Hacker News Reader

Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

A friend proposed that copyright should just die with the author and / or their spouse and I'm left agreeing. I want books and music to be less strict on copyright. Some of my favorite YouTube channels break down music and songs, and go as far as recreating beats / tracks from famous hip hop songs, but someone at a record label company dings every one of their videos, they can barely sample a few seconds, its VERY CLEARLY fair use, and even gets me to listen to the songs more, but they are stealing all revenue for a fair use video that took a lot of time and money to make to begin with, they are profiting from work they didn't even do. This is silly to me, I'm sure there's loads of other channels and videos out there screwed over by the record industry over 15 second samples from a song... Which should 100% be fair use and not be given to the record labels.

Issue is small streamers have no legal defense.

Edit, adding the channel I am referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos

View on HN

20 years to make some money, and then we set the work free for the public benefit. If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights.

It also solves the issue of potentially not knowing when the author died, with a fixed period (the number isn't so important imo so long as it's sane), a work is out of copyright x years after the first known copy was published.

reduces the ownership hunt problem, as well!

Either that or some exponentially increasing tax so that Disney can keep their vault. (I'm perfectly fine with them keeping it if they pay some proper taxes.)

the important thing is that copyright serves the public good, I do not think it currently does, at least not as well as it could

The whole purpose is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

The implementation is no longer in alignment with that constitutional requirement.

They pay taxes every time that they make money off Mickey Mouse, regardless of copyright status.

Yes, and they should pay taxes whether they use it or not if they want to keep it out of the public domain.

Do they? scope out their federal tax liability in 2025.

https://insidethemagic.net/2026/04/new-report-shows-that-the...

But this must then follow for all forms of works, why just books? Every company whose original creator dies must be converted into a public company within 20 years of founder's death for the public benefit as well if that's the case.

If I wrote it, I own the copyright on it, why should I or my future family give away something I worked really hard for? Why do only authors must care about public benefits?

> Every company whose original creator dies must be converted into a public company within 20 years of founder's death

if public company means employee owned (instead of publicly traded or state owned) then im all for it. if the founders family are good managers they can easily convince their workers to let them keep running things.

you dont deserve a job or a fortune just because your parents did a lot of hard work before you were an adult. you got to prove yourself and be better than the rest, thats what capitalism is all about right?

What do you mean that's what capitalism is about? It's about capital. It doesn't asks where you get that capital - if you have $100,000 that you inherited vrs $100,000 you earned, JPM will still see it as just $100,000. So yes, by capitalism, if your parents did a lot of hard work and saved the capital and gave it to you, you have it. Where does it make a moral judgement that it's wrong to have inheritance or right to earn it by the bootstraps?

And no, I mean every trade secret of the company should become public and anyone should be able to create its products and brands. Basically, do to them what you propose to do to writers and artists - why must their families benefit from their work?

To your second point: a company (or any kind of organisation) is continuous work. It's a very obvious retort to your analogy. It would be akin to the author writing a book in a series every year for twenty years, then giving their rights to their child who keeps writing books every year, and every book only has 20 years of copyright. Seems fair to me.

To your first point: inheritance has a concentrating effect on wealth. Concentration of wealth is not a good thing, as it breeds inequality by definition.

If your grandparents gave you a house for free, and you used that enormous advantage to pur your money elsewhere and then own 2, 3 houses, and your child then gets 10, that's 10 houses that people could own themselves, instead of paying the highest rent that your child can get away with.

If you have any experience of poverty, you should understand how viscerally unfair the existence of 'rich kids' seem, and how damaging it is to society.

> To your second point: a company (or any kind of organisation) is continuous work. It's a very obvious retort to your analogy. It would be akin to the author writing a book in a series every year for twenty years, then giving their rights to their child who keeps writing books every year, and every book only has 20 years of copyright. Seems fair to me.

I don't understand how that is fair though? Why should the author give away their rights without any compensation to the public is my point. Continous work is not really relevant to this, otherwise you would have concede that any previous work done by the company in 20 years including their trademarks, logos, ideas should be free for the public to use? Otherwise it is clearly unfair that we treat writers with one set of law regarding property but have another set of laws for every other business?

And yes, capitalism is not good but my point is that it supports inheritance as a system. It doesn't care where you got the money. Is it fair? Of course not. The root of this is based on exploitation and it is what the world has accepted as the common form of economy.

And yes, I have experienced poverty but I don't think its viscerally unfair that "rich kids" exist. Why is it unfair in an objective term? Because they got handed things for free? Or because they have it better than you? In either case, it would be very easy to find examples of people who have it 10 times worse than you and who think your existence is unfair. But is it really?

> If your grandparents gave you a house for free, and you used that enormous advantage to pur your money elsewhere and then own 2, 3 houses, and your child then gets 10, that's 10 houses that people could own themselves, instead of paying the highest rent that your child can get away with.

Or you could also lose all your money by being stupid with it and not having any skills. If you have the skill to build upon the foundation, why is it luck? Why are we assuming just because your grandparents gave you a house for free, you'll automatically continue to build upon it and not lose it (which happens a lot more often than you would think). Should that skill not be respected? Who are you to determine what is fair and what is not.

So what? Why should the state grant you a monopoly at all?

The reason is to encourage people to create useful writings and make useful discoveries. But we need to balance this encouragement with the benefit we get by making these writings and discoveries available to everyone. By granting a time-bound monopoly the state rewards creators, and by ensuring this time period is not excessive, spreads the benefit among the populace.

Plus, with a time bound benefit, you have to keep on creating, which is good for everyone under this regime.

These aren't, like, inherent rights, they are contingent

The point isn't why the state should grant me (or writers) a monopoly. But rather, why should the principle not be applied to all property and ownership and not just copyright for creative works? Why should one lose ownership over their said work if they are a writer but they shouldn't lose ownership of their trade secrets because they are a high-frequency trader? Or more so, why should only the creative field worry about the public better good when it comes to ownership and property? The conversation for public domain must extend to everything and not just works or art if one really believes in it.

Funny that you are comparing Copyrights and Trade Secrets. The monopoly granted on Copyright is predicated on it being published. Trade Secrets, by definition, are not published. Copyright is granted based on the value to the public provided by the author publishing their works. Trade Secrets have no such protection as they are not meant for the public good. They have other protection from theft, but once they are published, there is no protection of the information.

Copyright does not depend on publication. In most countries (including the U.S. and those following the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works), copyright arises automatically the moment an original work is fixed in a tangible medium. And there is no actual legal justification for it to be "meant for the public good" in law or policy.

One philosophical justification for copyright is that it encourages creators to produce and eventually share creative works. But the law doesn't ask whether a work provides public value before granting copyright.

You are undermining the argument by including your faulty understanding of law and missing the bigger point. I am not saying copyright and trade secrets are treated the same in terms of protection by law, I am saying they should be. Because as a writer, I do not want to give my life's work away and let people do whatever they want with it. I want it to stay in my family and I should have the legal right to do it. If that means registering a company and using other laws to protect my work, so be it, but it is not meant to be given away for "public good" in my opinion just because its a work of art.

For corporations sure. For individual authors that's certainly not fair. Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.

> If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights

Because there are fundamentally differ concepts and serve different purposes?

I don't think they are very different in concept, other than one covers physical goods (and also procedures to make physical goods), and the other covers writings.

The purposes of both are: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Like, this is a made up regime with a specific intent. The fact that we treat copyrights and patents differently is an accident of history. I think we could quite reasonably choose a different period of time (and in fact, have done so several times over the past few hundred years) and still promote progress.

I think it's very reasonable to say that one good idea should not be enough to let you coast your whole life, you should be prodded to cough up 3 good ideas. Further, it reduces corporate power at the other end by allowing individuals to play in coroporate properties after a relatively short time. You could be futzing around with, idk, a copyright free Cars under my proposed regime.

It would also make it much easier for corporations to exploit authors.

They would generally make most of their money early (in the couple of years following when the content is released). Individual authors would be much more affected, it might take years for your book to become popular. Also imagine if a studio decides to make a movie or tv show just right after your copyright expires, they wouldn't pay the author anything and just have higher profit margins.

> The fact that we treat copyrights and patents differently is an accident of history

Patented inventions and technologies have some sort of direct practical value. Society does not really benefit much if anyone is allowed to created derived works based on any copyrighted content without compensating the author.

> a copyright free Cars under my proposed regime.

I don't think cars are copyrighted unless you want to make an exact copy of it you shouldn't run into any issues.

If it is true that society does not benefit from creating derived works, then why is open source so useful?

> Patented inventions and technologies have some sort of direct practical value. Society does not really benefit much if anyone is allowed to created derived works based on any copyrighted content without compensating the author.

Most of copyrighted works are derived fro earlier works in some form, often ones that are older than copyright. If derived works provide no value then most copyright doesn't provide any value.

> For individual authors that's certainly not fair.

How about lifetime of the author? Or "lifetime or 25 years whichever is longer" so those writing in their later years (or dying young) can pass on the time they didn't get chance to fully use.

> Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.

That ship has sailed. We've seems "big corp" commit mass piracy and get the lightest slap on the wrist, I doubt they'll get less brazen going forwards.

I agree 20 or 25 years should be plenty of time to protect artistic work. No other industry or line of work has anything like that protection. A work published today by 10 year old could stay in protection for nearly 200 years. If that person was to live to 140, theoretically possible with medicine in future.

We do not continue to pay for most things once they are created. Unless they are continuous services. Artistic works should not be any different.

> copyright should just die with the author

That would have a few undesirable consequences... for example, you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are.

The complexity of our legal system is in many cases justified. The problems are often the numbers (duration of copyright protection etc.)

  > for example, you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are

If you hire them, then you own the work you paid them to do, no?

Either that or if it didn't work, insurance industry would've created a product that makes it work for commissioned works. Nothing happens in isolation here.

Not in every country, and secondly if you're basing it on life of the author then that does't solve corporate copyright unless you tie it to the live of a particular employee.

You could do "life of author or X years, whichever is longer". Or include a period after death.

But you see how the complexities come in.

The complexities are the problem. I've always thought a fixed term is best. Then, you can purchase a work - it says Copyright <dddd> on it. Then, you know that after dddd+term the copyright is lapsed. You don't need to hunt down the author to see if they died. No guessing, just written on the work that you purchased. No, don't have optional extensions - that just means you have to look it up. It should say it right there on the work you purchased when the copyright expires.

It is said that the vast vast majority of works don't earn anything significant after a few years in any case, meaning the only possible reason to have long copyrights is so that a very few people can get stinking rich. But those people already got rich, in the first few years.. society does not benefit from them getting richer.

20 years fixed term is my proposal.

Then just make it the rule that the copyright expires after 30 years or when the author dies, whichever comes last.

Why not just 30 years? Patents get a flat 20.

Not that I'm arguing for 30 per se, just that I don't see what goals of copyright would be advanced more by adding an "or until death" complication.

Well imagine you write a book in your 20s or 30s and it only becomes popular after a couple of decades. The publisher gets to pocket all the money.

Somebody decides to make a movie based on your book? You get nothing at all from it... The movie bit would be problematic even for books that were reasonably popular at the time. e.g the Witcher adaption came out almost exactly 20 years after the last book, for GOT it wasn't that far from being the case as well (at least for the initial volumes). Studios would be incentivized just to wait a couple of years to avoid paying anything.

I think it could be reasonably to have a fixed limit if the rights are held by corporations, though.

This is an edge case. The vast majority of intellectual output loses value extremely fast. If a new Kafka comes along and their writing becomes popular 30 years after publication, they will have 0 issues getting a fat contract for a new book.

Justifications for copyright are always built on edge cases, seemingly moral justifications of an empirically immoral practice. Yes, it'd be nice if a single handicapped mother of 2 coild see her children rise out of poverty thanks to her writing talent after 50 years. In practice, this person doesn't exist and building society around that scenario is not a good thing.

These 'what ifs' have the same value and do the same damage as 'who will think of the children' do for human rights.

> seemingly moral justifications of an empirically immoral practice

How is it empirically immoral? Historically it was one of the best things to have have happened to creative professional in history. Before it writer could make a living by publishing books unless he was independently wealth or had wealthy patrons to support him.

> Justifications for copyright are always built on edge cases

No they are based on the assumption that humans are generally rational and more likely to create content if they can make money by doing that.

> The vast majority of intellectual output loses value extremely fast.

Well that's great.. but then it means that your argument is mostly pointless since if that content has no value why are you bothered by the author retaining the ownership of it. Who would benefit from it entering public domain?

You're strawmanning, or having difficulty reading.

Whatever my personal opinions about copyright, this whole thread is about copyright set at 2000 years vs 20, so that answers your first 2 points.

For the last one, 'losing value' obviously doesn't mean they can be safely binned, but that the publisher has no return on keeping it in publication. Again, this is what the entire thread is about.

So? Imagine you build a house and it only increases in value after you sold it?

Imagine you invent a new kind of computer memory and it only becomes wildly profitable after the patent expires.

The purpose of copyright is NOT to let the original author capture all value of their creations.

And even independently of copyright "with the blessing of the original author" IS a selling point that will give authors ability to market their past works without restricting everyone else's speech. And any new works they create will automatically gain much more attention after their past works become popular - encouraging them to keep creating, just as copyright should.

> So? Imagine you build a house and it only increases in value after you sold it?

How is this relevant? We are not talking about the author selling the copyright of their work and then someone making more money than they did from it...

> The purpose of copyright is NOT to let the original author capture all value of their creations.

What is it then?

> And even independently of copyright "with the blessing of the original author" IS a selling point

Well that gives way less bargaining power to the author and even if they get paid anything by the corporation profiting from their work it would be much less than if they retained copyright.

> And any new works they create will automatically gain much more attention after their past works become popular

Well if you are happy to work for free while someone profits from your effort for "exposure" that's something you are free to do.

> without restricting everyone else's speech.

How is copyright restricting anyeone's speech? Everyone is free to create original content if they want to.

For inventions if you don't make money off it in the first 20 years you are unlikely to ever make any money off it - as the invention space moves on.

That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-)

Also most books etc don't make much, if any money - an publisher/author might rely on a the cummulative effect of a number of revenue streams built over time.

Also the effect of exclusivity is different - for patents you are potentially blocking the area of innovation you have patented by your exclusivity.

That's not the same societal effect as somebody not being able to copy mickey mouse.

So they aren't exactly the same - however I'm not proposing a 3000 year copyright :-)

My personal preference is actually a flat 50 years. I think that if an author writes something at 25 and it doesn't blow up until they're 75, I think that's given them more than a fair chance to capitalize on it.

My real point though is that IMO, whatever duration we pick shouldn't depend on the creator. It would tend to undervalue their later creations, treats corporations differently from people in a way that doesn't seem relevant to copyright, and oddly might lead to the untimely demise of creators.

I find your Odyssey example to be relevant. Homer's death means people today can release their own translations or adaptations. I can find a public domain version from 100+ years ago, or a modern translator can profit from their work so that I can see their take. I can watch the Italian 1911 silent film version for free on youtube [0], or pay for Nolan's modern take. The expiry of copyright gives me options.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbR97hqfG2o

50 years is too long - you should be able to build on your childhood experiences in your lifetime.

Ultimately the existence of the Odyssey doesn't stop you writing your own story - the creative universe is infinite.

This is completely different from IP around an invention - you don't want a single entity owning the rights the wheel forever - that would stymie human progess.

So I don't think it's right to conflate the two.

> That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-)

And it was written without copyright. So why should the rest of us give up part of our free speech rights for longer than 20 years in order to enrich authors, when its proven that we can get great works without doing that?

The question is not whether longer copyright ever lets authors profit more, it's whether society benefits as a whole.

> it's whether society benefits as a whole.

There is a big difference between not being able to republish or cut and paste from the works of JK Rowling and not being able to make and sell an electric motor.

ie my point was that in terms of societal benefit there is a big difference between IP protection and copyright.

JK Rowling managed to write Harry Potter series despite it reusing lots of well worn tropes. I fail to see how it's existence is stopping other people being equally creative.

I am fine that estate gets to keep rights for whatever period is left. If estate is dissolved ofc rights would also end. So they can't be orphaned. Either someone has them or they are public domain.

Orphaning is less of a problem than copyright nondeterminism where someone owns the copyright but no one knows. A good way to solve this would be to also move move works into the public domain if they are no longer sold in some form. With digital distribution costs are now so low that there is not excuse to not at least keep selling something unless you care so little about it that you have no argument why you should retain a monopoly. Perhaps with a short enough term this is less of a problem though.

> copyright should just die with the author

This makes sense when you’re thinking of a painting or a book.

Who owns the copyright to Windows or MacOS? A corporation. How do you deal with that?

> you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are

Commercial projects are works-for-hire and the copyright is not owned by the person who does the work.

The proposal for the limit of copyright needs to be refined.

In the US, the current rule is:

> For … a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation

> you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are.

And yet, practically all over the world, 70- to 80-year-old men are being hired for leadership positions to run the world. Regardless of how brilliant they are.

This would create incentive to kill people

So does life insurance.. but we still have that.

What we don't have anymore though because of that, is tontines.

They are still around.

And common if you count retirement funds.

Never heard of it, so just googled, but it's not obvious why these would be more preferable to annuities. As you get older above about 75, people tend to spend a lot less in general (assuming they don't need care support), so getting more money when you're unlikely to spend it anyway seems pointless.

I'd speculate that the regular payments on annuities would therefore be higher than tontines because insurance companies would be able to factor in average life expectancy to the pricing more easily, rather than having to budget for possibly all the money continuing to be paid out to just one remaining person who happened to beat the odds and live well beyond 100 instead of the average around mid-80s.

I would change it to "the expected natural life of the author" which is their birthday + 85 years. Regardless of whether they actually are still alive past that date.

I would accept that as well, but crank it down to like 62 years since their date of birth, presumably by the time they would retire.

What?

Think this through some more.

Authors and artists are still creating after that age.

So if an 86 year old writes a book they can't copyright it?

This can't work: life expectancy (of humans) can differ more than 30 years around the world, plus there are significant differences between men and women, and corporations - which often own copyright on work for hire - can live in perpetuity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes

not really, when copyright disappears, so does the profit motive

sure, you don't have to pay royalties, but any other publisher can now publish too

I'd rather not involve the author's life in the copyright duration at all - it should be a limited time just enough for the author/heirs/whoever to recover costs plus make a modest profit and not a special kind of retirement fund or other kind of welfare scheme.

I thought about this and what they are doing is writing the music industry out of the minds of the next generation who mostly uses Youtube etc. for entertainment.

Most Youtube videos do not contain any copyrighted music as it takes too much revenue as you state.

Again, its short term profit at the cost of long-term gain.

What if the copyright is owned by a corporation?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com