives touring, if we took the money that bankrolled Taylor Swift's tour and sliced it up into 50k-per-person-per-year grants? How many sculptors could we keep on the books for the price of one Anish Kapoor? It would also be interesting to compare efficiency of funds delivery-- replacing a bunch of for-profit publishers with a single cooperative or state-run entity probably results in more dollars actually reaching artists overall.
It also avoids the perverse incentives on the other side-- if you make one world-breaking hit, you can't ride it forever. Just because you sung White Christmas once doesn't mean you get out of ever having to work again. If we eliminate the opportunity to slice and subdivide "rights" to a work, then there's no incentive to hold back maximum utilization of it. Imagine the improved utility of modern content services if they can get legal access to all the things-- Netflix and Hulu would have to compete on the best infrastructure, UI and tooling, rather than "only we have Futurama".
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of abolishing copyright and funding art more directly but I also don't see the point in the goverment deciding what is and isn't art. At that point perhaps its better to ensure that everyone was a livable universal basic income and let people create art if they want to use their time to create art. And on top of that you can still have patronage / grants if you want specific types of art created more than they would otherwise be.
If your band tours to public parks or empty bars, you still get a living wage. If you crank out six paintings a month but they just line the halls of public libraries because nobody really wants to buy them, you can still live on the stipend.
More importantly, it eliminates the need to create that ownership right, and impede any "descarcification" tactics. Yes, those tangible things might be somewhat scarce, but if someone starts making posters of your paintings, or a recording of your concert goes viral, you both have no reason and no legal method to stop that from happening.
These don't rely on copyright so wouldn't need any special consideration when abolishing it.
As far as society is concerned, society’s resources (police, courts, etc) should only be given up to the point that the incentive to create works of art exists.
At zero copyright length, we can say artists (and media creating/owning businesses) have less than a desirable amount of incentive to create (from society’s perspective).
At 100 years, we can easily say there is too much incentive to seek rent and rest on one’s laurels.
The most expensive works of art covered by copyright right now are big budget Hollywood movies and tv shows. If these businesses would continue to make them with a 20 year copyright term, then 20 years should be the max. And I might even say they would continue to make them with a 10 year term.
Can we? What is the amount of art that we want to be created? How much more art do we really need every year considering that old art can be infinitely reproduced in the digital age? Remember that the art output without copyright is well above zero since we had art before copyright.
@PracticalEngineeringChannel on YouTube has plenty of videos on engineering drainage systems.
Let's say Kurt Cobain dies at 27 (or even younger) without an heir other than a very young daughter. ~95% of his earning capacity might be in the next 15 years, rather than the prior 5 years. The daughter might be cast into relying on charity while everybody else gets to freely commercially exploit his music after his death.
('the US social safety net needs reformed'; pre-empting those responses, because one is extraordinarily difficult to reform, the other isn't nearly so; that'd just be an excuse to hide behind)
Ritchie Valens comes from a poor family, creates a gigantic hit, dies at 17. His family deserves nothing specifically, while everybody else gets to freely commercially exploit his young talent forever.
A life of the author clause is inherently cruel. 20 years fixed, approaches that in a far more reasonable and fair manner. Families / heirs matter too. They often suffer, or otherwise carry a share of weight for the artist, so the artist can create, tour, publish, publicize, etc. Pretending otherwise is pure fantasy, it's life in an idealized vacuum.
Edit: I might be flexible on the life part. But not the 20.
Some artists will have a contract for a lump sum, others will have agreements for every time their record is played.
And there's nothing that can ever be done to change that, no matter how hard a state might try to force 'equal' distribution of unearned money.
Society should value one form of labor different from another, it's good that it always has and always will.
I've worked with plenty of very lazy bums that intentionally, knowingly do 1/3 of their job while other people have to work far harder because of them (or the business would fail and everybody loses). People like that are free riders, society should not be kind to them when they're repeatedly fired from jobs. All labor isn't equal, quite obviously, and treating it as though it is, is unfair to the vast majority.
This does not happen because the workers involved don’t have that kind of power. The power imbalance between the two parties is so vast that the laborers have no choice but to accept unfair terms.
I was thinking about this last night. Should I use a license agreement that gives my proprietary software to the public domain when I die? What about my open source software that I can no longer maintain? In my case, the software is probably not popular enough to continue without me. Should it keep a GPL license or be converted to MIT or to public domain?
What if I do have a hit someday and it provides income to me? My family might rely on that income, at least for a time, if I die early. I’d love to give a business to my kids and them to their kids.
Anyway, just rambling. I agree that copyright is probably too long.
Market it in a cute way, like "content donor" analogous to the "organ donor" tickoff on the driver's license form.
Year zero through five: free
Year six: $500
Year seven: $1000
Year eight: $2500
Year nine: $5000
Year ten: $10,000
Year eleven: $25,000
Year twelve: $50,000
Year thirteen: $100,000
Year fourteen: $250,000
Year fifteen: $500,000
Year sixteen: $1,000,000
Year seventeen: $2,500,000
Year eighteen: $5,000,000
Year nineteen: $10,000,000
Year twenty: $25,000,000
...
In the above case, big media couldn't afford to drag everything along forever. If every music track over 20 years old cost $25M per year to renew, they'd let tons of it expire into the public domain.
This kind of increasing scale renewal fee forces them to make more impactful works that are worth paying for. If they're truly valued by society, they'll pay the tax to keep them for longer.
It forces everyone to keep creating, which is good for employment and the economy. You shouldn't stop your output.
There's probably some optimal scale that incentivizes everyone to make more, and more of the content to be excellent.
How do you even price that per item? Do I pay once for the blog? Once per post?
The Internet should have taught us that if there is a portal the owner of that portal and the network effect around it has all the power.
Look at Twitter. Half its users hate its new management and spend much of their time there complaining about it, but they are still using it. Why? Because people are still using it.
Copyright will kill millionaire artists.
Currently the system has poor artists and millionaire artists. The millionaire artists will be hosed. The poor artists are already poor so not much changes for them.
Most music is produced by people at home and with friends chilling. Look at guitar center and all those stores. Lots of instruments sold. Same for art supplies.
There are only a few thousand wealthy artists.
I guess patents could be forcibly taken by the government and licenses minted for free, if the current holder is determined to be maliciously setting the price for licensing too high and holding back science.
Yes and in almost every country properties like land are taxed by their values. If copyright lasts forever, it should be taxed by its value too (not by income!).