A Free Market Fix for the Copyright Racket | Hacker News Reader

A Free Market Fix for the Copyright Racket

bloomberg.com

51 pointsnatex23 comments

Given other issues floating around maybe rather than go to something as restrictive as what was proposed at the end of the article take a half step.

Leave much of the law today as is (copyrights can apply to more than the original copyright law allowed and are automatically in force even without registering) but change the duration mechanism.

For the first 14 years of the work's existence you get a copyright for free.

For the next 14 years, you can re-register but with a higher but still nominal fee.

For each year after that, you must re-register and the fee goes up at an accelerating rate eventually reaching millions per year per copyrighted item. I'm assuming there would have to be a cap somewhere.

The government gets new revenue, most copyrights are shortened and enter the public domain more quickly and for the copyrights that are extremely valuable and still producing value in excess of the ever increasing registration fee, it will be worthwhile for the holder to pay.

I don't like this because the amount an entity will pay to keep copyright is roughly proportional to how culturally valuable it is. The more Disney will pay to lock up Mickey Mouse, the more we want the mouse to be free.

Well. You could always let the yearly payment grow uncapped. Assuming it grows faster than the rate of inflation at some point it would almost assuredly be in the interest of any holder to release a copyright.

Another idea. Letting cost rise uncapped would eventually cause any holder to not re-register but is bad for smaller entities that hold copyrights. Capping the long-term re-registration cost while still having a long time limit could be a decent blend.

Mickey Mouse is trademarked which is perpetual so it seems like the copyright on some cartoons would expire but it still wouldn't open the floodgates to any random person making their own Mickey cartoon series as Disney would vigorously enforce their trademark.

Edited: Added another thought. On more edit: Trademark vs. Copyright

If there is no cap on the exponential portion eventually Mickey will be too expensive to protect and he will be free. The result would be the Government capturing all the value in later years and then the work would be freed allowing the public to capture the value.

I think the OP's suggestion is the best I have heard so far. It could be a simple formula like a fee starting at $10/year for each copywrited work after 14 years, then it doubles ever year. By the 24th year you would be looking at paying just over $5,000, but by the 44th year Disney would be paying $5Bn/year. Probably not worth keeping the rights on Mickey for $5Bn/year.

Now Government will have yet another source of revenue to optimize. Since Government hates giving up revenue we could expect entities close to giving up due to cost to receive exceptions. Anything to keep the money flowing.

Yea, but having random works be in copyright for too long is even worse, especially as it gets harder to find the copyright owner.

Right, but this should be perfect because they're paying the public. (Not that I expect the government to spend the money wisely, but in theory it seems to make sense.)

Simpler: the fee starts at $1 for the first year and doubles every year.

Here's a bag of dollars. That should be sufficient.

Relevant: http://www.al6400.com/blog/2006/07/10/a-penny-doubled-everyd...

I like this idea, but often economics isn't the only thing at play. Imagine for example, after 28 years, Halliburton wanted to make use of a John Lennon song in their advertising (pun not intended). Seems unfair that John (or his heirs) would have to pay to keep it from being used in this way.

This is definitely an issue, however at some point the right of the people to appropriate their culture outweighs the right of the artists to control their creations. I think when your work has been in the wild for 28 years, it's time to let go.

Agreed. We're not used to see modern works reused freely because it has never happened. But with an open mind, I can easily see it. 28 years after your death, the world well deserves to finally use your work.

Existing music copyright already has this property. Mechanical licensing means that, simply by paying a standarized fee, a performance or recording of a piece of music may be lawfully created. This issue occurs regularly during political campaigns in which a candidate or party may use a song (Palin's use of "Barracuda" and Silversun Pickup' "Panic Switch" by Romney) against the wishes of the musician in question. Generally the negative publicity of the musician's protest outweighs benefits to the campaign. But legally there's not much musicians can do.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/politics/music-in-campaigns/in...

More broadly, the question becomes: at what point is a work fair pickings -- should we be able to prohibit Mozart or Vivaldi or Shakespeare works from being appropriated by various commercial or political concerns? Regardless, "use against my wishes or viewpoints" isn't one of the concerns of copyright as formed in the US Constitution.

My view is that absent a brief period of commercial control, works should be released to public domain reasonably speedily.

And for a similar issue, there's the case of Neda Soltani. You may recall the woman whose death by a sniper during a rally in Iran was shared on video with the world in 2009. This is not her story. Rather, Neda Soltani's Facebook photo was mistakenly attributed to Neda Agha-Soltan by media worldwide. In a cosmic dark comedy, both protesters and Iranian government agents attacked Soltani on account of an error she had no part in. Eventually she left the country, though much of her family and many friends remain behind.

http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/nov/30/my-stolen-face/

http://www.amazon.com/My-Stolen-Face-ebook/dp/B009JVQ8QQ

If there was a time or an issue that Republicans could stand for and actually be pro-market as they keep saying they are (in theory), it's this one. They'd probably get as much support as they usually get from evangelists, which seems to be their core audience these days, or at least that's how they're acting in public.

The evangelicals who support the GOP tend to be poor, rural, and of low education. They'll support pretty much any fiscal policies the GOP takes as long as the party adheres to conservative social policies.

Make no mistake, the reason they would be in favor of this at all is that copyright holders (Hollywood) are perceived to favor Democrats. It's another bullet.

It's nice that this issue happens to put them on the "right" side.

It's a shame: Republicans are, in general, pro-corporatism. They are not usually truly for the free market.

great... however, a more direct example would be mickey mouse...

Not necessarily. We all understand that Mickey Mouse is owned by Disney. It could be counterintuitive for people who don't often think about copyright to support the idea that Mickey Mouse could be owned by the public, rather than Disney.

The Frost poem was a helpful example.

Mickey Mouse is also a trademark of Disney. Using Mickey as an example would confuse the issue.

This is important to note every time someone brings up Mickey Mouse. The super old "steamboat willie" movies would be out of copyright, but Mickey Mouse would still be a trademark.

In addition, Mickey Mouse is perfectly legal to use in works of parody etc

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