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Uh, look, the analysis is flawed.

First, books are an odd special case.

I can't fit the analysis in a slashdot post... if you haven't read McCauley on Copyright, and if you haven't read Eric Flint's analysis of copyright, piracy and e-books as they effect modern authors, do so.

Start here:
Spillage: or, The Way Fair Use Works in Favor of Authors and Publishers http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos8

then go here and read _all_ the salvo's columns...
http://baens-universe.com/authors/Eric_Flint

Meanwhile, there's been very little said about copyright in the last century that McCauley didn't already address... http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm

five years to own a patent is insane.

You are making the silly assumption that is all too common among computer nerds that the software and hardware development cycles you are used to APPLY to the rest of the world.

If I invent something, and if you grant that I ought to have some "reasonable" length of time to have excluse licensensing rights to that invention, then the time for the patent to last needs to be both long enough to BUILD the infrastructure to manufacture it, the time to market it, and recoup my development.

In the real world, for "things" that are biggger than a breadbox, this can take more than a decade.

Hell, it takes four years to build a PLANT to make something like large-scale (car sized) ceramics, or toilets or pipe.

If you invent the world's greatest new toilet, a five year patent isn't enough to bother with.

17 years is marginal.

On the other hand, copyright terms have, as you have pointed out, gone completely out of control.

If you haven't read McCauley on Copyright, then that's the place to start. Eric Flint's recent annotation and analysis in the modern book market is approachable and reasonable (even if Flint is, himself a communist.)

http://baens-universe.com/authors/Eric_Flint

I think that is a good answer to question 1.

For question 2, there are copyrights and patents to consider.

Copyright:
Eric Flint (who is an author himself) makes a pretty good case for 40 years' copyright on literary works, possibly with the addition that copyright does not run out during the lifetime of the author:
http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos3
I think this argument can be extended to movies and music.

Patents:
I think those already do more harm than good. While patents help the inventor, they also can be used against anyone who made the invention independently and just was a bit slower to file for the patent. Which is compounded by patent offices handing out patents for far too vague ideas with too little explanation. That breaks the basic covenant that the inventor gives away his secret and gets a temporary monopoly in exchange.

Also, if you look at the history of important inventions, many of those pop up in different places at nearly the same time, not always patented. I take this as evidence that inventions happen when the time is "right" (the supporting technologies are there) and patents as incentive are not needed.

Overall, I think the patent system is counterproductive in most cases and needs to be abolished. With the possible exception of pharmaceuticals. In that field, the clinical studies take long enough that competitors might copy the drugs before they get on the market, so the original developer pays for the research without having a benefit.

Yeah, I've got to second that. There's lots of good stuff there, and I've spent too much money on their e-books. Apart from that they're just so bloody sensible.

Eric Flint wrote about this subject. His books are available electronically, but he still believes in paper books. He explains why.

Try Eric Flint's series of analytical articles on the relationship between copyright, DRM and the book market in his column in Jim Baen's Universe magazine on line ( http://www.baens-universe.com/ ) while the general magazine requires a subscription to read more than half the story, Eric's columns are free-and-open.

You might start here: http://baens-universe.com/authors/Eric_Flint -- start at the bottom and work up. By the time you're done you'll have a pretty complete education on the relationship of copyright, DRM and the book marketplace WITH NUMBERS.

Have a good time. Come back when you're done.

Try Eric Flint's series of analytical articles on the relationship between copyright, DRM and the book market in his column in Jim Baen's Universe magazine on line ( http://www.baens-universe.com/ ) while the general magazine requires a subscription to read more than half the story, Eric's columns are free-and-open.

You might start here: http://baens-universe.com/authors/Eric_Flint -- start at the bottom and work up. By the time you're done you'll have a pretty complete education on the relationship of copyright, DRM and the book marketplace WITH NUMBERS.

Have a good time. Come back when you're done.

One last unrelated thing: I see everyone talking about DRM'd ebooks. I have never bought a DRM'd ebook in my life and never will. I buy my books from baen.com (ALL completely DRM free and in several formats) which has -years- of good books that I don't have yet, and they release more each month than I can read in a month.

Amen to Baen! Darned near all of their catalog is available electronically (certainly everything printed in the past decade), they have a huge library of free books, and everything is available in plain ol' HTML as well as other forms (Rocketreader, Palm Mobipocket, Microsoft Reader, and RTF). Individual books are priced about the same as a paperback, cheaper if you buy the bundle-of-the-month.

They also publish a monthly SF magazine in a purely electronic format, if that sort of thing floats your boat.

Baen has a serious corporate allergy to DRM. Jim Baen hated it, and his successors hate it. This is what commercial electronic media should be. (I'm talking to you, RIAA!)

I've got to believe that the local denizens would like that magazine. They offer DRM-free downloads of each issue and, in addition to stories, have editorials about what's screwed up with the current copyright laws.

Reminds me of this Benford story. Call it the Bullet!

The music market and the book markets may not be directly comparable, but Baen Publishing's experience with non-DRM'd open format ebooks (including some given away as free samples) show that (a) given a fair price, most people will pay for a product (even if they could get it "free" with a bit of hassle) and (b) free ebooks boost the sales of the paper copies.

Authors who have books with both Baen and other publishers, or who have compared notes with authors published by other publishers, note that their ebook royalties (at $2.50-$5.00 retail per book) are much better, both in $ and absolute number terms, than similar ebooks (same/similar authors & genre) at publishers that charge $15+ with all kinds of format restrictions. (Big surprise, eh?) They also not e that their books stay in print and selling longer if free e-versions are available (see Baen Free Library for more details, although I think some of the above data is from one of Eric Flint's editorials in the Baen's Universe zine.)

So, your "My money is that the DRM-free version makes a lot more money, simply because of its ease-of-use." is correct at least as far as ebooks go. I'm sure it'd be true for music and video, too.

Breaching copyright may not be the same as stealing a physical object, but it's still dishonest.

Flint addresses this in his second Salvos column.

Other editorials in the series include

Column #1
Column #2
Column #3
Column #4
Column #5

All of which are available in their entirety, despite the "1/3 to 1/2" thing.

Good reading.

Other editorials in the series include

Column #1
Column #2
Column #3
Column #4
Column #5

All of which are available in their entirety, despite the "1/3 to 1/2" thing.

Good reading.

Other editorials in the series include

Column #1
Column #2
Column #3
Column #4
Column #5

All of which are available in their entirety, despite the "1/3 to 1/2" thing.

Good reading.

Other editorials in the series include

Column #1
Column #2
Column #3
Column #4
Column #5

All of which are available in their entirety, despite the "1/3 to 1/2" thing.

Good reading.

Other editorials in the series include

Column #1
Column #2
Column #3
Column #4
Column #5

All of which are available in their entirety, despite the "1/3 to 1/2" thing.

Good reading.

One publisher "gets it" (and has for quite some time now):

http://baen.com/

Baen books (sci-fi and fantasy) does NOT use, nor support DRM, and offers all of their books in multiple DRM free formats for very reasonable prices (even their new releases are much cheaper in ebook form than in dead-tree form - as they should be).

Also see their new e-magazine, Baen's Universe, which includes a very good series of articles that tears down the idea of DRM:

http://preview.baens-universe.com/
(free preview version)

The question is whether or not the additional income from increased ticket sales at live shows and merchandise sold (even additional recordings) to people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of the band more than compensates for the potential income lost from sales of DRM-protected recordings to people who have already heard of the band. My own personal belief is that those people who have tried it (like Janis Ian) have found that it does. In any case, as Cory Doctorow put it in a speech to Microsoft:

No Sony customer woke up one morning and said, "Damn, I wish Sony would devote some expensive engineering effort in order that I may do less with my music."