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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

I think a fixed, short term might be better.

Considering two extreme cases:

Author A writes something incredibly popular and dies the moment he wrote the last word. His children end up in the poor house because they don't get any royalties from sales.

Author B writes something incredibly popular at the age of 15 and is still living large off his royalties at the ripe old age of 100.

If you just set it to, say, 20 years and it's done (or IMO better would be an exponentially increasing fee for renewal, $1 for the first year, $2 for the second, $4 for the third, etc.) then it seems to be more predictable and cleaner.

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I don't see any reason you couldn't have the greater of: a fixed term (say 20 years) or when the author dies (I don't have any problem at all with an author living off their own work for as long as they live).

>(I don't have any problem at all with an author living off their own work for as long as they live). //

It corrupts the copyright deal to some extent. Copyright in part is to encourage creation of new works in the hope that they will benefit society. If we (the people) allow authors to rest on their laurels we potentially deprive ourselves of much of the benefit that could be elicited from their creativity. We also to some extent lock up important works that would otherwise allow the inspiration of others - creators of derivative works - to be rewarded.

We want to reward creativity, but not so much so that those who happen to have societally enriching creativity don't need to exercise it more than once!

I think that would be decent. I don't particularly think a person should still be getting income from a copyrighted work they created the better part of a century ago just because they happen to still be alive, but I'm not strongly opposed to it either.

I think that using just the fixed term would be better, just for simplicity's sake. How would it work if you have a collaborative novel? One author dies, the other continues living. What if the author goes missing? Changes their name, moves and leaves no forwarding address? How much effort do you need to put in to track down an author in order to re-print their works, or to tell if they're in the public domain?

It's much easier to just do a standard, fixed term for all copyrights.

I think that having an exponentially increasing renewal fee seems like a good idea on the surface, but makes things more complicated than they should be.

In order to do that, you have to have a central authority that actually keeps track of copyrighted works, who owns the rights to it, if they've been extended, if the fees have been paid, etc. On top of that, you need to think about the broke independent author who can't afford to extend the copyright on that 5th year because they got a divorce, got in a car accident, and landed in the hospital. Or the high schooler who wrote a book for NANOWRIMO, self-publishes it, but doesn't know the first thing about copyright law or needing to continually do extensions. The copyright inevitably lapses, and some publisher finds it, likes it, and starts printing copies and selling them because it's in the public domain.

I really, honestly believe that we need to reform copyright, but I also think we need make sure that it doesn't favour people with money and people with access to intimate knowledge of copyright law. I think everyone probably has at least one copyrighted work to their name, so we should make it a goal that just about everyone should be able to understand copyright.

Most countries already have that central authority, so that's not a particularly big hurdle. Note that for most of the history of copyright in the US, it wasn't automatic, and you had to register your work. Automatic copyright for simply creating something didn't happen in the US until 1989. There's still a central authority, as registration is still required for certain additional whatnot.

Of course, "that's how it was" doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. But it's not completely disastrous.

I think most of your objections would be solved by a sort of hybrid system that I hinted at. Don't start the exponential renewal until the 20 year mark. If you haven't learned about the need for renewal by then, you clearly don't need it. Start it at a dollar, so it's a tiny barrier for anyone making any money at year 20.

By year 30 it'll be a thousand dollars, and by year 40 it'll be a million. This will start to scare off small time folks who aren't making a ton of money. Highly profitable properties will be able to afford the fees for a while longer, although year 50 will hit a billion dollars a year, and soon after it'll exceed the GDP of most countries.

So in essence, it breaks down to a 20-year period for even the worst crap, a ~30 year period for obscure but selling works, a 40 year period for properties that continue to be fairly profitable, and maybe a 50 year period for Mickey Mouse class stuff.

I think 20-30 years should be plenty to figure out how profitable something is going to be, so it shouldn't much depend on how much money people had before, but how much they can make from the work. If we consider that a proxy for how valuable the work is to society (a bad proxy to be sure, but perhaps better than nothing) then why not allow profitable works to last longer? Make some money for Uncle Sam too.

Am I right in thinking we can still do automatic copyright assignment, even with your proposed hybrid system? One could just check the registry, and if the work is not present in the registry then it can be assumed to have the 20 year lifespan.

I still think we need to make sure that we keep very good records with this registry, however. I could foresee more instances like we have with Happy Birthday if we don't do a good job of it.

I agree entirely. A fixed term, ideally with ongoing maintenance required to maintain, seems far fairer than tying it to a particular individual. You'd need a fixed term regardless to handle works for hire, so fairness would argue for using that same term universally.

20 years would be culturally terrible. That would make it so just around the time your kids are old enough for you to introduce them to the great comics, cartoons, movies, music, and books of your childhood it would enter the public domain and become widely used in advertising and low budget productions. You are not going to be able to share the magic of, say, Calvin & Hobbes, with your kids if your kids have already been saturated by those characters as TV pitchmen for toys and junk food.

I think you have it exactly backwards. A reasonable length copyright (like 10-20 years) would be awesome for culture. You'd see loads more great new comics, cartoons, movies, music books all remixing, reworking and drawing inspiration from an renewed and thriving public domain.

Advertisers and branding wouldn't find much use for them because they were public domain. They gain value from these things by limiting the use through exclusive deals enabled by copyright.

> Advertisers and branding wouldn't find much use for them because they were public domain. They gain value from these things by limiting the use through exclusive deals enabled by copyright

That's one way advertisers can gain value from using a character. Exclusivity strengthens the association between the character and the product being advertised. Without exclusivity, many advertising characters probably would indeed be of little value and advertisers would probably not use them. I think, though, that this would mostly apply to characters that were created for advertising, or that were outside characters that were not very significant to the public.

If the Michelin Man were used to pitch donuts, for example, I'd find it weird, because I only associate the Michelin Man with Michelin tires.

However, for characters that had significant public interest before they were used in advertising, I don't think exclusivity is very important. For instance, Michael Phelps (yes, I know he is a real person, not a character, but that doesn't change the point) has done ads for Subway Sandwiches and for Speedo, and I don't think either diminishes the other.

He, quite reasonably I think, doesn't want to see loads more Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Because they won't be created by Bill Watterson. They'll be created by PepsiCo to sell sugar water.

Twenty-year-old (and even much newer) commercially successful comics, cartoons, movies, and music are, in fact, widely used in advertising, etc. -- heck, with comics and cartoons, they are used as pitchmen for toys and junk food from day one.

So, I think the cultural terror you refer to is the status quo even with effectively perpetual copyright.

Calvin and Hobbes isn't used to promote toys and junk food.

> Calvin and Hobbes isn't used to promote toys and junk food

Sure, if you are going to be hyperspecific about that one particular example and that one specific use, but the issue was more general about works, and, as for that work, while it may not used to promote toys and junk food, its first titular character is used in rather ubiquitous window decals that seem to present at least as much of the same problem.

The cultural context for a succesful work, with regard to its specific characters, but also more generally, is never going to be the same when you want to introduce your kids to it as when you were introduced to it yourself, particularly if you encountered the work when it was first introduced to society (or when first became popular, which may not be the same time).

Trying to restrict other people's freedom in order to preserve that cultural context -- as by adovcating long copyright terms for that purpose -- is never going to work.

I'm not being hyperspecific about that one particular example. The comment you chose to reply to was specifically about that one particular example.

Long copyright terms seem to be doing just fine for Bill Watterson.

> The comment you chose to reply to was specifically about that one particular example.

Not, it wasn't. It made the following general claim about a problem that would exist without long-term copyright:

>> That would make it so just around the time your kids are old enough for you to introduce them to the great comics, cartoons, movies, music, and books of your childhood it would enter the public domain and become widely used in advertising and low budget productions. <<

> Long copyright terms seem to be doing just fine for Bill Watterson.

Perhaps its doing fine for him, but its not preventing characters -- Calvin particularly -- from Calvin and Hobbes from being ubiquitously used in our culture in a way which shifts the context in which someone newly introduced to the source works might experience them. Sure, its not specifically "marketing toys and junk food", but rather expressing preferences, but its not fundamentally different from the perspective of the kind of cultural context concern raised generally in the post I was responding to.

I don't think I follow your second graph, but you might be suggesting that copyright aside, Calvin is frequently used in stickers on the backs of Chevy and Ford trucks. Those stickers are counterfeit. They've been the subject of legal action, and if they aren't today, it's because Watterson doesn't care enough to go after their small-potatoes producers.

> I don't think I follow your second graph, but you might be suggesting that copyright aside, Calvin is frequently used in stickers on the backs of Chevy and Ford trucks.

Hardly limited to those two (either as locations or subject matter), but, sure, that's one aspect of the use.

> Those stickers are counterfeit.

Irrelevant to the cultural point under discussion, which has to do with what potential future people may be bombarded with in their environment before seeing the source work, not what is legally considered genuine or counterfeit.

> They've been the subject of legal action, and if they aren't today, it's because Watterson doesn't care enough to go after their small-potatoes producers.

Whether Watterson cares is, again, irrelevant, since the issue raised wasn't about the concerns of creators, but how extended copyright protects fans of work from having their children subjected to various forms of unwanted portrayals of the character, etc., of the work before those fans are able to introduce those children to the work in general. Both the specific kinds of unwanted portrayals pointed to as examples ("TV pitchmen for toys and junk food") of the general problem for the general class of works at issue ("great comics, cartoons, movies, music, and books of your childhood") and similar ubiquitous cultural portrayals not effectively controlled by the author (the stickers) for the specific work cited as an example ("Calvin & Hobbes"), so I don't think that there is much evidence that the current effectively-perpetual copyright does much to prevent the general problem being pointed to.

Even if that problem is agreed to be a problem whose prevention warrants government action restricting human freedom (a position I think is itself far from uncontroversial), I think its pretty clear that the existing copyright regime isn't an effective intervention to acheive that end, and so cannot be justified as a solution to that problem.

I don't see any correlation currently between things that are in the public domain and things that are used on TV to pitch toys and junk food.

Yes, but isn't that because the edge of public domain is very far back? Some random character from the early 1900s that no one today recognizes is not going to be all that useful. Move that edge to be just 20 years back, and it picks up a lot of things that are still well known.

20 years is not nearly as long as it sounds. Harry Potter, for instance, is already 17 years old. I bet a lot of advertisers 3 years from now would jump on the chance to use Harry Potter characters.

There are plenty of classic, well-known characters in the public domain. Sherlock obviously being one, given the context of the discussion. Frankenstein. Robin Hood. King Arthur. Jesus....

On another note, it doesn't affect your point all that much, but while Harry Potter the character would go into the public domain in 2017, the first movie wouldn't go into the public domain until 2021. In that interval, you could use the characters but you couldn't replicate their likenesses from the movies without some sort of agreement.

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