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Comment by growingkittens | Hacker News Reader

I think copyright law should be different for originators vs. owning individuals vs. legal entities. Once the legal rights of a work are separated from the originator, the work should pass to the public domain faster.

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Which harms the originator since a potential buyer can't realize as much value for the purchase of the IP. If the originator isn't in a position to exploit their creation directly, their ability to offer it to someone who can is reduced. So the extended time an originator could hold on to it would only serve larger originators; smaller creators would see their work devalued.

I think you misunderstand what I mean by originator: the actual creator of the work. There are no large or small originators because an originator can only be an individual.

If a company or different individual hires someone to create work for them, the work would transfer from the originator to the company or individual, thus putting it on the faster track automatically.

So, if I create art and sell it online directly to customer, I get the longer protection, but once I register as a one-person LLC, my copyright becomes shorter? Or am I still the originator, and it only shortens once I hire another person? Or do I keep the longer protection as long as the company is 100% originator-owned, and only lose it after someone else buys a share?

Originator sells online to customer without transferring copyright: originator gets the longest protection.

Originator sells online to customer and transfers copyright: shorter protection applies, since the originator no longer owns it.

Originator transfers work to LLC: shorter protection applies. You gain LLC benefits for a shorter copyright term.

France and Germany recognize the creators’ moral rights to the work; maybe the relevant law there would be a good starting point

Thank you, that's a good idea. I want to formalize my opinion on copyright sometime in the future.

They'd just sell it as a perpetual or 100 year lease instead then.

An originator could lease their work, but only as long as they own the rights to it. Perpetual leases wouldn't be possible. When an originator dies before their copyright does, for instance, the work is transferred to a separate entity and thus has a defined time limit.

Wouldn't everyone just create a corporation and assign all their work to that from conception? Corporations never die.

Corporations cannot be originators.

If you assign work to a different entity, it is no longer owned by the originator, and subject to a shorter copyright term.

Are you saying that's how you would solve it, or that's how things work?

Employees create content all the time that is copyrighted by default by their employer and never by the employee.

That's how I would solve it, yes.

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