Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.
> Part of the issue is that the loudest voices are that 0.01% of authors whose work still has some commercial value decades after its creation.
My favorite scheme is that all copyright last for 10 years by default. You can register it for $100 for another 10 years. And every 10 years after that, the cost goes up by 100x. That way commercial works that are very economically valuable can be protected for a pretty long time, but everything makes it into the public domain relatively quickly.
Maybe the numbers need to be tweaked a bit, but I think the idea is fundamentally sound.
I actually have the opposite view: I'm more worried about a small-time author that say, makes living on a low-volume text or training book, than I am protecting Mickey Mouse.
Another justification: if the harms increase for giving an author exclusivity for a longer time, society should demand a larger payback. This may only be justified for the most prominent works
It feels a little out of calibration. How about free for 20 years; $500 for 10 more, and then 100x for every 10 additional years. Everyone gets 30 years to exploit a work for a reasonable price, and then the price ramps steeply so that very few works are registered beyond 40 years.
A tiny proportion of works will be worth the $50k step, let alone the $5M one. Even Disney will not pay $5M for most things.
And, of course, things that are forgotten or devoid of commercial value will lapse at 20.
A lot of stuff simply has no commercial value after 5 years. This is for software, BTW; for movies or books, different terms might make more sense.
If it's sold or otherwise acquired by a non-person (company or similar) the exponential fee should kick in immediately.
Something along those lines.
I think 5 years might be too short for a novel, but regardless, the lesson here is: don't publish your work until it's ready. Copyright protection should start when it's published, not when the first word was typed.
>If save all your garbage and find the notes from your rough draft that you started more than 5 years ago
Maybe there should be a provision about rooting through someone's trash? This seems a rather rare edge case.
IMO, it's important to have a short default period. The vast majority of content - posts, comments, videos, tweets, open source software, etc. will never be registered. It's a huge benefit to get that into the public domain as fast as possible while still providing a reasonable period of exclusivity to creators.
If you're really wedded to the 30 year thing, I think an initial 10 years, and 20 years for the first registered period is a better balance.
I'm sure we can agree that we can definitely do better than what we have now, though. Let's not make perfect the enemy of good.
My understanding is that copyright starts when the work is first fixed to a medium. Which means that intermediate versions shouldn't start the clock[1]. But I'm not a lawyer, so I could be totally wrong.
> I'm sure we can agree that we can definitely do better than what we have now, though.
100% concur.
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1. As opposed to the situation with medication and patents, where the patents are ticking down while trials are in operation.
No, but an initial time presenting a form of the work will. So, e.g. using the basis for a future textbook with your students starts the clock on those versions.
The final arbiter was never "does it have commercial value still?" until today. That's a purely modern perspective pushed by companies like Disney, because of course it is. That's all they care about. We don't have to care about that. In fact, I'd suggest it's completely immoral to accept that framing when we look at how important public domain has historically been to our culture.
This hardly seems perpetual in practice.
Pretty quickly the cost to renew exceeds the amount of money in the world.
This scheme tosses the few powerful creators a small bone while shortening duration of all copyrights.
In addition to generating revenue from these large creators, and shortening their total term of protection... it also diminishes their power by creating a vibrant public domain with a whole lot of contemporaneous works in it.
Protect for 40 years for a million? Sure. Probably worth it for mega IPs
50 years for $100m? Still doable but it really starts to hurt.
60 for $10B? Maybe Pokemon and Mikey mouse can justify it, but very very few.
By 70 years it's simply not worth it.
>This scheme seems to protect the largest companies with the largest bank accounts the most. Why would we want a system like that?
Because the small time authors really won't care in 20 years anyway. Even if the cost to renew is a pittance. Are there authors trying to sell the copyright to a failed IP in 30 years?
Hard to find the right balance, but what we have now is asinine.
That said I like the exponential scheme.
Works with little to no commercial activity should be protected longer to provide more opportunity to do so and give more protection to unknowns.
For small-time authors, why should they enjoy the intellectual property rights for the rest of their life? The vast majority of people need to keep working to keep generating money.
Free, 1% of revenue, 10% of revenue, 100%, 1000% etc.
Thus non commercial darlings could be kept relatively long without high cost but all commercial offerings would wither off relatively quick. Pipe dream as obviously companies in power are controllers here.
But wouldn't we want the valuable works to enter the public domain faster than the worthless works?
That's going to create a lot of paperwork for not much value. Much better to have 10 year extensions. Your pricing scheme is functionally equivalent to starting at $2000 for 10 years, and increasing the cost by 1000x for each additional 10 years.
This is not related, but another problem with current US copyright law is that there's no exception for companies that go out of business. The works are still copyright encumbered even if no one exists that can enforce that right.
Based on the former two points, you end up with works where you can't find out who holds the copyright, and it doesn't matter if they're dead or whatever because it's still copyrighted. This leads to the "assume everything is copyrighted" posture that stifles so much creativity.
The most annoying thing about the 1976 Copyright Act is that copyright is only nominally automatic. To be clear, it casts a huge shadow over all creativity that would have otherwise been uncopyrighted. But on the other side, there's still a registration system. You need a registration in order to sue infringers, and you don't get statutory damages on infringements that happened before registration[0]. This trips up loads of creatives, and especially photographers, because it's a lot of boring bureaucracy that never gets explained to them up until they've already talked to a lawyer who says "no you can't get $$$ out of this big company that used your Facebook uploads without permission, because copyright lawsuits are never worth pursuing without statutory damages on the table".
The cruel irony of US copyright law is that, while we only half-implemented Berne, we still use Berne as a thought-stopping cliche for why we can never claw back copyright protection from the half-dozen publishers and creative artists that actually benefit from owning your childhood. Because the base assumption of copyright is that only the creative upper class is worth protection. Protecting artists as a class requires syndicalism and mass unionization, not atomizing everything into individually held psuedo-property rights that are financially ruinous to assert against anyone who won't fold immediately and settle.
The orphan works problem you're talking about is deliberate. Publishers like the idea that when they knock out a less-scrupulous competitor, their creative works spill out onto the ground like Diablo loot, and they can collect all that up and just idly hoard it forever. At the very least, a work that nobody knows how to license or can't afford to license is a work that has been taken off the market and can't compete with them.
Funnily enough, GitHub repos without a LICENSE file are covered by a fallback license in GitHub's ToS that basically says you're allowed to fork and PR. They've probably also explicitly added a "and we can train GPT on your code too" EULA ruffie in there too.
[0] There is a short grace period for this, of course. I think it's 90 days.
This a thing in the US? It isn't in my country, you just need to be able to prove you own the copyright, a stamped letter or certified document is good enough.
You cannot make blank statements about the US on a platform that has an international audience.
Copyright law is cross border and the US does respect other countries Copyright acts just like other countries respect the US
>You cannot make blank statements about the US on a platform that has an international audience.
I'm not sure what you're saying - I was very clear that this is US specific law.
That being said, while I don't exactly know how it works for works created by Berne signatory country citizens, I suspect foreigners still have to register in the US before suing in the US. "International copyright law" is generally just a pinky promise to let foreigners use the copyright system as it exists in other countries, so the rules you have to follow depend on what forum you sue in. For example, if you can get standing to file a copyright lawsuit in Japanese court, then your defendant can't mount a fair use defense, because there is no fair use there[0].
That being said, I do have to wonder if you could get SCOTUS to agree to "foreigners don't need to register but Americans do", because that's the sort of blatantly stupid ruling that only a law-huffer would love.
[0] To be clear, fair use is generally a concept borne of the Anglosphere and it's weird obsession with common law and precedent. Other countries don't have it. But those countries will still codify exceptions to copyright that do similar things. Japan is just unique in that they didn't even bother doing that, so it's illegal to, say, review anime if any Japanese fans might be watching your reviews.
Generally that wouldn't be needed since it's no US copyright law that is being violated but the country of the copyright holder. Being in violation you would not be tried in the US but in the copyright holders country.
There is this whole thing where in general Copyright is unenforceable but when it matters it is enforced, since nobody really cares if you as an individual infringed on my Copyright since to be fair there just isn't enough to be claimed in damages for it not to be a frivolous suit.
But when the amounts become significant enough it is quite serious.
https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2006/02/article_0006.h... for reference to an influential case on copyright law, there are other more modern cases as well
I sell code (programming libraries, and commercial business systems) which have been under continual development sint 1996. So 27 years.
Copyright in this context would be complicated in a "20 year" model. Last month saw a significant upgrade to a product first released in 2000. Should the 2K version be public domain now?
I get the main complaint, especially in the context of old games like infocom (which are abandoned). It feels like those should move gracefully to public domain. But on the other hand there are those of us who do still make a living from old, but active, code.
I do agree that current copyright is absurdly long, but I also understand why Disney et al see ongoing value in their creations and are prepared to lobby for that value.
I don't think there's a simple fix here, one which covers such a wide set of circumstances. All the fixes I've seen proposed are "great for x, terrible for y".
Copyright timer would be reset for every new release. So the version of the library you released in 2000 would be out of copyright, but the version you released last month wouldn't be. I guess there is a risk that someone will take your version from 2000, reverse engineer it, and release a competing product, but it seems like a minor risk.
Market-wise I could see a fair bit of confusion as an old (now public domain) version floats around with the same name (but different version number) to the commercial version.
Of course this is likely immaterial anyway. Unless someone bothered to archive the version at the time, that version no longer exists. We can date it (from the release notes) but I no longer have that build in the archive.
So maybe my wariness is unfounded.
… so maybe it would be useful to have a law that protects the preservation of old media, allowing the public to legally break DRM, copy distribute and shift it to new platforms after a number of years… without necessarily granting rights to economic exploitation of the characters, story, etc. or making new derivative works.
But this didn't used to be an issue. It was accepted that things would fall into the public domain and you couldn't benefit from something for eternity. It's unacceptable that we've finally reached a point where only the creator or owner can ever do something with a creation, regardless of how long ago it was created. Just because you created a thing doesn't give you an inalienable right to own it forever. We're just making it so because "commercial value" and other bullshit.
E.g. At x+10 anyone could make a new sequel to Zork, but the rights to the published Zork are retained for x+25
That feels fair.
I can think of arguments why derivatives should get more favorable and less favorable treatment than overall copying. To me it feels like a wash and they should probably be treated similarly-- though trademark can provide some limited protection beyond copyright terms if the work's use in commerce has been continuous.
The original thing has already been created, and proceeds benefit whoever created it (or who they sold rights to).
Whether they choose to continue to actively market it or not, while under copyright, can't be influenced by copyright. Abandonware under copyright is still abandonware.
But! There's a class of derivative works, built on top of the original, that currently can't get made.
If they were, we'd all be better off.
Arguably, I can even see an aggressive sunsetting for derivative works being net positive for the original work's commercial value ("See the original").
Would the copyright holders of Zork get royalties in this scenario, like with cover versions of songs?
The other problem is that in this scenario people will just be slapping the names of things that were popular x+10 years ago on literally anything. People will just make the lowest effort loot box laden pay-to-win mobile games you can get onto the App Store, and advertise them as sequel or tie-in to that old popular game/book/movie.
Debatable. Some sort of FRAND-level payment, for a limited period, seems fair? Not enough to torpedo the economics of anyone using a property. But enough so an originator has a revenue stream for wildly-popular IP.
> slapping popular names
Would this be that bad? If there were Harry Potter crap... how would that be different? Expect there'd be more stuff out there.
It's essentially a case of brand dilution. Today 'Harry Potter' is a brand that has certain values. If a new Harry Potter book shows up on the shelves tomorrow I can be very sure it's a kid friendly, easy to read, book about wizards. People can feel safe buying as a present for their niece or grand child that likes Harry Potter. In this alternate future a 'Harry Potter' book could be literally anything. If that is 'good' or 'bad' is left as an exercise to the reader, but something would definitely be lost.
People aren't writing books because of the profits they might make 25 years from now.
I do think that the current copyright regime is too long. I guess I'd like to see something like ~25 years from publication for human authors, but easily/cheaply renewable to lifetime copyright; and 25 years from creation for copyright held by companies, or for works for which the copyright has been assigned to someone else other than the original author, with no renewal.
Presumably in the same way that if you sell the mineral rights on a plot of land to someone else, and then they find oil or rubies there, it's thought of as fair that they get the money from that and you don't.
Or how if you sell someone a stock, and it goes up, they get the money from the appreciation and you don't.
Or how if your neighbor finds buried treasure on his land, and you find none on yours, he gets a big finder's fee and you don't get anything. (Indeed, in this case, there are commonly accusations of unfairness, but those tend to focus on the treatment of the neighbor being unfair. You deserved the nothing that you got.)
What's a scenario where this kind of event wouldn't be called fair?
Yes, Netflix might've been able to make The Witcher without paying him, and also random Youtubers, complete nobodies, would've been able to make derivative works as well. That's the whole point of expiring copyright.
Does that favor big corporations? Well, it also means anybody and everybody can make Mickey Mouse content, or use the popular Marvel and DC characters, etc. Do you think Disney is a fan of that idea?
So while corporations would take advantage of it, so would random people, including indie artists.
Second, no, even with the expiring copyright on Disney's earliest works, people can't just go out and make their own Mickey Mouse content, because there is trademark protection on Mickey Mouse and other major Disney IP, and that can be renewed indefinitely.[0] So even a quickly expiring copyright regime would still favor the deep-pocketed large corporations.
And you might say, well, the little author can trademark their work as well. But most won't. So all Disney and Warner would have to do is sit on the sidelines, trawl through the 25 year old fantasy section for interesting stories and characters that have not been trademarked, and just start use NG them without compensation. And what's worse, by introducing minimal changes to the characters (“Frobo Daggins“) they can then copyright and trademark their derivative works such that even the original author could not turn around and try to benefit from the resurgent popularity of their creation.
Not expecting to change your mind or anything, but I hope I have communicated my misgivings.
[0] https://blogs.luc.edu/ipbytes/2023/08/13/is-disney-losing-mi...
Writing books can be a pretty risky proposition from a financial point of view. Copyright should at least span an authors lifetime in my opinion.
Thinking that an author could profit not at all from a work if it gains popularity 20 years after it was written also seems unfair, seldom though as that case may be.
Why is it accepted that patents can last only 20 years then? Like, do you think creating new inventions is easy? Why for one and not the other?
But the bigger thing is that books making significant amounts of money after twenty years is an extreme exception. That's not the motivating thing. It's a "maybe that'd be nice" on top of the desire for revenue in the immediate future, in the first few years of the book coming out.
Like, how many such books can you actually name?
I think it’s a little different for music, where people sometimes sample fairly obscure old songs and turn them into hits. But then, a lot of those old songs shamelessly ripped off even older works…
I could imagine an argument for harmonising the duration with patents for even more simplicity.
Another interesting consequence is a lot of GPL code would become public domain. I haven’t really thought about that before.
Sure, but who should capture that value for those works. Is it more fair that all the value goes to the publishers and TV/movie studios making adaptations, rather than some of it being shared with the author.