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Forever is a long time. My great-great-great grandfather was a newspaper publisher in the 19th century. Should I be able to exert some sort of control over that information because someone who was dead before my grandfather was born wrote it?

So if you were an author, you would not write a book because royalties would cease coming in to your grandchildren X years after your death?

People and companies should be able to "own" their ideas for a reasonable period of time. The point of copyright is to "promote the useful arts" and to promote and reward creativity.

Allowing companies to own the Mickey Mouse story in the year 2213 does nothing to promote that. What purpose does that serve? Why should the government protect the right for generations of your descendants to be profit from the intellectual work of a distant ancestor? Why should shareholders in the year 2513 benefit from a cartoon produced in 1930?

Why should I on the death of an author be able to reproduce their work and sell it? Why should that be the case after 28 years or 75 years after the death of the creator be able to take their work and profit from it?

>So if you were an author, you would not write a book because royalties would cease coming in to your grandchildren X years after your death?

The chilling effect on work is not a result of the author, but the company who pays for the work that allows the author to work on the book for years. Why would a company give advance an author, spend money promoting/printing/distributing a book if they can not make royalties on it x years after the author dies?

>People and companies should be able to "own" their ideas for a reasonable period of time.

You tell me what is a reasonable time? 28 years, 28 years + 28 years, life time of the creator, lifetime +75 years?

>Allowing companies to own the Mickey Mouse story in the year 2213 does nothing to promote that. What purpose does that serve?

That serves the purpose of Disney spending billions on theme parks to further develop the brand, to further invest in their brand, establish their brand all over the world which creates jobs fueling the global economy. That is less likely if their work can be diluted by any joe schmo creating independent subpar works creating confusion in the market place in terms of origin.

Copyright has always been for a limited term. Defining that limited term is a political judgment call, and I believe that the judgment is at this point wrong, erring in favor of unduly long copyright.

It is a safe bet that any book of 1957 still remembered (definitely Atlas Shrugged and On the Road, believe it or not The Anatomy of Criticism, probably not some of the others) has long since paid back the publisher's investment beyond expectations.

It isn't just about "stealing." Allowing works to enter the public domain actually encourages more works to be created. People are free to remake and remix works in the public domain.

Think:

A REAL lot of old Disney movies (Alice and Wonderland, Jungle Book, Pinocchio...)

Pride and Prejudice with Zombies

That Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and guns.

A Christmas Carol in play form (it lends itself really well to live theater, I suggest seeing it!)

West Side Story (inspired by Romeo and Juliet)

Clueless (based on Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma)

The anime/manga Lupin III was inspired by the French gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, created by Maurice Leblanc. Japan didn't enforce copyright at the time of its creation but the Leblanc estate got mad once Lupin started being sold in North America. Some foreign releases changed his name as a result. In 2012, Leblanc's original Arsène Lupin entered the public domain in France

See this video for a different perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

Also read the copyright clause in the Constitution!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress:

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.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" is the goal and purpose of copyright, as written by the founding fathers, not "financially benefit" especially not forever.

Your post is very helpful because of the examples.

Lets take the Disney example. Lets assume the non-disney original Snow White had a Copyright and was not in the public domain. That does not mean Disney's version violates the copyright, it is very likely there was enough change in Disney's version from the original that Disney would not be found to infringe.

Pride and Prejudice with Zombies: Assuming the creator of Pride and Prejudice had a valid copyright, without being familiar with either work I can almost guarantee this would not be Copyright infringement because it would be valid under the satirical exemption to Copyright infringement.

The Clueless and West Side Story examples are more difficult because I am not familiar with the works and the verbiage "inspired by" "based on" is all I am going off of. But this was my whole point regarding the OP that there is an assumption of copyright infringement. Just because a work is "inspired by" or "based on" does legally mean there is infringement. These individual examples would need to be analyzed on a case by case basis to determine if they violate copyright law or not.

All I advocate for is extension of the term of a copyright not an expansion of the right itself. In which case I would argue most of your examples would not rely on the underlying works being in the public domain, because they were changed enough to not constitute infringement as opposed to say a 1 on 1 copy of the original work.

Are you willing to put you interpretation of copyright to the test? Why don't you write a modern retelling of Cinderella based on Disney's version and see how far you get. Next try a remix between Cinderella, Harry Potter, and the leaked Windows source code and see what happens.

With a quick search I found 37 different film versions of Cinderella, I did not look at them individually to confirm, but it would be safe to say Disney did not create 37 versions of Cinderella. So a serious derivative work can be made that does not violate any Disney copyright, but I can certainly say I could create a zombie themed Cinderella that would fall under satire and not constitute a infringement.

I should also note that I am an attorney, and have handled both trademark and copyright infringement cases (for plaintiffs and defendants). That is in addition to successfully registering both and in some cases over objections of the examining USPTO attorney or third parties.

Edit: I don't know why I am being down voted but in the instance it sounds like I am saying I must be right bc I'm an attorney, I am the first to acknowledge disagreement between practitioners, jurisdictions, and Judge's/justices. For what its worth I noted it as a sign of good faith that I am not blowing smoke of my interpretation of copyright law

Perhaps Cinderella was a poor example due to its origins as a folk tale. Let's substitute Mickey Mouse for Cinderella in my example. Would I be able to write, publish, and profit from my own non-satirical Mickey Mouse stories if I clearly labeled them as not originating from Disney? What about 250 years from now?

I think part of the disconnect between your opinion of copyright law and some of the other commenters here is caused by the lawyer/hacker dichotomy. Hackers tend to view any involvement of the courts as a failure. For most non-wealthy people and most small businesses, the threat alone of legal action has a chilling effect.

An argument I make against long copyrights, especially for famous works, is that these stories and characters become woven into our popular culture. At some point, the public deserve to own their own culture, not megalithic corporations. Cinderella is the story it is because of the additions of different storytellers over time, like the godmother and glass slippers added in Perrault's Cendrillon.

>Perhaps Cinderella was a poor example due to its origins as a folk tale.

I used Cinderella specifically, bc my understanding is the folk tale was very unlike (violent, gory, ect...) the Disney version tailored for children.

In general satire is a much easier and obvious legal analysis as well. Say for example South Park's episodes with Mickey (although more of a Trademark issue than copyright), more on point with copyright is South Park's Star Wars episodes. However, to answer your question, is it possible to make a non-satirical Mickey story that does not violate Disney Trademarks? The answer is yes, but admittedly much more difficult and likely to infringe than a satirical story.

>Hackers tend to view any involvement of the courts as a failure.

As a lawyer, I see lawsuits as a cost of doing business and inevitable for any successful enterprise. I would encourage all hackers, especially, to view lawsuits in the same light (e.g. I am not successful until I get sued). I say this because hackers particularly set out to disrupt established industries, take Uber or AirBnB as good examples, but even YC itself has been sued, that is not a failure that is the cost of success.

> At some point, the public deserve to own their own culture, not megalithic corporations.

This is simply where we disagree, I am not saying you are wrong by any means, because I do not think their is a right answer, your point is sincere and well reasoned. My counter, is that the free market decides. Moreover, if Mickey is not going to win in the market place because society wants to take the character and run with it open source style, well then Mickey will lose in favor of another cartoon Mouse created by an pro open source artist, but I would say the reason Mickey became a cultural icon is because of the tight control of the story and character vis-a-vis Disney ownership/investment. In contrast and in support of your position Japan has a thriving culture based open source character, where even iconic corporate mascots are adopted by the public and the public creates their own stories, comics, commercial products, virtual concerts, ect...

You have no idea what you are talking about because you do not understand copyright law. It just doesn't work that way.

You can't make a new version of something and not have it be a copyright violation, even if it is significantly different from the original. I'll give you an example, the movie Blade Runner was an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie was very different from the book, but rights still hsd to be secured to use the source material and characters and money was paid. I can't even make a completely different movie and have Harry Potter come in my movie because J.K. Rowling, etc owns that character. The exception is for parody.

Plus the burden of proof is on the defendant in a copyright lawsuit - the copyright holder can still sue even if its fair use, now you gotta defend yourself in an expensive lawsuit.

Another example that just came of my head, the movie Apocalypse Now was an adaption of Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness however the setting was changed from The Congo to Vietnam.

I think that the reasonable upper boundary one can place upon encouraging an artist to create new works is the death of the artist. To my knowledge, people simply do not go on creating things after they have died.

But since that might create a perverse incentive to murder artists or to name one's children as co-creators, it would be better to apply a fixed term instead--one well within the natural lifespan of a human.

An automatic 20 years, renewable for additional 10 year intervals only as long as the primary author still lives and holds the copyrights--that seems reasonable. Works-for-hire would thus be a fixed 20 years with no possible renewal. In contrast, patronage could be worth more to the patron in the long run, so long as the author remains satisfied.

Under such a system, I imagine it would be typical for novices to create works for hire for some time to build reputation, then graduate to patronage in exchange for exclusive licensing terms, and then finally move on to complete self-management, where the fanbase is able to fully support the artist.

>I think that the reasonable upper boundary one can place upon encouraging an artist to create new works is the death of the artist. To my knowledge, people simply do not go on creating things after they have died.

I will use funny examples here just to illustrate a point. Biggie Smalls has generated more money from his work after his death than during his lifetime. 2-Pac has published more music after his death than during his life time (obviously the music was recorded but not released). There are many examples of painters who's work only became famous after their death.

It is my belief their work should not lose protection and be entered in the public domain because of their death. People can still make derivative works so long as they do not infringe, but 1 to 1 copying would, and what I argue is should, be protected. As it relates to work with greater investment, $200M+ movies for example, yes I believe (and I think what most people do not agree with me about) is those would disappear if they entered public domain after 20 years (using your term as an example).

> Why should I on the death of an author be able to reproduce their work and sell it? Why should that be the case after 28 years or 75 years after the death of the creator be able to take their work and profit from it?

Because information truly wants to be free, and should be. Copyright is a legal construct that exists to make it financially viable to create. Creation and innovation drives society forward.

> The chilling effect on work is not a result of the author, but the company who pays for the work that allows the author to work on the book for years. Why would a company give advance an author, spend money promoting/printing/distributing a book if they can not make royalties on it x years after the author dies?

They do already. There are 220,000 books published in the United States annually. What fraction will still be in print in a decade? 50 years? 100?

> That serves the purpose of Disney spending billions on theme parks to further develop the brand, to further invest in their brand, establish their brand all over the world which creates jobs fueling the global economy.

Letting works slide into the public domain doesn't prevent that. Disney still retains the ability to evolve the story (ie. create). Let Mickey and Minnie have kids, and make that part of the Mickey Mouse canon. Two hundred years from now, Disney can and should evolve their brand, including their theme parks.

youre confusing brand (trademark) and public domain here.

personally i think theres no such thing as IP and lifetime+0 is plenty nice enough.

using you principle we should probably pay fees just to write words, thats if IP had been a thing 3000y ago.

I can create and distribute any creation for free thanks to the internet. Your argument assumes that a publisher/studio is required, when this is simply not the case, and not the direction the world is headed. Copyright and all IP law stifles creation at the cost of creativity.

I create because I'm a creator, not because there is a fiscal reward. I create because I want to make a great product, not because I want to make a lot of money. I don't create so I can make some corporate fat ass rich.

You can copy and distribute any creation for free thanks to the internet. A publisher is not required for the next On the Road. But creating the next Bridge Over the River Kwai will require serious resources.

Samuel Johnson, who did an awful lot of writing, and was not that one can tell a greedy man, said that No man but blockhead ever wrote but for money.

>I can create and distribute any creation for free thanks to the internet. >I create because I'm a creator, not because there is a fiscal reward.

Then there is nothing stopping you from doing just that...Just because the protections exist does not mean you must avail yourselves to them, you can give your work away for free all you want or let others take your work reproduce it and sell it as their own (maybe even take credit as the original creator).

However, if your saying you need to create your work off anthers work which is copyrighted and they want to enforce the same, then I would say IP is not what is stifling creativity, rather an unoriginal artist with no creativity to begin with.

> However, if your saying you need to create your work off anthers work which is copyrighted and they want to enforce the same, then I would say IP is not what is stifling creativity, rather an unoriginal artist with no creativity to begin with.

Creativity != originality. Its been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, but plenty of Disney's works are not original. That doesn't detract from the quality of the work or the creativity involved in adapting the story.

What you argue for with indefinite control is building on someone else's work and then being allowed to say "OK, I have the final say. No more is to be done on this line."

>Creativity != originality. Its been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, but plenty of Disney's works are not original. That doesn't detract from the quality of the work or the creativity involved in adapting the story.

I agree with you. When I said "create your work off another" I am referencing a 1 to 1 copy or at least a work that results in a finding of infringement. If you create a derivative work that does not infringe on a copyright, more power to you - but the point is you would not need to have a work in the public domain to create a derivative work that does not infringe.

Nothing you wrote tries to justify indefinite copyright protections.

Certainly my points have counterpoints, but I included at least 3 reasons for indefinite copyright protection.

1. Indefinite protections encourages the creation of new works vis-a-vis encouraging investment in new creation/distribution.

2. That just because there is indefinite copyright protection, does not mean people can still create derivative works, engage in fair use, ect...

3. Finally, just because indefinite protection exists would not prevent works from being voluntarily entered into the public domain.

The "indefinite" is not necessary in any of your points.

What tangible difference in incentive exists for creating new works if your protection is 60 years or 1000 years after you die? Copyright is a contract between creators and society: limited protection to encourage the creation of creative works, with the promise that the material will eventually be (unconditionally) available to the public.

Information cannot be permanently locked behind a paywall, especially as it becomes important to study it historically, or as it becomes culturally embedded.

>What tangible difference in incentive exists for creating new works if your protection is 60 years or 1000 years after you die?

You think Disney or anyone else will invest if they lose their copyright protections in 60 years? No, it is stability that encourages creation and investment.

>Information cannot be permanently locked behind a paywall, especially as it becomes important to study it historically

That is the problem...misconception that copyrighted work is behind a paywall. Copyrighted work is subject to fair use and a number of other exceptions such as academic/scientific purposes.

>You think Disney or anyone else will invest if they lose their copyright protections in 60 years?

Is this an appeal to imagination?

Yes I do, because I'm going to speculate that most of the income derived from a creative work is extracted in its first 60 years, and going to mention the historical fact that none of the media created 60 years ago was expected to be marketable 60 years later, and was often just destroyed.

So I don't think Disney would invest if they thought they couldn't make money from product 60 years later, it's just the truth. If your view of the issue requires as an axiom that all creativity would stop under a measly 60 year copyright term, it is clearly wrong.

I am being taken out of context, I am not talking about making money I am talking about copy right protection. Disney has a vested interest, whether making money or not on a work, that Joe Schmo does not start reproducing a given work 1 to 1 and selling it as their own.

You may be right most income is derived from a work in its first 60 years, or that media created 60 years ago was not expected to be marketable 60 years later. Though I do not know this to be a historical fact, 60 years ago (1953) there was plenty of evidence to suggest a given work by a US author has plenty of commercial appeal after a mere 60 years of existence (Walden Pond, Civil Disobedience, Uncle Tom's Cabin, almost any Mark Twain novel).

There is no evidence Disney is canning movies because they won't be able to profit from them 60 years from now. They are not thinking that far ahead (because they can't); you are deluded.

You keep bringing up fair use, but that does not apply to public performances.

> You think Disney or anyone else will invest if they lose their copyright protections in 60 years?

Yes, because people did when copyright terms were shorter than that, and virtually all of the income from most things subject to copyright is derived in the first decade or so.

> Copyrighted work is subject to fair use and a number of other exceptions such as academic/scientific purposes.

Academic/scientific purpose is a factor in evaluating fair use, not a separate exception. And DMCA anti-circumvention provisions make it a crime to make it possible to get access to copyrighted material (when it is distributed in particular forms) beyond what the copyright owner chooses to allow even if the purpose of that access is to make use that is covered by fair use or other exceptions to copyright.

>Yes, because people did when copyright terms were shorter than that, and virtually all of the income from most things subject to copyright is derived in the first decade or so.

Yes the terms were shorter, but people were also not investing $200M+ per film. Now you are probably right that any given work, including $200M+ films, are likely to derive all income in the first decade, but the investment for such projects would not happen if they lost protection after a decade and people could simply start reproducing 1 to 1 copies at that point.

note that most disney movies are profitable a few weeks after release. so even of copyright was 1 year theyd still do it .... because profit. its just that now they can enjoy 100y of profit without additional effort instead.

No one (rational) is arguing for no legal protections. However, there's a difference between "the creator gets a period of time in which they're not competing with themselves" and "nothing created post-1978 (or affected by the 1978 copyright extensions) will ever realistically enter the public domain because of continuing copyright extensions". What makes these works so much more valuable that their creators should never have to give up the rights to the public, the way that creators in the USA for nearly 200 years did?

>What makes these works so much more valuable that their creators should never have to give up the rights to the public, the way that creators in the USA for nearly 200 years did?

Nothing makes these works more valuable, its just the jurisprudence has caught up to modern applications of the law. Copyrightable work is an asset much like anything else I should be able to leave to my heirs, why should I be limited to making money off my work during my lifetime or any other arbitrary period of time. Especially because there is case after case that establish work that becomes popular only after the death of the creator.

So I will ask you your own question turned around, why as the creator of a work should I ever be forced to give up my rights of the same to the public?

There are no business models which depend on a revenue stream existing 30 years from now to encourage the creation of works. In fact I can't think of any business models that are dependent upon such lengths of time; patents don't even exceed 20 years.

You are not encouraging any additional creation by making the copyright indefinite, you are simply handing creators exclusivity enforcement forever at the expense of the public.

As a creator you are not entitled to ownership of information, it is given to you by the government. It is not relinquished from you to the people. Copyright is a social contract, not an inalienable right arbitrarily given to creators simply for the act of creation.

In the first Supreme Court case on Copyright, they ruled:

“Congress… by this act, instead of sanctioning an existing right… created it.”

> No one (rational) is arguing for no legal protections.

There are many quite rational anarchists who would argue for that. Personally, I wouldn't advocate for throwing that switch in today's world, because we only have like 5% of the infrastructure needed to support a healthy anarchistic society. But if in the future we have a fairly complete complement of anarchistic technology and culture I could rationally argue that copyright would be superfluous, if not outright harmful in that world.

Copyright is traditionally an area of law that has been served by moderation. The government offers some protection to creators, but not absolute rights. For instance, songwriters have a right to receive royalties when someone else records and distributes their song, but they don't have the right (in the US) to set the price of that royalty, or to veto a particular artist covering their song. It's a balancing act.

On the one side, if you don't have copyright at all, it severely limits the ability of creators to monetize easily copied works. This became a problem with the printing press and copying has only gotten easier as technology has progressed.

On the other side, there are a number of problems with granting an absolute, indefinite copyright. One is that you stifle the creation of derivative works. Another is that obscure works can easily fall out of print and be lost forever. A larger philosophical concern is whether corporations should be allowed to hold control over the shared cultural heritage of a society long after the actual creators have died.

Almost everyone sees the need for some kind of compromise here. Personally, Canada's life+50 years sounds pretty reasonable to me.

I touch on this point in OP, I am not saying owners should receive some absolute right, I am saying I believe an indefinite right (referring to the term only) of existing protections subject to existing infringement and defenses (fair use, derivative, news worth, ect...)

Your use of song is a good example, just because I create a song (and receive indefinite protection) does not mean someone else can not sample it, only that I am entitled to a royalty..any why shouldn't I be whether I created the song yesterday or 100 years ago and transferred the copyright to my heirs?