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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

14 years as originally intended would be fine. All the classic movies up to 2010, and I still have to pay a subscription to watch, and lots of them are unavailable because the studios want to haggle over licenses for 50 year old properties? It's the kind of thing that might drive a man to pirate.

If your book hasn't made you rich in the first 14 years after publishing, I'm sorry, audience just isn't that into you.

(I am aware movie deals can languish for many years before finally landing a deal, and with 14 years studios could just wait you out and there's no incentive to write a script anymore, but copyright should be 14 years after publishing right? And movie scripts are not generally published before they get made into a movie, if ever.)

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Not sure if this influences your thinking at all, but whatever duration copyright applies for starts once it was made, whether it was published or not.

> Copyright in a work created on or after January 1, 1978, subsists from its creation ... [1]

And "creation" basically means "written down" [2]. IANAL.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fixed_in_a_tangible_medium_o...

The option for a single renewal for 14 more years doesn't strike me as onerous. It makes a concession for the "audience hasn't made you rich in the first 14 years" and is still light years ahead of the current de facto infinite duration.

It won't ever change, though. No chance ever. Other than to be actually made infinite. The nature of "intellectual property" and money being speech in US politics locks that in.

Well, at some point our government will collapse entirely, and then all the laws can change. I'm starting to think that might not be far off.

I'm afraid that is just wishful and overly-optimistic thinking.

Maybe a middle ground is mandatory, standardised licensing after 14 years and then public domain after 28. (Where do the multiples of 7 come from?)

The original author (not an assignee) should get N years free and should be able to renew every N years for some fee that escalates upwards with a single retroactive period if you haven't paid. If you hit a second period that you haven't paid, copyright dropped. If you aren't the original author, you get to renew once for N years--no more.

This is a nice compromise in that it disincentivizes simply squatting on properties--you have to pay money to maintain later copyright so you have a strong push to make money on it.

if you do suddenly become popular, you can write a second book, and get involved in TV or movie adaptations of it.

GRRM isnt included on ASOIAF content because hes the copyright holder, but because his influence makes people want to see the shows

You could argue that 14 years is a little short, especially for books which can get adaptations that pay more than the book. OTOH preventing adaptations stifles things. Imagine if Tolkein had managed to lock down his orcs and elves like Disney locked down the mouse.

I think 20 or 30 years is fairer. But IIRC it's not about fair, the Constitution says that it should only be to encourage innovation, and long copyright inhibits innovation.

> 14 years is a little short, especially for books which can get adaptations that pay more than the book

If you want to make an official adapatation, hire the author. If not, it's not official. This takes care of itself for authors who cultivate their fan base.

You could also keep trademarks. So content might not be protected, but you couldn't release remixes under trademarked names.

I think some kind of automatic royalty would be a nice middle ground.

Compulsory licensing seems to have worked OK (though maybe not great) in some areas, such as broadcast retransmission, and recordings of cover versions of songs.

> the Constitution says that it should only be to encourage innovation, and long copyright inhibits innovation.

I concur, but the Supreme Court might not. Plaintiffs in Eldred v. Ashcroft were defeated on "limited times", and I expect that a "promote the progress" argument would have an even harder time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft

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