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You could certainly make the copyright registration process a low-cost one (online only, no fee, etc.), but I think the registration requirement has some very real value for subsequent creators.

As is, there's no currently no way for me to confidently know that I have permission to use a particular work. Even if I get permission from the original creator, I have no way of knowing whether said creator actually copied from someone else. A registry (properly indexed and searchable by Google) solves that problem.

I like very much your idea of making it as easy as possible for someone to consume and re-use as far as whatever is possible permits.

But I would think that the Internet Archive or some Google text/video/image search with "scraped on:yyyy-mm-dd" would essentially give you permission if the scrape date was less than (Now() - <X years original reproduction is prohibited>) or (Now() - <Y years "substantially" derivative works are prohibited>); where Y is probably less than X.

Then someone could have exclusive rights to publish their works for (say) 10 years, while an artist could potentially make a different work after (again, say) 5 years.

I only follow this enough to make highly illogical conclusions, but it seems like a blogger shouldn't have to register every single post with a central authority to retain a very limited length copyright. They should have some time to publish a "Greatest Hits", and if they don't during tlicensed", then "Greatest Hits PLUS today's take on past events" would seem to lure the die-hards.

Ultimately though, I don't feel it should be on the creator to register every creation.

In your example, I would hope the person that "licensed" it to you would be responsible, and not you, but I've heard possession of stolen goods can be a tricky area (at least in the U.S.) even if you have no prior knowledge, so I don't hold high hopes for reasonable property decisions concerning intellectual property rather than physical.

The cost of having a blogger register every post seems like an implementation detail. There's no reason Wordpress couldn't auto-register every post the say way it auto-publishes posts via RSS. Alternatively, you could simply register the blog as a whole with the copyright registrar and the Library of Congress would be responsible for periodically re-indexing your site. As a final compromise, we could grant the creator something like a 10-year window to register. Any copies made prior to registration (and maybe within a 30 day buffer after registration) would still be allowed, but any copies made after registration would be limited by copyright. That would allow for easy initial consumption and re-use (including archival and scraping) but permit the original creator to have some say over large-scale commercialization of his or her "greatest hits".

As a philosophical point, I think it should be on the creator to register every creation (at least if said creator wants copyright protection on it). You are claiming a property right over an amorphous thing you do not physically possess. The least you could do is to be provider clear notice to the public of what exactly it is you are claiming rights over. In that sense, copyright is less like personal property and more like real estate, where owners are expected to register their deeds to enjoy full legal protection of their property rights.

Also, as a practical matter, we're also more likely to see registration requirements passed than a reduction of copyright to 5 or 10 years (historically, it's been about 14-28 years in the U.S.).

Except that scraping itself would be prohibited by copyright law. This is why there should be some central repository, so that there can be a legal copy that is available to the public after the copyright expires.

"it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create"

More efficient for what, exactly? Because it is much more efficient for me to just assume that nothing is copyright when I creating something new that incorporates the work of others. It is overwhelmingly more efficient to just ignore copyright on the Internet -- our computers are the greatest copying machines ever made, and spending our time trying to figure out if some data is copyrighted is nothing but a retarding force.

I'm all for free works and the Public Domain. The only problem with assuming that some work is free unless otherwise noted is that an entity with more resources can claim the same rights, and therefore profits, to a given work until presented with a significant challenge. A smaller entity can easily placed on a disadvantage.

If there's a public database of all copyrighted content they can't just assume without checking.

As far as copyrighting is concerned I think it's fair to require you to put some effort into protecting your works.

However free copyright should only last about 20 years after that a small fee should be required on the 21'st year and that fee should grow exponentially[1] every 10 years from then on.

If it's valuable enough to you you will pay the fee but if it isn't you will release it into the public domain.

That will prevent people keeping thing copyrighted for too long and companies like Disney could keep their stuff copyrighted for at least 100 years before the fees get too large.

If it's no profitable there's no point in keeping it copyrighted and you're just hurting the public domain by doing so.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

Fair point, and thanks for replying. I was arguing on the supposition that original content creators deserve a right to some time-limited monetary compensation for their works, if truly valuable to society. I'm sure many people would create content irrespective of a monopoly on monetization, but that seems like a step C, where I guess I was suggesting a path from A (current Disney-style) to B (something in between A and C).

Edit: After reading your comment more carefully, I see you were discussing creating something new based on a work, rather than a simple reproduction of an existing work; my apologies. In which case I agree with nthitz's comments in this thread regarding it being transformative, and therefore permissible (in my idealized scenario).

If, as an artist, you only had one monetizable piece of work, then you are NOT a genius, you are a complete failure. You prove your genius through a body of work, through a repetition of successfully creating things. And it's really not genius at all, it's just perseverance. Most of the artists we hold up as "great" weren't the most technically skilled, weren't the smartest of their peers. They just knew how to finish.

It is a major disservice to budding artists that we continue, through culture and through implication with our copyright law, to promote the notion of the genius artist. The image of divine inspiration, the golden work, a single masterpiece that creates a laying legacy, is complete falsehood. It relegated at to a world of myth, only to be attempted by gods, not for us mere mortals.

It's an incredibly important lesson for the entrepreneur. It's better to be done than be right or beautiful our elegant. Done is the only thing that sells units.

If you want government assistance in enforcing your IP rights it seems reasonable that you contact the government to let them know that you have something that needs their protections.

See, for example, trademarks. You do not have to register your trademarks; just using them is enough. But wothout registration the government (in the form of customs agents) will not seize trademark infringing goods at the border or (in the form of police and courts) arrest and prosecute people engaging in mass commercial fraud / violation of your trademarks.

IP law baffles me and it'd be great if there were some short pages explaining why we are where we are with Intellectual property. There are lots of pages explaining what the law is, but not why. Also, some comparison with other legal systems would be cool. (Possibly popular article for HN?)