The Economist Weighs In For Shorter Copyright Terms

lxmota writes "The Economist says that long copyright terms are hindering creativity, and that shortening them is the way to go: 'Largely thanks to the entertainment industry's lawyers and lobbyists, copyright's scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years' protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act." They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.'"

Comments

When they're right, they're right

[symbolset]

A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable.

It has been reported that 14 years is closer to optimal.

Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.

And of course these speaches on copyright make a good primer on what to expect when the copyright law is percieved to be unfair.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Cryacin]

Finally some semblance of sanity is returning to the Copyright argument.

The whole trouble with this is that it provides a completely unfair playing field for inventors, which are the people that the concept of copyright was meant to protect in the first place. Unfortuantely, being right by law is only ever as good as the lawyer that can argue that you are right. Big companies mean more money, which provides better lawyers.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[rolfwind]

As always, the case against Intellectual Monopoly:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

(Not that I'm against it all, but sometimes you have hear from people on one extreme to balance out the extremist corps like Disney, etc.)

Re:When they're right, they're right

[calmofthestorm]

I think reasonable is about midway between the likes of Harlan Ellison and Disney Corp and Richard Stallman.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[PeterBrett]

A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable.

It has been reported that 14 years is closer to optimal.

Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.

And of course these speaches on copyright make a good primer on what to expect when the copyright law is percieved to be unfair.

Maybe you should support the Pirate Party? When (ha) we come to power we'll cut the duration of copyright to 10 years.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Sparx139]

A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable.

It has been reported that 14 years is closer to optimal.

Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.

And of course these speaches on copyright make a good primer on what to expect when the copyright law is percieved to be unfair.

Hey, a starving man will be happy to gulp down a half-eaten crust. Sure, it's not perfect but at least it's sort of reasonable.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

I'm going to tell you why that argument alone will not sway the general public (although it is part of a good argument).

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation. For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death). That could have been prevented with modern copyright law. A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore, and would be annoyed if someone else tried to hijack that (although the result couldn't possibly be worse than the cartoons). People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work. I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.

In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance, you're also going to have to find a way to convince people that giving control to the original author isn't all that important. Otherwise you can forget reforming copyright law. I am not sure of the best argument for this, maybe someone else can think of a convincing one.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[mwvdlee]

If 14 years is optimal, than 7 years would be unreasonable. Not quite as unreasonable as 95 years, but unreasonable nonetheless.

The basic idea behind copyright (providing security to invest in creating new products) is one I can support, the current implementation of that idea significantly less so. It has come to a point where the copyright itself has become the business model instead of the product.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Yvanhoe]

The pirate party i s abit more extreme than that :
* Authorization of non-commercial sharing
* 5 years of commercial exclusivity
* +5 years if derivative non-commercial work is authorized
* +10 years if derivative commercial work is authorized (but you still want to get credit)

I am fine with this position.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Stolovaya]

The thing is that there wouldn't be anything preventing Tolkien's kin from keeping things "official". Anyone could write and add on to the story, but you can't falsely advertise that you're Tolkien himself when writing those stories. It would be pretty much commercialized fanfiction.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Maxo-Texas]

So who is the guardian of snow white?
Jack Horner?
The 9 tailed demon fox?
The skin walkers of indian lore?
Pride and Prejudice?

"Fables" comic book (which is excellent) wouldn't even exist if all the characters in it were locked up. and it's an excellent *new* creation.

When did our culture become the exclusive property of "royal" families?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Bemopolis]

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.

You say this, and then you follow it up with an example of two authors who died, and are thus bereft of all control over their works. Why should people who did NOT write the works (okay, Christopher Tolkien might be given latitude here) ever be given control over the copyrights, especially in an age where that copyright is becoming ever more perpetual?

Mitchell didn't want a sequel written. Tough. Given her feelings, we can consider her lucky that she didn't live to see it. The Tolkien estate is protecting the legacy of the literature. Good on them. But like the works of literature before them — some of which were the basis of other, later, better works — these works will eventually fall into the public domain, and anyone can do anything with them. I, for one, am not willing to extend copyright until the heat death of the Universe (plus 70 years) to prevent it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

You seem to be pretty upset about this idea, but I'm not trying to convince you that it's the way it's supposed to be, I'm just reporting on my attempts to educate people about copyright reform. If you want to make any meaningful progress in changing things, you are going to need a lot of people agreeing with you (if you can't get that, having a lot of money works almost as well). Right now this is a serious obstacle to copyright reform. A lot of people are going to need to understand that having a short copyright isn't the end of the world. Otherwise you can kiss copyright reform goodbye.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Le Marteau]

A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore, and would be annoyed if someone else tried to hijack that (although the result couldn't possibly be worse than the cartoons). People like the feeling of officialness.

Yeah. Because the "official" continuation of the Dune series by Brian Herbert was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

Given her feelings, we can consider her lucky that she didn't live to see it.

I find your sympathy and compassion admirable, good sir. Basically your argument amounts to, "I don't like it, so she can suck it." Even if you are right, which often isn't the case in political situations, you still aren't going to convince anyone with that argument. You look like a self-centered fool. So the question remains, what argument can we use to help people see that short copyright is good, even though it removes control from the original authors?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Jurily]

For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death).

That's not a sequel and shouldn't be treated as such. It's fan fiction, and I don't see anything wrong with it as long as it's not marketed as canon. From an "official" point of view, it doesn't exist.

I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.

Plagiarism would be if she wrote a different ending to the story, and published the whole as her own. Meanwhile, did you stop to consider the artistic qualities of the sequel?

See, that's exactly the problem with copyright debates: you're treating the right to use ideas, the right to modify existing works and the right to distribute existing works as one inseparable topic.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[paeanblack]

I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.

The continued economic success of Disney makes me inclined to believe otherwise. The vast majority of their content is ripped directly from Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, and others. Occasionally, they even plagiarize more modern content, like Kimba, the White Lion.

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

Otherwise you can forget reforming copyright law. I am not sure of the best argument for this, maybe someone else can think of a convincing one.

"The Congress shall have Power ... 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"

Why didn't the drafters add in:
"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote Warmth and Welfare of the Populace, by securing for limited Times to Citizens and Free Peoples the exclusive Right to the Shirts on their Backs"

The second version sounds absolutely ridiculous, because, unlike ideas, we actually own our clothing. The founding fathers understood that publishing an idea is like pissing in the ocean. Once you decide to do that, you can't get it back...it's not your piss anymore; you don't own it.

TJ's thoughts on the matter:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

Re:When they're right, they're right

[timmarhy]

I suggest we drop by the house of everyone that doesn't understand IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DON'T WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO IT, and slap them in the side of the head.

I don't believe retarded notions such as "offical" keepers of fictional characters eg. tolkien, should be pandered to or encourged.

this idea that the author some how controls the works from beyond the grave is equally stupid, and deserves a bigger slap in the head.

20 year copyright terms were more then generous, if you haven't milked every drop of profit from a work in 20 years, your an incompetent fool who deserves to be driven out of business.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

I suggest we drop by the house of everyone that doesn't understand IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DON'T WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO IT, and slap them in the side of the head.

This is the best presentation of an argument I've heard in weeks. I can't imagine why you've never run for public office.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[AliasMarlowe]

I suggest we drop by the house of everyone that doesn't understand IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DON'T WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO IT, and slap them in the side of the head.

This is the best presentation of an argument I've heard in weeks.

True enough when it comes to copyright and patent debates on slashdot...

I can't imagine why you've never run for public office.

It would be far too exhausting. Can you imagine how many voters would need their heads slapped during the campaign?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Anonymous Coward]

"...it provides a completely unfair playing field for inventors, which are the people that the concept of copyright was meant to protect in the first place..."

Err, no...
Inventors get Patents, not copyrights.

Copyrights were for writers and other artists.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Znork]

People like the feeling of officialness.

Perhaps some do, but I would suggest they're in a minority, and certainly not historically significant.

Works ranging from the Christian bible through every fable to Alice in Wonderland exist in multitudes of versions. Whoever may have once been an early author of the work simply is of very little interest to most people; the versions are easily differentiated between by prefixes such as 'King James', 'H.C. Andersens' or 'Tim Burtons'. As long as there is no deliberate deception on who is the author or what the parameters of the relation to some original work, these are all considered perfectly acceptable and are usually judged, accepted or rejected, on their own merits.

Those who think the Tolkien estate are doing a good job of guardianship will simply regard only those works with 'approved by the Tolkien estate' as being associated with the work, most who do not accept a sequel to Gone With the Wind simply would not consider such a sequel as being valid and ignore it.

Personally I get more annoyed when there are actual 'approved' sequels that obviously have nothing to do with the original work or author, as this appears to confer an 'officialdom' which shouldn't be there, ie, a kind of deception. And copyright certainly doesn't protect any work from bad stewardship; we'd be better off with anyone able to write, modify and extend the works and pick the better ones ourselves, than left to the chances that one single heritage or business deal turns out to be a good one.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Anonymous Coward]

A technical answer to that might manifest shortly in the musical scene.

"Music" follows set mathematical grammars, and as such, has only a finite number of "Pleasant" sounding progressions. It is entirely possible for all possible "Pleasant" musical scores to become copyrighted, and thus, essentially destroy the process of creating "new" musical scores. (Since the only way to make such new scores would be to either radically redefine musical structure (would require rewiring human brains)-- or to utilize the existing progressions in novel configurations.)

So, you end up with either: All music is copyrighted, so forget about being a musician unless you have deep (DEEEEP!) pockets; Submit to having your brain rewired so you can appreciate "Discordant" "music"; or finally admit that lifetime of creator + 70 years (with option to extend ad infinium) is batshit fucking crazy, and needs to be repealed/reformed.

Alternatively, you could ask them what they feel about MotherGoose nursery rhymes, and about Brother's Grimm fairytales. (Since BOTH collections would have been impossible to make under existing copyright laws.) Just ask them to imagine a world without those two collections, and how western culture would have been had they never been created.

Then, remind them that you are not saying that you want to take somebody's novel work, and remove all control from them (the creator); You want to compromise with the creator, and give them a sufficiently large window of time to monetize their work, before it is released for totally unfettered consumption, and want to make sure that the creators are not being the ones who are greedy, by robbing the future of its heritage.

If confronted by the "What if the author didnt want $ThingAuthorDidntWant to happen?" (Like "Gone with the Wind" sequel); Ask if they enjoyed the Disney versions of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, etc-- because these were only possible because the source material was public domain.

"Culture" and "heritage" exceed the individual, even though individuals are the source of culture. Excessive copyright exerted by greedy/selfish individuals destroys culture.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[un_om_de_cal]

The pirate party i s abit more extreme than that : * Authorization of non-commercial sharing * 5 years of commercial exclusivity * +5 years if derivative non-commercial work is authorized * +10 years if derivative commercial work is authorized (but you still want to get credit) I am fine with this position.

What about works where almost all use is non-commercial?

For example, what should professional musicians do, only record advertisements?

Or computer games - I can't imagine a business model that would work for them if non-commercial sharing was allowed.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[purpledinoz]

I think Copyright on any piece of work must be inherently owned by the creator. Which means it cannot be owned by another person or company, just leased. Copyright on any works should also be immediately public domain if the author dies. I think this gives the creator greater protection, as the copyright laws are supposed to do.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[xelah]

You say this, and then you follow it up with an example of two authors who died, and are thus bereft of all control over their works. Why should people who did NOT write the works (okay, Christopher Tolkien might be given latitude here) ever be given control over the copyrights, especially in an age where that copyright is becoming ever more perpetual?

Think of software you've written for an employer. Presumably you accept that the employer should get the copyright (or at least an exclusive licence that lasts as long as the copyright). I don't think it'd be reasonable for employers to find work they'd commissioned to be out of copyright the day their programmer is run over by a bus.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Bert64]

The length of copyright terms should be variable depending on the type of work...
A piece of music written today may still have relevance 14 years from now, but a piece of software probably won't.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[orzetto]

[People] want the original author to be able to own the work. I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.

It seems to me you are thinking more something along the lines of trademark rather than copyright law, to protect certain "franchises" such as Tolkien's world. I don't think people care at all that e-books of Gone with the Wind are being copied and distributed.

Personally, I think that if your sister was so upset about that sequel, she should simply ignore it. If it were possible to block such derivative works, we would not have the Aeneid, since it builds on the Iliad.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Bert64]

Musicians don't make most of their money from CD sales... Think live shows, radio/tv airplay, merchandising etc... Plus some people actually want to buy the original even when an identical copy is available for free. The only people this would hurt, are the greedy middlemen. Free sharing could actually serve to increase peoples exposure to some bands.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[sapphire wyvern]

Or computer games - I can't imagine a business model that would work for them if non-commercial sharing was allowed.

MMOs would work. Personally, I think a world where the only professionally-produced computer games are MMOs would be a very sucky world indeed.

I like a lot of what the Pirate Party has to say, but we can't endorse widespread non-commercial sharing of easily replicated works and still expect major productions (movies, games) to occur. I've participated in some alternate business models for small-press products (eg Reign RPG "ransom model" where the content is only published once the author has been paid and is freely sharable after that), and I think that's a great way to go for content that is relatively cheap to produce, but I can't imagine it scaling up to the point where it would be practical to fund a project like the Lords of the Rings movies.

And I do enjoy well-made movies. Heck, I even buy stuff from the concession stand to support my local independent cinema. :D

Re:When they're right, they're right

[PontifexPrimus]

You mean like this? "I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living." -- Thomas Macaulay, House of Commons 1841, debating whether copyright should be extended to 60 years after an author's death.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[putaro]

One of the major problems with the current state of copyright is that everything is copyrighted for these ridiculous long terms. I'd like to see something like a basic 15-20 year copyright, after which you would have to re-register and maybe even pay a property tax to continue your monopoly.

My argument for regular people, then, would be "If you want to keep control, you have to show that you want control and you have to pay for it, just like real property where you can't abandon it and you have to pay property tax."

Re:When they're right, they're right

[delinear]

That's a completely different situation, since you're acting as an agent on behalf of the company when you write the software - this is already covered by agency law and doesn't need to be accounted for by a special rule of copyright.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[demonlapin]

A piece of music written today may still have relevance 14 years from now, but a piece of software probably won't.

They're still selling classic video games on the Wii, most of which are older than 1996. I think you'd have to provide a method for extension of copyright by payment of a tax for certain properties (which do remain commercially viable).

Re:When they're right, they're right

[demonlapin]

That's a fine philosophy for a book you write at 40 if you die at 90, but under your method we'd never have seen A Confederacy of Dunces, which was published after the author died. Artists and writers should have some expectation that their family will continue to get royalties should they die an untimely death. Otherwise, you start wondering how much it would be worth to kill Stephen King.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[delinear]

That is one of the best arguments on the subject I've ever seen, and surprisingly relevant considering it was made over 170 years ago.

A lot of what he has predicted has come to pass. The relentless extension of copyright has certainly diluted it in the eyes of many, even with the threat of legal action it's clear that copyright is increasingly seen as outdated and people are happy to infringe it on a daily basis, whereas if it was for a short term and could be demonstrated of proven benefit to artists rather than greedy middle men who "drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress", people would be more likely to respect it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[delinear]

Not only that, it would discourage authors who find themselves in the position of having a long-running series suddenly becoming lazy and churning out filler volumes to squeeze money from their fans if, at some reasonable time after the first edition, another author could add to the series. Authors would have to produce consistently good works to retain those fans, and if a better writer picks up the mantle and does a better job then that is a win for the public. Sure it sucks a little for the original author, but he's made his money on the initial idea, if he doesn't have the skill to continue that then he doesn't have the god-given right to be paid no matter what - if anything his series will continue to be relevant despite his lack of skill and people may end up buying his original books on the basis of the subsequent author's work.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[One Monkey]

Wow, this only got modded up to two? Well... just goes to show... (This space left blank for your own conclusions about what it goes to show.)

Re:When they're right, they're right

[delinear]

That would be almost impossible to adjudicate. Music, for instance, might be a throwaway pop tune, or it might be a cultural classic that becomes deeply ingrained in the minds of a whole generation, so a flexible copyright system would have to allow for both possibilities regardless of the format, music, video, the written word, etc. It wouldn't be enough to say "All music copyright lasts 14 years, software 7, written word 21" or similar, that would create incredible injustice and would fail at the first technical hurdle (if I sell a digital copy of a book, is it written word or software, if I have an audio book, is it music, etc). Once you have a situation like that, someone has to be in charge of determining which end of the scale every single piece of created material sits (remember, even your holiday photos on flickr or the movie you filmed on your phone are subject to copyright). Not only would that be a endless task in itself, but whoever was in charge of determining those things would be the weak point in the link, he'd have every lobbyist trying to persuade him their works needed the maximum protection. No, one arbitrary figure to cover all media is the only workable approach.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[delinear]

We already had widespread non-commercial sharing of major productions prior to the internet, and the content providers didn't go out of business. The only change here is that websites now exist which profit on the process by giving easy access to that shared content in exchange for advertising hits. The focus of the law should be back on stopping those profiteers, but if someone wanted to throw up some music on his site for his friends to grab, that's no different to the days when he'd make a tape and pass it around.

The effect of this would be that casual users would continue to buy rather than download. Hardcore sharers will still go to the effort of tracking down content, either because they like hoarding, or they're true fans but broke, or they just like getting something for nothing - artists, these are not your audience, much as you'd like them to be, so stop worrying about "lost profits" from this group. At the other end you'll have people who would always buy regardless of the ease of sharing, again artists need not worry about this group, only the casual group in the middle. This approach worked in the early days of the internet, sharing sites would appear, the hardcore sharers would always find them, the casual users might drop in and out but usually didn't have the time or motivation to follow the trends. What changed was the artists (or rather, the **AA orgs) got sick of playing whack-a-mole with sharing sites and decided to go after their customers instead. There's no reason a shift of focus back to the way things were a decade ago would suddenly put them out of business

Re:When they're right, they're right

[delinear]

Depends what OP means by "professional musicians" - if he means session musicians (i.e. the people doing radio and TV jingles, etc), well they're generally hired for a specific piece of work for which they're paid and they never own the copyright in any event. If he means artists who release singles and who perform for audiences, well they'll make money the way they currently do - through playing live concerts. This is and has always been the most lucrative part of the business for artists, if anything giving away their music for free should improve their earnings since it removes any barrier of entry for new fans to find their music.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[xelah]

So if JRR Tolkien had set up and sold the copyright to JRR Tolkien Associates Ltd then bequeathed the shares to his family they could control the copyright even after he'd died, whereas if he owned it personally and bequeathed it to them they couldn't? Or would you have a special rule for that? What if it was a publishing company instead of a company intended only for this purpose? Would the publishing company have to have commissioned him to write the work, or employed him as an employee, for them to get the 'that's a completely different situation' posthumous copyright extension, or would it be enough for him to have sold it to them after he'd written it? How much would it cost in lawyers to establish these differences?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[TheRaven64]

You know, every time you spam Slashdot with your political message, I lose a little bit of sympathy with your party. You're starting to fill the niche vacated when Ron Paul dropped out of the US Presidential race.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[CarpetShark]

If 14 years is optimal, than 7 years would be unreasonable.

I don't think unreasonable means what you think it means. The concept you were looking for is "suboptimal". In many cases, a suboptimal solution is a very reasonable one. In fact, this is the case much more often than the most optimal solution is a reasonable one.

But personally, I think (and have said before) that copyright in the internet age should be no more than about 3 years, and probably even less. Back when the it took 20 years for society to distribute, appreciate, and adopt a new composition into the collective pysche, it made a lot of sense for the copyright term to be 20 years. Now that we can distribute a new song around the world in a day, comment on it, assess it, collaboratively remix it, and distribute the improved version, it makes much less sense to hold creativity back for so long.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[TheRaven64]

The solution to that is to extend something like trademark law (which is perpetual) to cover characters and settings. If you create a sequel to something in the public domain then you'd have to clearly market it as unauthorised, unless you received permission from the creator to use their trademark. You could still write the sequel to Gone With The Wind, but it would have to be marketed as an unofficial sequel and there could be no (even implicit) indication that it was canonical.

This would also help protect big content franchises. Star Trek would now be out of copyright, but if you wanted to create an official novel, TV show, or film set in the universe then you'd need a license to the trademark. This would cleanly separate things into official material and fan fiction. Of course, given some of the recent output from Paramount, the fan fiction might be better, but that's the trademark owner's problem.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Grimbleton]

Basically the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[pbhj]

>my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death). That could have been prevented with modern copyright law.

With respect, you're wrong. Unless there is a specific provision in the USC for this, there is none in Europe.

The mega-crop media rights holders use trademarks to protect such things. There is no protection of characters or character names in copyright you can create a sequel or fanfic without infringing the original work.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[guruevi]

(Bad) sequels being written or story lines being hijacked has nothing to do with copyright and probably can't even be protected by it (since it's not the same story). After all, the original author is dead. The only way you can show your disappointment is by not buying those books, eventually the author will have to move on to fresh content or change jobs where imagination is not required as much.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[pbhj]

Personally I would keep a lengthy period of protection of moral rights and otherwise harmonise with patent terms.

Authors and their kin or estate would have the ability to protect their right to be named as author and to prevent modifications. They would, after say 20 years, lose the right of monopoly of reproduction. After that time anyone could reprint their work with a note something along the lines "reproduced without authority of the author".

I don't think it is fair to allow after 20 years, against the authors wish, someone to simply take the work wholesale and re-label it as their own.

If the Pirate Parties terms stand then a media corp can simply sit on your book/film/song for 5 years and then print it without paying you anything claiming themselves as authors.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[jonadab]

Two years would definitely be too short. It's not unusual for it to take longer than, after first publication, that for a writer to really get noticed. The term should be long enough that the writer is still getting royalties from the first book while he's finishing up the second book. That way society can support professional writers, who get paid for the books they write and that's their job.

We can't support that career for everyone who thinks they want to be a writer, obviously. Nobody would ever do anything else, and that would be bad, and most of the books that would be written wouldn't be worth printing. But the people who write books that people actually want to read should be able to spend their time doing so, and not have to work a day job to support themselves. For this to work, the royalties coming in from the previous book need to keep flowing at least until the next book is ready to hit the market, and that's a bare minimum.

And yeah, I know two years would be overkill for someone like Nora Roberts, who can write an entire series of four books in a quarter of a year, and within six months everyone who's going to buy them has already done so, but most writers aren't like that. Even five years would be shaving it pretty thin, by the time you take into account several rounds of editing and so on. There are some authors who write very good books, but take several years to write each one. Their books tend to be of higher quality, and I think this should be encouraged.

Seven years *might* be long enough. Might not. I'm not certain. But I *am* sure it would be much too radical a reversal to actually get through Congress, starting from where we are today.

Thus, I favor a reduction to somewhere in the neighborhood of "fifty years from first publication", with a grandfather clause covering things that have already been published before the bill is passed. Not because I don't think that's really still too long, but because I think it's what we might potentially have a prayer of a chance of actually convincing Congress to consider doing, given enough lobbying and pressure. Call it "living in the real world" if you will.

Of course, we could start by lobbying for a restoration of the original 28-year term, and reserve backing down to 50 years as a negotiation tactic...

Re:When they're right, they're right

[un_om_de_cal]

Yes, we've had and we still have widespread non-commercial sharing of software and music, but it was never legal.

By making non-commercial sharing legal, all content creators trying to sell their work will be in a competition with companies specialized in providing free and easy access to non-commercial content, which will now be 100% legal. I don't think the content creators will be able to do more than ask for donations.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cheesybagel]

IMO there should be a fixed copyright term from the time of first publication. Death, no death, whatever. Nothing else matters.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[ultranova]

For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death). That could have been prevented with modern copyright law.

Your sister didn't have to read it, now did she? She loses absolutely nothing for said sequel existing. On the other hand, the people who did read and enjoy it would lose something had it been prevented from existing.

You have made an argument against, not for, copyright law.

A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore, and would be annoyed if someone else tried to hijack that (although the result couldn't possibly be worse than the cartoons).

And a lot of people say screnw that and hijack it anyway. Which is okay, because Tolkien also used elements from common cultural heritage - the works of people who became him - to create his works, so why should it be held more sacred than them?

People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work. I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.

I notice a lot of people haven't objected to Disney ripping off everything from Tarzan to Jungle Book to Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves.

In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance, you're also going to have to find a way to convince people that giving control to the original author isn't all that important. Otherwise you can forget reforming copyright law. I am not sure of the best argument for this, maybe someone else can think of a convincing one.

People are already just fine with this, as proven by the fact that Tolkien-inspired art doesn't seem to draw a negative response, nor do the orcs and elves in pretty much every fantasy work. In fact, they are constantly creating derivative works from everything imaginable. That's not a new phenomenom either, but has been with us ever since stone-age hunter-gatherers told stories around a campfire.

No, what you have to do is convince politicians that not criminalizing normal human behaviour is more important than bribes from Disney. That's never going to happen, so let's concentrate our efforts on improving various anonymizing networks like Freenet or Tor that make it easier to ignore such laws. That also has the added social benefit of countering censorship in general.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[hitmark]

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html

Re:When they're right, they're right

[wurp]

What you're talking about is protected by trademark law. Authors should put "their seal" (some representative name or symbol, which might just be their name) on a franchise.

As far as I know, trademarks do not expire.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Anonymous Coward]

A technical answer to that might manifest shortly in the musical scene.

"Music" follows set mathematical grammars, and as such, has only a finite number of "Pleasant" sounding progressions. It is entirely possible for all possible "Pleasant" musical scores to become copyrighted, and thus, essentially destroy the process of creating "new" musical scores. (Since the only way to make such new scores would be to either radically redefine musical structure (would require rewiring human brains)-- or to utilize the existing progressions in novel configurations.)

You're right, all the pleasant configurations have been used up, and now we're left with: Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Ke$ha, NickelBack, etc.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[hitmark]

and here is the basic issue.

US copyright, before berne, concerned itself mostly with economic gains.

however, french "copyright" dealt just as much with the social implications, and how the use of a work may reflect back on the creator, even tho the use was in no way sanctioned by said creator. And that may well be a issue long after any reasonable economic gains have run out, thanks to market saturation and so on.

then comes the berne convention, where one was tasked with finding a common system.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[hitmark]

that actually makes a fair bit of sense, as part of copyright, at least in non-english speaking nations, deals with the creators right to control how his creation is used, so as to not have his own reputation tarnished. I think more creative people are worried about their creations being used next to messages or topics they do not agree with, then the actual economic issues related to its use. Just observe how some old symbols have picked up a nasty vibe thanks to historically recent events.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Nadaka]

As a software developer, copyright helps protect my work, 2 years really wouldn't be long enough IMO.

I do however believe that the modern term is insane and defeats the purpose of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to enrich the public domain. Its means of achieving that goal is granting a TEMPORARY restriction on the right to copy except by permission of the author. The media multi-nationals lobbying to extend copyright in perpetuity seem to have forgotten that.

Personally, I am in favor of 10 to 20 years. Though I could see less than 10 if a single extension is allowed and that extension came at a substantial fee payed to the copyright office.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[hitmark]

and old tv series are being dusted off and put on dvd for sale to the people that where kids during their original airing.

both cases sell to nostalgia. Heck, some of the wii games are not 100% the same as what one got on cartridge back in the day.

and then there are the latest mega man downloads that capcom have released for PS3. 8-bit graphics and music, but introducing game elements that may have been impossible using the NES hardware.

heck, thinkgeek now sells devices that can take original nintendo or sega cartridges, complete with replica controllers for the era. Its all a nostalgia trip for the 30-somethings that grew up with these devices, and now have money to burn.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Jedi Alec]

By making non-commercial sharing legal, all content creators trying to sell their work will be in a competition with companies specialized in providing free and easy access to non-commercial content, which will now be 100% legal. I don't think the content creators will be able to do more than ask for donations.

Wow. I guess that explains why there's no Free Record Shops left in the Netherlands, and why we had to close down all our movie theaters.

Wait...

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Xtifr]

Why should people who did NOT write the works [...] ever be given control over the copyrights [...]?

(Referring to heirs.)

Well, for one thing, it greatly reduces the chances that creators will be murdered so that publishers can get access to their works. For another, it increases the motivation for the elderly and the terminally ill to create new works. I'm all for reducing copyright length, but I tend to think a fixed period is best/safest.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[edremy]

This is more or less what Lord of the Rings Online is. They've bolted on an entire series of side stories that occur during the time of the trilogy (and often interweave with it) but have distinct characters. The Saul Zentz group is the guardian of the IP, and Turbine has to vet the stuff with them, but honestly that's not really necessary- folks who like LOTR simply aren't going to play the game if it takes too many licenses with the story. Consider the various "Vampire/werewolf/sea monster" versions of Jane Austin's stuff- my wife won't even look at them, even though she'll read the followons that are actually true to the story

Re:When they're right, they're right

[BobisOnlyBob]

You want us to try to solve the three-body problem using those three!?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[bzipitidoo]

What I find illuminating is drawing a sharp distinction between copying and plagiarism. Show those people that they've confused and conflated these two concepts, and they often come around.

No one sharing a few Beatles songs is seriously trying to claim they wrote those songs, they're only making copies. A lot of people object to removing copyright because they're convinced it protects against plagiarism. Copyright can be used toward that end, yes. But we can protect against plagiarism just fine without copyright and all the other bad, monopolistic things copyright does. I think plagiarism is already covered under statutes against fraud and misrepresentation. But if it makes everyone more comfortable, we can have a law specifically against plagiarism.

Then, what really is wrong with "fanfic"? Nothing. Unless someone is trying to misrepresent their own work as official, and why should anyone do that? Only to cash in in some way on the name recognition and the copyright monopoly that grants far too much control to the author anyway. If there isn't copyright, that incentive is much reduced.

Some examples. One is this Harry Potter Lexicon that J.K. Rowling squashed. The people who worked on the lexicon put a lot of time into it, and they got screwed thanks to copyright and this idea that somehow they weren't the victims, that instead they were victimizing poor little J.K. Rowling and making it impossible for her to profit from doing her own lexicon her way, when she saw they were right about it being profitable and changed her mind on letting them do it. Obviously, she's no dummy, and so I guess she was pushed and manipulated into this stance by publishers whose opinions she perhaps trusts overmuch. It goes against her own philosophy as revealed in her works, so far as I can tell. That is, what would Harry Potter do in a similar situation?

Another example is the huge library of CD track information built up by thousands of fans and utilized by ripping software. Thousands of people each contributed a tiny little bit, but the music industry keeps trying to assert control over such efforts out of a misplaced sense that they really do have some right to every possible potential profit such a collection of info might be able to generate, or might hypothetically prevent them from being able to make somehow. That last is one of the most anti-competitive, bad results possible. The controllers deny a good tool to the public so that their much inferior, cruddy workarounds, if any, can maybe generate a profit that is, frankly, not deserved. It's as if they were granted a monopoly on the horse and buggy, then were allowed to interpret that as a monopoly on all forms of transport, and then opted to shut down the airline, auto, railroad, and river shipping industry so that everyone has to buy more buggies, or walk. And if some enterprising person tries to finesse the restrictions by, say, using cows to pull a buggy, they're vilified as cheaters. There are many people who would seriously argue that Wikipedia should be shut down because it harms the print encyclopedia business.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[BobisOnlyBob]

I'm a member of PPUK, and spamming here won't help. Also, self-deprecating is not a way to get ahead in politics.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[elrous0]

It's not the people you have to worry about, it's the Disney Corporation. Good luck getting anything which doesn't actually extend copyright again past those deep pockets, brother. Hell, now they can even run campaign ads to buy the Congressmen they need.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[mcgrew]

Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.

Two is definitely too short; even seven years would put The Paxil Diaries into the public domain, and I'm just getting them into book form (it's close now, guys). Two is way too short. But even twenty is reasonable; that's how long a patent lasts.

The journal Dork Side of the Moon (February 25 2008) might stand on its own without the beginning and ending Pink Floyd lyrics, but it wouldn't be nearly as good. That album was recorded over 35 years ago, yet the journal that sort of relies on it is actually breaking copyright.

The Economist is right; long copyright terms hinder creativity. Artistic advances are like scientific and technological advances, as all draw on one's culture and what has come before. Were patents as long as copyrights, technological advance would come to a virtual standstill.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[jedidiah]

> "I don't like it, so she can suck it."

That's liberty.

You have to defend the freedom of your enemies and those whom you think have no taste in order for the whole thing to work.

Also, at some point you have to contemplate what these new and expansive limits of copyright should be.

Do the Greeks get to veto a bad remake of Clash of the Titans?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Shakrai]

Also, self-deprecating is not a way to get ahead in politics.

Says who? Were you paying attention from 2000 to 2008?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[darjen]

thanks for posting, I was gonna do that if no one else did. I support this view and think we would all be better off by abolishing copyright monopoly.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[jedidiah]

Yes it is. They think they can get away with selling music for $18 when movies are being sold for $5 not 20 feet away.

They bitch and moan about how they are "entitled" to the same profits they used to have and that if their sales are down then it MUST be due to piracy.

Nevermind video games, the web, Pandora, cheap movies, hulu or anything else that might be an entertaining distraction.

In truth, it's probably just the case that the industry no longer has a format change to milk for pointless album re-purchases.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're right about the technicality, of course, but it's all too easy in this debate to get sidetracked by technicalities. The underlying point is that all these intellectual properties laws were meant to support those who create and share the fruits of their labours, so that in turn everyone else can benefit from enjoying those things. However, in reality it is mostly the huge middleman organisations who actually benefit from the current legal position, not those who do the work and certainly not society as a whole.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Maxo-Texas]

Wierd.

I can't see where you got "upset" out of that post.

There isn't an emotional word in it- it's a series of questions and a statement.

It's a counter example you can use with your sister (in law?) who's upset about GWTW.

Many of Disney's movies would never have been made if Snow White was still locked up by some 13th century family.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[NickFortune]

Basically your argument amounts to, "I don't like it, so she can suck it."

Well, yes, if you frame it in the most unsympathetic terms possible, you could put it like that. Of course, by that yardstick your own position reduces to "copyright must persist forever or else we may hurt the feelings of dead people", which is scarcely more persuasive.

what argument can we use to help people see that short copyright is good, even though it removes control from the original authors?

In the cases you cited, death has removed control from the original authors. Shortening copyright is not going to upset JRRT one iota. For those folks still alive when copyright expires, I don't see that the situation is any worse that the reams of unlicenced fanfic that get uploaded to the internet daily. The authors will be free to accept any work as cannon or not, and their fans will surely respect that

Everything is a trade-off. In order to lessen the well documented abuses of copyright, it may be necessary to risk having Margaret Mitchell turn in her grave a time or two more. Call me unsympathetic, but I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Hatta]

For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind

So what, we should all suffer because your sister is a bitch?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[melikamp]

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.

Some, you are thinking about some people. Most people do not care. Millions of downloaders disagree to the point of non-violent resistance to the law. They are breaking the law and risking million+ fines for downloading a few $10 movies, so they obviously either don't care or disagree with you strongly.

For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written

She'll get over it. She basically would like to dictate what other people will do with their culture, the one she barely contributed to. Oookay.

A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore

A lot of people did not read the books, they cannot care all that much. Those who are informed, know that Christofer Tolkien is the only guy with the guns, having edited The Silmarillion and other great works. Everyone else in that team is more of leech, and their efforts to defend the copyright did nothing but set back the influence of Tolkien's work. There are no hobbits in our games or comics, and that is not because of lack of interest or desire to introduce them.

People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work.

Pointless, meaningless generalizations.

In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance

We are already finding the economic balance, by the way of making cheap digital copies of the monuments of our culture. The copyright, being a monopoly, can only destroy the balance. If you believed that free markets work better than planned markets, you would agree immediately, but you seem to be all mixed up. If we wanted to ruin the economic balance, we would tighten up the copyright noose and started (over)charging for every freaking word you read and every moving picture you see. Yeah, let's make everyone pay for access to culture, even though there is no sound economic reason for doing so, unless we specifically want to segregate the society and create a caste of content producers, the mighty Brahmins, who own all the rights to creation and modification of content. Of course, this won't work while licenses like GPL and CC-SA provide a hedge around the public domain. Who needs expensive pop-culture, when people voluntarily create a double-free alternative? Look at Linux and BSD: they've dwarfed proprietary OSes in terms of how good they are, and now they are poised to crush them in the marketplace. So if you are that commited to proprietary culture, you better make copyleft explicitly illegal, or it will swallow the marketplace, because it will be cheaper and of superior quality.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Hatta]

Video games from the 80s have aged far, far better than music from the 80s.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Hatta]

Or computer games - I can't imagine a business model that would work for them if non-commercial sharing was allowed.

Video games have been shared freely for as long as they have existed. The success of the video game industry is testament to the fact that rampant sharing and profitability are not mutually exclusive.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[brianerst]

There's an interesting case of an authorized sequel that was only temporarily accepted as canon.

H. Beam Piper wrote a pair of novels ("Little Fuzzy" and "Fuzzy Sapiens", the first a Huge Award nominee in 1963) before he committed suicide. There were rumors of a third "final" Fuzzy novel (the second novel had a sort-of cliffhanger), but his effects after his death were so scattered no one could ever find it.

Eventually, his estate authorized William Tuning to write the final Fuzzy novel in the trilogy ("Fuzzy Bones") in the 1980s. It was very well received by Piper's fans. Unfortunately for Tuning, three years later, someone found the unedited manuscript for Piper's final novel ("Fuzzies and Other People"). It was quickly edited and polished (maybe by Jerry Pournelle - he was a friend/acquaintance of Piper) and released. This novel resolved the issues of the first two quite differently than "Fuzzy Bones" and very quickly became the "canonical" work.

These days, you can fairly easily purchase the Piper trilogy, but good luck finding anything other than a used paperback copy of "Fuzzy Bones". Some people describe the Tuning book as an "alternate history" of the Fuzzies, which would probably tickle Piper's fancy, as his other major work (Paratime) was about alternate universes and histories.

There is yet another "third" book in the Fuzzy sequence, called "Golden Dream, A Fuzzy Odyssey" by Ardath Mayhar, which was written from the Fuzzy perspective. That one is even more obscure - I don't think the Piper fans liked that one very much (I thought it was only OK, based on 20+ year old memories). John Scalzi just announced plans for yet another sequel - presumably it will try to fit into the "accepted" canon (ignoring the Tuning and Mayhar works) so it doesn't end up on the remaindered shelf with the others.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Yvanhoe]

For example, what should professional musicians do, only record advertisements?

I am sure that, like me, you know many music fans who buy CDs "for the artist" but never even open the case : they have all of it in MP3s. Sell goodies, sell concert tickets and even send simple $30 bricks saying "I gave $30 dollars to artist X" to put on display and people will buy them if they like your music. I think that systems a la flattr should have been tried by majors at least once, as they are probably the antidote to the current situation. There are other models, like the so-called 'ransom model' : "I'll release a new album if the donations reach $15,000, I'll give back if they don't". Commercial use of a work includes the use of a song in a party where there is an entrance fee, on a radio where there are advertisements, on a website that tries to sell something.

I know that all these models seem risky, but really, relying on the scarcity of copies to pay back artists seems safer to you ?

Or computer games - I can't imagine a business model that would work for them if non-commercial sharing was allowed.

The problem is, I can't imagine a situation where it would be possible to technically enforce a copy interdiction and still have freedom on internet. Dwarf Fortress has a business model that works (donation based, the game is free, awesome and obscure), World of Warcraft has a business model that works and would work even if you were able to share copies. What is certain is that the current model of Doom wouldn't work, does this mean they are condemned ? Well they are condemned to change, that is for sure. I could easily see them sponsored by ATI or NVidia.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Bemopolis]

I find your sympathy and compassion admirable, good sir. Basically your argument amounts to, "I don't like it, so she can suck it."

I wish I had remembered this last night when I wrote my original post, but consider this: The sequel that so offended the senses of the late Margaret Mitchell? The sequel was authorized *by her estate*.

Why should I extend any more sympathy than did the protectors of her legacy?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[eth1]

Just point out that with a 20 year copyright term, they'd be able to *legally* download a library of any/every song & movie created before 1990. People older than 30 would be signing up in droves. Might as well make greed work *for* us, for once.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[TubeSteak]

It would be far too exhausting. Can you imagine how many voters would need their heads slapped during the campaign?

Wanted: Campaign volunteers
Requirements: At least one hand and a desire to change the country

Campaign slogans:
"Hit the IP industry where it hurts: Upside their heads."
"How can she slap? She slaps for copyright reform."
"Communicate with today's voters the way their parents once did: with a slap."
"Would you rather have 14 slaps or 95 slaps? We feel the same way about the length of copyright."
"How many slaps does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"

-This message sponsored by Students Litigating Against Pratty Publishers

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, if you use very short terms of, say 1-2 years, but more of them (perhaps a maximum length of 20 years), you increase the number of opportunities for an author who has sought copyright (indicating that they want it) to fail to renew the copyright (indicating that they no longer care), thus getting the work into the public domain that much sooner. Since the cost and effort to renew is minimal (a couple of blanks, a couple of checkboxes, send it in over the net if possible, by mail otherwise; the fee could be as low as $1 for all I care, so long as it isn't free) it's no hassle for the author.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Blue Stone]

>"IMO there should be a fixed copyright term from the time of first publication. Death, no death, whatever. Nothing else matters."

What counts as "publication"?

Suppose I draw an image, it sits in my studio. Someone comes in and scans it and then uploads it, without my knowledge. They don't claim to be the author, or the owner of the image.

Did my copyright start when I drew it, or when it was put on public display? Perhaps I intended to never make the image public, but only to use it as research for other creations I intended to display.

(At the risk of answering my own, previous question) what protection do 'unpublished' works have? (currently it's copyrighted at the moment of *creation*).

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Attila Dimedici]

One way is to bring up counter examples, such as the song "Happy Birthday". Ask them if they are aware that the song "Happy Birthday" is still under copyright, even though the author has been dead for somewhere around 100 years. Then ask them about how they would feel if the works of Hans Christian Andersen were still under copyright. What if school bands/orchestras had to pay a fee to perform the works of Bach? Mozart? John Philip Sousa?
The first step is to get them to acknowledge that current copyright is too long. There are some examples of classic literature that could not have been produced under current copyright law because they were based on works that would have still been under copyright.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

People keep saying this sort of thing, and it makes me wonder how they can have such strong opinions about something they are so uninformed about. As it is, a sequel is protected as a derivative work. Is this not obvious to you?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[syousef]

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.

Bullshit. If something is sold, that should end a person's control over it. All that the original author does by retaining such controls is hinder other creative work. It is an unnatural restriction. The author should only be permitted to profit from work that they put in, not from everything that comes from it.

Moving slightly away from copyright, can you imagine what society would be like if there were terms of use for the wheel? Fire? The combustion engine? Electricity? If someone involved in their invention could just walk up and prevent a use you had for their invention? Or if there were patents on basic plumbing techniques? How do you feel about being locked out of using the sewerage system because some dumb fuck decides he can try to milk it for all it's worth by overcharging rich people.

For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death).

Boo fucking hoo to your sister. Tell her not to watch the fucking sequel and let others who do want to enjoy it. Who the fuck is she to decide? She's not the author, and I've just argued that even the author should not have control.

A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore, and would be annoyed if someone else tried to hijack that

Well double dumb ass to them. If you don't fucking like it, don't read, watch or listen to it you obsessive fucking geeks. Do not however prevent others from enjoying a creative work because it has some basis or link to some other piece of work?

All IP law is wasteful and unnatural. It prevents creation and the use of creation. It does not in any way enhance or promote it. The issue of compensating a creator is a separate one altogether and does not require the control of the creation itself.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

That's never going to happen, so let's concentrate our efforts on improving various anonymizing networks like Freenet or Tor that make it easier to ignore such laws.

When you say stuff like this, it makes you sound like what you REALLY care about is being able to get your music for free. I have no sympathy for your cause, sir.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[NoOneInParticular]

Why should relevance have any bearing on the length of copyright. The most important works in human history have near infinite relevance, should they have infinite copyright terms? Come to think of it, you can make a good case that relevance should be inversely proportional to length of copyright.

Remember, copyright is not there to make profit, it is there to encourage progress.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Red Flayer]

Wow, this only got modded up to two? Well... just goes to show... (This space left blank for your own conclusions about what it goes to show.)

Just goes to show... that people do not tend to mod up wall-of-text posts.

Paragraphs are a useful convention, as are line breaks.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[GreekLawyer]

IMO there should be a fixed copyright term from the time of first publication. Death, no death, whatever. Nothing else matters.

Totally agree with parent - has anybody seriously considered the fact that with medical and technological advances average life expectancy will grow immensely, even possibly rendering a transhuman entity immortal (Kurzweil, Grossman et al) and therefore also copyright protection infinite? Humanity has better things to worry about such as quickening the time in which we will become a type II and III Kardashev civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) and longer copyright protection surely is not assisting in that direction at all!!

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cpt kangarooski]

Oh, I don't know. In the world of real property, there used to be something called a fee tail. Basically, this was a form of ownership in which land was owned by A, and all of A's heirs. It could not be sold or otherwise gotten rid of, unless the family line died out (although this could cause massive lawsuits if one branch of the family tree died, and others vied to take over). In practice, it could not be rented or mortgaged, since the tenant would be kicked out as soon as the person they dealt with died. This tended to make the family that owned it impoverished, if they could not directly use it themselves, and tended to cause the land to go to waste, since it could not be moved around in the market so as to be put to the best use.

It was a huge pain in the ass. When the US broke away from England, we more or less abolished it. Thomas Jefferson regarded getting rid of it as one of his main accomplishments in life. Most other places have abolished it since.

Long copyright terms have a similar effect. After all, when copyright terms are short, and expire, no one is removing the fact of authorship from the authors. No one is prohibiting the authors from continuing to create works that follow up on their previous works. All that is happening is that the field is being opened up for competition on their back catalog. More people get to enjoy the work, as it becomes available at a lower price (or free). Translations become available, if they were not before (or more, at least), further expanding the reach of the work. Some authors may make derivative works based on the work; these works do not diminish the original in any way (Do the ruby slippers in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz make it impossible to enjoy the book, which has silver slippers, instead? Of course not!) and are not required reading. If they're good, then good. If they're bad, then ignore them. In some instances, they may turn out to be better than the originals on which they are based. (Wouldn't be hard in the case of Star Wars prequels)

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

One is this Harry Potter Lexicon that J.K. Rowling squashed. The people who worked on the lexicon put a lot of time into it, and they got screwed thanks to copyright and this idea that somehow they weren't the victims, that instead they were victimizing poor little J.K. Rowling and making it impossible for her to profit from doing her own lexicon her way, when she saw they were right about it being profitable and changed her mind on letting them do it.

OK, I am going to tell you, I've tried using this example. I can see you probably haven't (at least not with people who don't already feel like you do on copyright, which is a small minority of the population), because it doesn't work. Go talk to a Harry Potter fan sometime, and ask them what they think of the lexicon, and more than likely they will tell you that it was 100% within her right to stop it's publishing. Most people really don't have a problem with it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Just Some Guy]

(At the risk of answering my own, previous question) what protection do 'unpublished' works have?

Ideally? None. The purpose of copyright and patents is:

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.

An unpublished work does nothing to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and the Constitution (which provides the legal basis for copyright) doesn't have an opinion on it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

Heh, sure. That's liberty. And in this case, it is the liberty of the majority to tell you to suck it. You may not have realized it, but outside of the slashdot portion of the population, most people actually favor copyright. Go talk to people and find out. So if your only argument is 'suck it,' you're going to be ignored. That's why you need to find a better argument if you actually want to change things.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[tlhIngan]

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation. For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written (it was written after her death). That could have been prevented with modern copyright law. A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore, and would be annoyed if someone else tried to hijack that (although the result couldn't possibly be worse than the cartoons). People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work. I think this is related to the fact that in our culture we really don't like plagiarism.

In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance, you're also going to have to find a way to convince people that giving control to the original author isn't all that important. Otherwise you can forget reforming copyright law. I am not sure of the best argument for this, maybe someone else can think of a convincing one.

I believe the market already sorts that out itself. If someone writes a sequel against the author's wishes on a work out of copyright, fans are free to reject it. If like most sequels it's horrible, then it'll just be a footnote in the original book's Wikipedia page and forgotten about. I'm sure most people probably didn't know there's a GWTW "sequel", so it probably wasn't that great to begin with.

Officialness is easy - if the author is alive, and they write a sequel, that is an official sequel. IF not, then either the author has given someone else to do sequels (like the HHGTTG one after Mostly Harmless), or they're unofficial. Unofficial isn't bad - consider the amount of fanfiction out there.

And I believe there are times when the official sequel was so horrible, it fell into the footnote, while an unofficial one was much better. Rare, but happens.

To use your example, I would take it that nothing that takes place outside the Tolkien franchises is good, and stuff like fanfiction, fanpages, fan wikies which aren't "blessed" are therefore bad and to preserve the "officialness" of the franchise, they ought to be removed and deleted?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Battle_Ratt]

It takes 21 years from birth before a child is recognized as an adult. (Can drink alcohol legally) At this point your creative work, a child, is capable and expected to make any choice, and if you benefit from a relationship with them, it is at their discretion.

I would argue that any work that is older than the time it takes for a child to reach adulthood, should be in public domain, because the creator has had enough time to benefit from it, at least as much as a parent has had time with a child.

So that copyright period of 21 years although possibly not optimal for the full greater good, is still at least reasonable. What has been around since before you were born, when you become an adult, is now your public domain birthright.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Just Some Guy]

For example, what should professional musicians do, only record advertisements?

How many copies of albums do professional musicians typically sell 5 years after release day? A tiny minority of generation-defining albums will continue to sell, but I think Britney's pretty much seen all the money from "Oops! I Did It Again" that she's ever going to (assuming that her label ever actually paid her for it in the first place).

People who would stand to lose from the Pirate Party's idea: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin. People who would stand to gain from it: everyone else.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[DarthVain]

What I don't get is why is has to be some sort of blanket static number.

To me that seems stupid. Different things require different copyright. This is because of two reasons, one is that different things require different amounts of time to make adequate amounts of money, which to my mind is the whole point of copyright. The second is different things may or may not be even relevant after a given time frame.

Some examples. Does a software company really need copyright on software that was written 30 years ago? Likely it isn't even relevant any more. Music and Writing might still be relevant, but, I would say if they need 30 years of copyright to make a living off previous works, I would guess they should pick a new field of work.

Also who is to say that rights have to be an all or nothing affair. I don't see why there cannot be a sliding scale or tiers in which the creator goes from having all the rights to the work, to progressively less rights until it is not protected at all.

Anyway this sort of thing seems to be dominated by lobbyists and corrupt politicians, rather than by reasoning and common sense. Considering the potential consequences of these decisions one would thing careful consideration would be required, and not pandering to corporate greed. I think recent financial developments support this conclusion. Oh and don't even get me started on Patents.

As a side note I love how the premise of the article is that having such long protection stifles innovation and creativity, where the EXACT same argument is used for the other side, in that without such long copyrights, you would lose the same thing. Reminds me of sesame street: "One of these things is not like the other!" :)

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Paradoks]

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation. For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written

This comment reminds me of the possibility of Matrix sequels, and the possibility of Star Wars prequels. We're glad they never happened, as the creator realized that they would be unable to capture the sheer genius of their previous works.

So, personally, I suppose I'm glad to have creators with such obvious ability to assess their own talent, but I'd sure like copyrights to be shorter so that we could get dozens of attempts at making sequels and prequels, where, since it wasn't made by the original creator, we could ignore the bad ones and promote the good ones, like with what has happened with Shakespearian knockoffs and new Sherlock Holmes adventures.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[sgtrock]

Some examples. One is this Harry Potter Lexicon that J.K. Rowling squashed. The people who worked on the lexicon put a lot of time into it, and they got screwed thanks to copyright and this idea that somehow they weren't the victims, that instead they were victimizing poor little J.K. Rowling and making it impossible for her to profit from doing her own lexicon her way, when she saw they were right about it being profitable and changed her mind on letting them do it. Obviously, she's no dummy, and so I guess she was pushed and manipulated into this stance by publishers whose opinions she perhaps trusts overmuch. It goes against her own philosophy as revealed in her works, so far as I can tell. That is, what would Harry Potter do in a similar situation?

That's not quite true. J.K. Rowling didn't object to someone else creating a lexicon. She objected to copying and republishing large amounts of her text word for word. There is no question in my mind that the amount of that text went far, FAR beyond any reasonable definition of fair use.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[MaskedSlacker]

You know he didn't drop out at all right?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[MaskedSlacker]

even possibly rendering a transhuman entity immortal (Kurzweil, Grossman et al) and therefore also copyright protection infinite?

No it won't, stop plugging your snake oil shamans into unrelated discussions.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Gulthek]

Plagiarism doesn't mean what you think it means. A sequel to Gone with the Wind isn't plagiarism, it's a new work using an existing setting and characters.

Also, what culture are you from? Around these parts, remixes abound and everyone grabs pictures from Google Images.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[MaskedSlacker]

My kingdom for a mod point!

*This post made possible by the expiration of Copyright*

Re:When they're right, they're right

[DelShalDar]

I'd think seven years would be a good number, with the option to continue an additional seven years at the end (for a total of fourteen years), then a final additional six-year extension option for a maximum copyright term of 20 years (a nice round number and easily within the average lifespan). Death is irrelevant as, once copyrighted, the copyright remains in place for the current term/extension and automatically expires unless the initial copyright holder explicitly extends it again, with no "automatic" extension option. So, if the original creator copyrights their work, and gets "hit by a bus" the next day, the copyright will expire at the end of the 7-year term and the work enters public domain.

For characters, locations, or "franchises," trademarks can be (and already are) used to protect a certain franchise from unauthorized use of titles, characters, and even specific imagery.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Perhaps. But the GPs original argument still allows for the Star Wars prequels, so I don't see that the public will necessarily buy it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[david_thornley]

FWIW, I thought the style in "Fuzzies and Other People" to be considerably different in important ways from stories I know were written by H. Beam Piper. I see no internal evidence to indicate that it was written by Piper rather than, say, Pournelle, perhaps based on a few notes. (Compare the H.P. Lovecraft stories that August Derleth "finished" - often based on a paragraph or two that Lovecraft wrote and the rest straight Derleth.)

Re:When they're right, they're right

[david_thornley]

They could still sell classic video games on the Wii, even if they weren't under copyright. A bit of creative adaptation and it's a new work.

Moreover, those games were written to generate money when they were written, and shortly thereafter. Nobody was going to write a video game in 1990 in the expectation that the profits after 2004 would be what made it worthwhile.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[david_thornley]

You know another thing that would be nice? Knowing what's copyrighted and what isn't. Under a fixed-length scheme, I can look at the copyright date and know if it's public domain or not. Now, I've got to know when the author died. Basing copyright on a lot of extensions would have a similar problem.

If I were elected queen of my planet (or whatever), I'd decree a copyright of 20 years, no ifs, ands or buts.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[elgaard]

Yes, certainly guardians might have completely different interests.
Which was something was used to be understood

From James Boyle, Puclic Domain on Macaulay 150 more than years ago.
http://itpol.dk/files/the-public-domain.pdf

==
The intellectual property skeptics had other concerns. Macaulay was partic-
ularly worried about the power that went with a transferable and inheritable
monopoly. It is not only that the effect of monopoly is "to make articles
scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad." Macaulay also pointed
out that those who controlled the monopoly, particularly after the death of the
original author, might be given too great a control over our collective culture.
Censorious heirs or purchasers of the copyright might prevent the reprinting
of a great work because they disagreed with its morals.32 We might lose the
works of Fielding or Gibbon, because a legatee found them distasteful and
used the power of the copyright to suppress them. This is no mere fantasy,
Macaulay tells us. After praising the novels of Samuel Richardson in terms
that, to modern eyes, seem a little fervid ("No writings, those of Shakespeare
excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart"), Macaulay
recounts the story of Richardson's grandson, "a clergyman in the city of
London." Though a "most upright and excellent man," the grandson "had con-
ceived a strong prejudice against works of ction," "thought all novel-reading
not only frivolous but sinful," and "had never thought it right to read one of
his grandfather's books."33 Extended copyright terms might hand over the
copyright to such a man. The public would lose, not because they had to pay
exorbitant prices that denied some access to the work, but because the work
would be altogether suppressed.
==

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Danse]

Heh, sure. That's liberty. And in this case, it is the liberty of the majority to tell you to suck it. You may not have realized it, but outside of the slashdot portion of the population, most people actually favor copyright. Go talk to people and find out. So if your only argument is 'suck it,' you're going to be ignored. That's why you need to find a better argument if you actually want to change things.

Outside of the slashdot portion, and certain academic circles, nobody but those who are profiting the most even thinks about copyright. They don't have anything resembling an informed opinion. Of course uninformed opinions certainly drive what passes for "political discourse" these days. Too bad the press is more often contributing to rather than debunking that stuff.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

No, three years is too short. Publishing houses could just wait for copyright to expire, and market the hell out of their new public domain work, with no benefit to the author. 12 to 14 years sounds about right, perhaps with an option to extend to 20. After that I seriously don't care whether or not you could milk it for more money, or its social importance. Thats the point, returning to society its cultural icons for the legitimate creation of derivative works.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[ultranova]

When you say stuff like this, it makes you sound like what you REALLY care about is being able to get your music for free.

Not really, I'm far more interested in the fine drama sites like this offer :). There's nothing like pouring myself a hot cup of coffee early in the morning, sitting in front of the computer, firing up the browser and seeing a story on Slashdot's the front page with a title like "Drug found to cause hallucinations! This proves that there is no afterlife!" and 700+ comments on it.

I love the smell of burning karma and caffeine in the morning.

I have no sympathy for your cause, sir.

All the more reason for me to champion these anonymizing networks, so I don't have to depend on sympathy from strangers, now isn't it you peasant?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Shagg]

Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.

I certainly hope not. Copyright has very little to do with guaranteeing control. If you want absolute control of your creation, don't publish it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[evilWurst]

Well, we have to draw a line somewhere, so basically, yes, that line is also the point where society collectively says "s/he can suck it".

If we draw that line too close to the date of the work's creation, maybe we're being self centered fools. But the line is currently headed for the far opposite extreme. 95 years is a *long* time on the scale of human lives. It means there are things under copyright today that were created before the vast majority of us were even born, and it means that things created during our lives won't be freed during our lives. Even things with a trivially short half-life of worth are covered for that term; this slashdot thread won't enter the public domain until the year 2105, by which time we'll be long dead, any children we're likely to have will be long dead, *their* children will be old, and *their* children will be adults. So there's one pretty blunt way of showing that copyright is too long; and with that method of description in mind, it starts getting really hard to argue in favor of copyright past 40 or so years. Hell, if we try to tell people they can't print this thread even five years from now, we'll probably be told to suck it.

In your GWTW example, 40 years after GWTW was published, the author had been dead for 27 years (but would be 76 if still alive then), and people well into their 40s would have been too young to have been aware of the work's existence when it was first published.

You can also triangulate on works currently around halfway through their copyright terms, too. That works well, because they're all things that we already consider old, and yet they'll still be locked down for that many more years. Yellow Submarine came out 44 years ago (1966), but won't be free for another 51 years (2061!). Let that settle in for a moment. It's already older than most people alive today (for example, the median age in the US is 36). Yet one of today's newborns will be in their 50s before it's free. The Beatles were in their 20s when they first made the song, and now half of them are dead and the survivors are old enough that they'd be able to collect social security and get medicare (well, if they were Americans and you were using this example on an American).

For some things, you could triangulate on an imaginary 40 year copyright and it'll still seem strange. For example, good old MC Hammer's Can't Touch This is from 1990... 20 years ago. It's old. People who were in their early teens when it came out will be in their 50s when the song turns 40 years old. Does this need 95 years of lockdown? 40? It feels kind of old even at 20, doesn't it? Oh, and it's derivative of something from the 80s, so if Rick James had said 'no', it couldn't have been made then, or even today, even though Rick James died a few years ago. Maybe it's a silly example, but it's real life and it'll probably work on anyone who remembers the 80s and early 90s.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cpt kangarooski]

You know another thing that would be nice? Knowing what's copyrighted and what isn't. Under a fixed-length scheme, I can look at the copyright date and know if it's public domain or not. Now, I've got to know when the author died. Basing copyright on a lot of extensions would have a similar problem.

So long as the initial grant of copyright, renewal terms, and transfers required registration with the US Copyright Office and the inclusion of a unique application or registration number in all copies made after those numbers were issued, as well as some other information printed in all copies (e.g. author's name, work's title, year of publication), and copyright holders were required to keep those records up to date if they moved (perhaps on pain of a reduction in the available remedies for infringement), it would not be problematic. Real property owners are required to file information with their local Registry of Deeds to keep master records of ownership up to date. Why should we tolerate sloppy or no bookkeeping for copyrights? It isn't as though artists are somehow incapable of handling simple paperwork -- after all, they live in our society, which is full of such things for everyone (e.g. change of address, voter registration, taxes, property, leases, etc.). Note that patents and registered trademarks require frequent filings to be maintained, and that copyrights traditionally used to as well.

If I were elected queen of my planet (or whatever), I'd decree a copyright of 20 years, no ifs, ands or buts.

Unfortunately, for a lot of things, 20 years is too long. That's why renewals and registration are better: copyrights are only issued upon request, and only for as long as the request is maintained, up to some maximum. It requires a bit more work logistically, but you get a far more efficient system in terms of what's copyrighted and what isn't.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Golddess]

I've not heard a clear take on exactly what went down, but taking GP's post at face value, it looks as if this is what he is saying happened:

1) People ask J.K. Rowling for permission to write a lexicon.
2) J.K. Rowling grants permission, thinking it won't be very profitable.
3) A lot of hard work and money are put into this unofficial lexicon.
4) J.K. Rowling sees how profitable a lexicon could be.
5) J.K. Rowling rescinds permission given to write the unofficial lexicon.
6) The people writing the other lexicon are now out a lot of money.

Are you really saying that most people do not have a problem with being taken advantage of like this? Or is this not actually how it went down?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

Well, we have to draw a line somewhere, so basically, yes, that line is also the point where society collectively says "s/he can suck it".

I think the point is, in general, in society, people are in favor of copyright. So those who oppose it really aren't in a position where they can say 'suck it.' They have to do something that actually manages to convince.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cpt kangarooski]

surprisingly relevant considering it was made over 170 years ago.

Why wouldn't it be relevant? The most fundamental aspects of copyright really haven't changed since the early 18th century. We've been screwing up the implementation of it for a while, but the basic idea remains sound.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cpt kangarooski]

They expire when you stop using them.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[thetoadwarrior]

Yeah someone might decide to crap all over Star wars and make a Star Wars sitcom. We must protect material from people who don't value it as much as the creator!

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

My understanding of how it went down is a bit different, it was:

1) People make online, free lexicon, kind of a wiki if I remember right.
2) J.K. is ok with that.
3) Publisher comes and wants to print it, promising the creator to cover any legal fees.
4) J.K. is not ok with that, sues, and if I remember, wins resoundingly.

My feeling is that most people don't mind derivative works and such that are free, but they have a problem when someone else makes profit off of the work. Even those who are willing to download songs for free sometimes get upset when a rogue record company tries to sell DVDs or whatever. I'm not saying this is fair or how it should be or anything, but it's my perception of people's opinions.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

It's his choice to trash it if he wants to, man. It's his choice.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[cpt kangarooski]

Remind me how it benefits the public to protect or even recognize the existence of 'moral rights' at all?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[thetoadwarrior]

The majority isn't always right. Are all the people that supported the Nazi party right? Or those that voted for Bush or all those people that supported the sham that is the Iraq war? What about the US opinion of the Japanese during and after WWII?

People will often believe something if someone repeats it enough but that certainly does not make it right or true.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

Indeed, you are correct, the majority is not always right. But in a democracy, a majority that is wrong will usually win out over a minority that is right. If you want to have effective copyright reform, it will be necessary to convince the majority that it is a good idea (unless you can somehow raise the money to fight Disney and friends).

So, in order to do that, I've been trying to identify what the majority feels, why they support that, and how to convince them that it's an issue worth caring about. That is my point. I hope you understand now.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[xelah]

(At the risk of answering my own, previous question) what protection do 'unpublished' works have?

Ideally? None.

So if you commission some software to run on your server then it attracts no copyright? Unless someone pinches it and publishes it rather than just using it for themselves, I suppose. What about, for example, stolen private diaries or e-mails? They seem worthy of legal protection of some sort. Why not copyright?

The purpose of copyright and patents is:

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.

Why accept the US constitution as the document which establishes what copyrights should exclusively be used for? It's a perfectly sensible goal, but why limit it to that just because it doesn't say we shouldn't? The authors didn't really have any special perspective compared to modern economists, politicians, lawyers and scientists...and even if they did, that doesn't mean we should accept what they said without questioning it. There are lots constitutions and laws which you could have quoted, and none of them will make your argument for limiting copyright for you because they're about what the law IS, not what it SHOULD be or why. Why not argue for copyright wherever it's useful, has the legal effect you're looking for and appears to do the right thing?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[thetoadwarrior]

Plagiarism is to taking someone's work and claiming it as your own. Writing a sequel, unofficial or official is not taking an existing work and claiming it as your own.

There is also the problem that someone may want nothing to with someone else's work but the other guy thinks it is too similar to his work.

While I don't think we'll all of the sudden run out of story ideas in 100 years, we will, more than any other time have so many combinations of names and scenarios created. So it will be an absolute nightmare for anyone to create something. Unless of course you're a major corporation with an army of lawyers.

Hundreds of years ago when most people were illiterate and poor and books / music were still fairly rare so giving someone a monopoly doesn't really matter. In this day and age it's so easy for someone to create music, books, games and movies. Even from their home and again, how are these people supposed to keep on top of all the copyright material and ensure there stuff is original? It can be hard now. It will only get harder over time.

Lastly, the that created Mickey mouse is dead. Why should people continue to be able to live off his work? Hell, why should someone living be able to write one book and expect to collect from that for life when no one worker gets to live off their work for life. You can argue that music lasts longer than serving someone McDonalds food but there are people making peanuts manufacturing goods that will last for much longer than they get paid for it.

Most real artists will create no matter what and in fact a lot of artists were poor. The only people this would really affect are corporations that pump out soulless shallow pop music, video games and movies because they're not really artists. They're in it just for the money and quite frankly I don't care if they decide to quit creating because they feel it isn't worth it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[mpeskett]

Doesn't the current system provide an incentive for the family of a successful creator to kill him off? That way the royalties go to "the estate of" instead of to the creator in person.

If copyright evaporated on the creator's death, who personally stands to gain by killing them?

Unless you've got a killer idea for a knockoff of a Stephen King novel, and the only thing in your way is the copyright.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Myopic]

That's really insightful. If it has value and lasts forever, that makes it "real" in the sense of "real estate". If you want the United States government to have a standing army which protects your physical piece of the ground, then you must pay property tax; if you want the United States government to have a standing judiciary which protects your "intellectual property", then you must pay property tax.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Zxern]

Or work on commission or by live performance kinda like they had to for hundreds of years before copyrights. Truly great artists will continue to make money despite any possible loss from sharing.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[thetoadwarrior]

I fully agree but the point is that ensuring the creator and his family have control over something forever does not ensure the quality of sequels and related work at all.

I would say the fans, who would get in trouble for copyright violation, have treated the Star Wars series better than its creator.

So I believe your argument holds no water. Regarding sequels, don't read them and they effectively don't exist. There is a Beverly Hills Cop 3 but to me it does not exist. Those who want it can watch it and I can avoid it. Everyone wins.

People need to realise they're not the centre of the universe and just because they don't like something doesn't mean it's wrong or bad.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[phantomfive]

OK, I don't really disagree with you, I think there is real benefit to allowing third parties to add to a work, but what is needed are arguments that will convince the average man. Saying, "People need to realise they're not the centre of the universe and just because they don't like something doesn't mean it's wrong or bad" doesn't really convince anyone.

The one other issue I think people will have is: when someone writes a book, or a story, they should be able to prevent movie studios from stealing the work and creating a movie without compensating the original author. To be honest, I would have a problem with that too.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[mwvdlee]

Why not split up copyright in separate parts.

i.e. 14 years protection from derivative works/clones, 28 years protection from verbatim copying. After 14 years, anybody could make their own cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse, after 28 years, anybody could publish Disney's original Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[thetoadwarrior]

I wouldn't advocate that they lose their rights to their work straight away. But if someone makes a movie from a book that existed 14/28 years ago, for instance, I can't really see myself caring.

They'll either do a good job or not. If they don't it will probably bomb and what harm is really done? Especially seeing how so many bad book (and especially video game) based movies have been done already with the author's blessing.

What happens when someone makes a similar game to God of War? Are they infringing on Sony's copyright by using greek mythology or not? Kratos isn't a name that Sony came up with, it's a Greek god. But should they now get exclusive use of that?

Maybe they wouldn't get control of it but I almost certain they'd take you for court and try if you make a Greek mythology based game that contains a character called Kratos. The mere fact they'd likely do that is enough to scare people off even if Sony would win and creativity is hurt.

That sort of thing should be explained to people and, one quick way to prove a point to people, would be to start harassing them for using copyright material on their sites / blogs when they're simply doing things like using Mario or Mickey for an avatar. It's only a matter of time until companies start doing that anyway.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[demonlapin]

If copyright evaporated on the creator's death, who personally stands to gain by killing them?

The guy who wants to make a movie based on it.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[TSPhoenix]

The last thing we want is a system where you pay to extend copyrights. That means Disney gets eternal copyright yet the little guy gets 20 years as he can't afford to extend it beyond that. Hardly fair.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[TSPhoenix]

The last thing we want is a system where you pay to extend copyright. All that will result in is Disney and co having eternal copyright and the little guy not being able to afford to extend beyond the initial period. Hardly fair.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[CarpetShark]

It's a fair point, but I disagree. I think publishing houses couldn't afford to wait for copyright expiration, because every download site and p2p service would do the same thing for free (by definition, and rightly so). If people will pay for anything related to media, it will be high-quality delivery of the newest stuff as soon as it exists, with the best analysis.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[GreekLawyer]

You may not believe in those guys but fact is human' life expectancy is growing;

Source, Wikipedia:

QUOTE

The number of centenarians is increasing at 7% per year, which means doubling the centanarian population every decade, pushing it into the millions in the next few years.

Japan has the highest ratio of centenarians. In Okinawa, there are 34.7 centenarians for every 100,000 inhabitants [6].
In the United States, the number of centenarians grew from 15,000 in 1980 to 77,000 in 2000

UNQUOTE

Tying copyright span to human life is entirely antithetical to any form of human progression - very few things will ever come into the public domain which is not very conducive to evolution - you would have to practically shoot Bono in order to be able to listen to his music after 100 years!!

Having said that, if you do not believe in Kurzweil you must be very short sighted - things are pointing towards a technological singularity, a fact predicted not by my snake oil merchants but by John von Neumann in 1958;

Source Wikipedia:

QUOTE

In 1958, Stanisaw Ulam wrote in reference to a conversation with John von Neumann:
"(...) One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue. (...)"

UNQUOTE

Stem cells, nanotechnology, protein and genomics medicine, transhumanism which is already taking place (I am communicating this message wearing a pacemaker, contact lenses and by mobile keyboard) will make us almost immortal.

I understand that this runs contrary to commonly accepted notions but the whole trend points to that direction and no other, therefore it is irrefutable-

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Danse]

surprisingly relevant considering it was made over 170 years ago.

Why wouldn't it be relevant? The most fundamental aspects of copyright really haven't changed since the early 18th century. We've been screwing up the implementation of it for a while, but the basic idea remains sound.

And yet they still did exactly what was warned against, and are experiencing the predicted results. Now they pretend not to understand, and they continue to demand respect. Sorry, but that's not how respect works.

Re:When they're right, they're right

[Hognoxious]

I've noticed a lot of this "cult of the founding fathers" recently. I wonder why people think we should mindlessly obey things, taken out of context, that were allegedly said by men who lived in a totally different world.

Are they spinning in their graves because women can vote and blacks aren't slaves?

Re:When they're right, they're right

[pbhj]

Remind me how it benefits the public to protect or even recognize the existence of 'moral rights' at all?

Anyone that writes anything (a business plan, say), makes a performance or performs a work (poem, monologue, photo) gains protection for themselves. You're right those selves are individual creators but they together amount to the populace (the public).

Personally I find it befits common decency to acknowledge a mans work as his own and to not slander a person by altering and falsely attributing their work. Such common decency affords a certain standard of civilisation, which "the public" benefit from.

I have no problem with longer copyright terms...

[mark-t]

... as long as the copyright holder is still actively publishing the work. Once they stop publishing the work/cease making it available to the general public, I think that the work should revert to public domain in 5 years.

Of course, that leaves a hole for companies that may stop publication for a while and then want to start back up... I should think that they must maintain distribution for a certain minimum period before my above proposed 5-year clock would reset... perhaps at least six months or so.

Science & art flourished better w/o copyright

[mykos]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.

To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement. People act as if not paying money to someone for a hundred years will make art and music disappear.

If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?

Interesting

[slimjim8094]

Here's hoping it's indicative - or will lead to - a groundswell of public opinion.

What us nerds need to do is remind people that copyright is a trade. I've explained to people that Disney nor your favorite band 'deserve' any protection, which they find crazy. But when I explain the idea of copyright is to promote new works by allowing the creative types to make a living - with the understanding that we'll all get it in the end - they start to look at copyright how it was originally intended.

We would still have books and music and art without copyright - people do those for free all the time - but big movies, etc legitimately take a lot of money to make. So I think copyrights are necessary, but drastically limited in length. It's a travesty that the Beatles' work doesn't belong to the world yet, and it's obscene that Mickey Mouse doesn't.

Copyrights were much shorter at the founding of our nation - and that was when a significant portion of the time allotted was used in physically moving stuff around. Now that that's almost instantaneous - or perhaps a few days - it should be shorter than that.

Re:Interesting

[XanC]

A creative work is not something naturally owned. It's not a tangible item that you have. Only a social contract allows you to simulate ownership, and to use words like "my", on something as vaporous as a creative work.

The default is for creative works to not be ownable.

Re:Interesting

[Jedi Alec]

Copyright to me is about protecting my ideas, it's not a trade I make, it's about the state protecting my property.

Awright, fair enough. And since said state is a representative of me, Joe the Voter, what's in it for me?

So let's make a deal. I agree that you get protection from the law w.r.t. your intellectual property, and you agree that after a set amount of time...say 14 years or so, your work goes into the public domain for the betterment of mankind? Deal?

Re:Interesting

[Moddington]

We're owed access to other people's work, because they openly published it to the world. The point of copyright isn't to keep your ideas yours; that's easily enough achieved by simply not publishing your ideas. The point is to give you recompense for giving your ideas to the world.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The very idea of "owning" something--even something tangible--is, itself, intangible: it is just a social contract that lets you have control over a particular item. This is a very useful contract, but the default really is for nothing to be ownable, with anyone able to take anything they can.

Re:Interesting

[sahonen]

Because an idea is not property, it is an arrangement of neurons in your head. If one person takes a piece of property, he deprives everyone else of the use of that property... However, the same idea can exist simultaneously in every single mind in existence, and no person is deprived of the ability to hold that idea in their head by the fact that someone else is also holding that idea in their head. The natural, default state of an idea is that it is freely available to *everyone*.

However, we recognize that certain people have ideas that most people couldn't have by themselves. In general, these ideas are useful to society, so we want these people to keep having them. In order to free these people from the distraction of having to earn a living by conventional means and allow them to spend all of their time coming up with more of their ideas, we create a mechanism by which people can profit from them... A completely artificial concept of imaginary property. We allow these people to be the only ones who may use their idea for profit for enough time to keep checks in their mailbox till they come up with their next idea. After this time passes, the idea reverts to its default state of being available to everyone.

The reality is, when you come up with a creative work, you do the original work of creating it *once.* Most people have to work continuously to earn a continuous living. What gives a creative person the right to earn a perpetual living off of a single act of creation?

Re:Interesting

[roman_mir]

True, the default for your car is also not to be ownable, I'll be taking it now.

Re:Interesting

[Dekker3D]

if every idea was protected forever, that would eventually create a legal minefield for anyone trying to publish something new. they'd have to go through ages of creations to check if anything remotely resembled their own, and it'll only grow as more people find gaps. eventually, you'll need someone specialized in finding these gaps to assist you while you create. is that your dream world? it isn't mine.

Re:Interesting

[Sique]

I like car analogies when talking about copyright :)

Re:Interesting

[AliasMarlowe]

Copyright to me is about protecting my ideas

If you want to protect your ideas, keep them to yourself as secrets. That way, nobody else can use them. Copyright is not about protecting ideas.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage sharing of ideas, so that the whole community can use them. To encourage such sharing, a limited period of exclusive control over use was created by copyright law (it does not exist as a natural right). When that period is over, everyone can use them.
In many jurisdictions, the creator has a perpetual moral right to be identified as the creator. This is why we refer still to Dante's Inferno, even though it is not protected by copyright - nobody else can claim to be creator of that particular work. This right might be considered a natural right, and is distinct from copyright.

Re:Interesting

[Trepidity]

Though that's true, the social aspect of "intellectual property" seems much deeper than the social aspect of tangible property. The social contract needed to enforce tangible property is essentially policing boundaries. The world is divvied up into piles of stuff, and nobody can take stuff from a pile that's labeled as someone else's.

But intellectual property requires society being able to regulate everything that anyone does anywhere, not just the boundaries. With intellectual property, society has a claim on what you can do with your own pen and paper in your own house: you cannot copy someone else's book onto it. It also has a claim on what you can do with your materials in general: you cannot implement a patented invention, even for personal use.

Re:Interesting

[fryjs]

Because an idea is not property, it is an arrangement of neurons in your head. If one person takes a piece of property, he deprives everyone else of the use of that property... However, the same idea can exist simultaneously in every single mind in existence, and no person is deprived of the ability to hold that idea in their head by the fact that someone else is also holding that idea in their head. The natural, default state of an idea is that it is freely available to *everyone*.

But copyright doesn't (or at least shouldn't) cover ideas, it covers creative works. Millions of people could have the same idea and still no one would be producing copies of other's creative works. So copyright can't prevent anyone having ideas and producing creative works from them.

However, we recognize that certain people have ideas that most people couldn't have by themselves. In general, these ideas are useful to society, so we want these people to keep having them. In order to free these people from the distraction of having to earn a living by conventional means and allow them to spend all of their time coming up with more of their ideas, we create a mechanism by which people can profit from them... A completely artificial concept of imaginary property. We allow these people to be the only ones who may use their idea for profit for enough time to keep checks in their mailbox till they come up with their next idea. After this time passes, the idea reverts to its default state of being available to everyone.

Again, copyright shouldn't be about ideas but creative works. A creative work is neither imaginary or artificial, it's an idea realised by creative expression: the creator's work, so it is in the ownership of the creator by default. And so copyright protects the creator's property. Ideas are never denied to anyone.

The reality is, when you come up with a creative work, you do the original work of creating it *once.* Most people have to work continuously to earn a continuous living. What gives a creative person the right to earn a perpetual living off of a single act of creation?

The fact that it's the creative person's creative work. Their work, not anyone elses. Their copyright is not preventing anyone from creating their own creative works, just directly copying the creative works of others.

Re:Interesting

[fryjs]

I used the wrong term. Copyright is about protecting my creative works as my property. Anyone can (or should be able to) use the ideas of any copyrighted work to create their own work so long as they aren't directly copying (ie. they are being being inspired by, not duplicating).

Re:Interesting

[metacell]

Copyright to me is about protecting my ideas, it's not a trade I make, it's about the state protecting my property.

Which hinges on the assumption that ideas are property, and can be owned in roughly the same way that physical objects can be owned. To me, that sounds absurd. For example, if two people come up with the same idea independently, why should one have the right to stop the other from using the idea just because he came up with it two months earlier?

Re:Interesting

[Spad]

Would you not also agree then that the guy who did the plumbing in your house should be entitled to royalty payments every time you have a bath? After all, it's his work and he may well reject your claim to a right to it.

Re:Interesting

[TeknoHog]

If you want to keep your ideas to yourselves, do not publish them. It's the best way to keep them safe. But once something is out there, it's out there.

Re:Interesting

[Bert64]

With physical goods it's a social contract that takes the burden of having to physically defend those items yourself...
With no laws whatsoever you can still "own" physical items so long as you are able to stop anyone else from taking them, either by hiding them or physically defending them.

You even admit it yourself "with anyone able to take anything they can" - if i'm bigger and stronger than you, then you can't take anything i have unless i let you.

Re:Interesting

[Bert64]

Under such a default system, if you wanted to take my car you would have to get past me first - and i would be trying to kill you for attempting to take my car. Winner takes all.

Re:Interesting

[roman_mir]

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the situation, that's why I would be coming with a few guys that like to work for me because I pay well enough for them and we bring the right tools for the job.

Re:Interesting

[mpe]

if every idea was protected forever, that would eventually create a legal minefield for anyone trying to publish something new.

It dosn't even need to be every idea to create an effective "minefield".

Re:Interesting

[Just Some Guy]

True, the default for your car is also not to be ownable, I'll be taking it now.

From 1700 years ago:

For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared. ~ Augustine of Hippo

My car would be diminished by sharing it with you. A song I wrote would not be.

Re:Interesting

[mcgrew]

Copyright to me is about protecting my ideas, it's not a trade I make, it's about the state protecting my property.

Your ideas are only your property until they leave your head. As someone else said, once you piss in the ocean you can't get the piss back. The US Constitution specifically states that my writings do not belong to me, but belong to humanity. It merely gives Congress the power to grant me a limited time monopoly on its distribution.

I no more own my slashdot journals than I own the house I rent; in both cases, I hold a limited time monopoly. If you don't want your ideas dissiminated, keep them to yourself, because once you let them loose they're no longer yours..

Re:Interesting

[Culture20]

Again, copyright shouldn't be about ideas but creative works. A creative work is neither imaginary or artificial, it's an idea realised by creative expression: the creator's work, so it is in the ownership of the creator by default. And so copyright protects the creator's property. Ideas are never denied to anyone.

How exactly does copyright protects the creator's property (the physical result of their work of creative expression)? Does it put it in a vault? Does it use laser-vibration sensors on glass? Does it insure the property so that the creator is compensated for loss in flood, fire, or other natural disaster?

It does none of these things. It _does_ prevent a specific type of creative expression that beginning creative people use: tracing (and its literary, film, and digital equivalents). But this prevention does not protect the original work, it instead protects the creator's ability to make money with that work for lifetime+20 years. It prevents idea expression. I was about to say it prevents idea transfer, but it doesn't do that, because in almost all creative works, idea transfer is the intended result. Instead, the transfered idea is not allowed to be re-expressed creatively by anyone other than the original creator unless it is sufficiently modified to be adjudicated to be an entirely different, albeit similar, idea.

Re:Interesting

[NoOneInParticular]

I get a right to your work the moment I pay a sum to obtain said work. Who are you to continue to claim ownership on something you sold?

Re:Interesting

[roman_mir]

From 170000 years ago (a state much closer to the default): Bam, I hit your head, you dead, I take your skins and women.

Re:Interesting

[Dekker3D]

doesn't even need to be forever either, but thanks for pointing it out. right now it's more like one of those beaches where wars were fought: most mines are gone, but there's always a chance that you'll run into one. i know i've had my fair share of that: thinking of something that seems new, searching for it on the net to make sure, and discovering some obscure company's already thought of that before.

Here's one

[sjames]

It's time for the "Everyone who had anything to do with creating the mouse is dead now act". It will revert the term on all existing works to the length it was when the work was created. Last I checked, no amount of retroactive incentive can further encourage the dead.

Re:Here's one

[epee1221]

For a while now, I've been hoping we'd eventually see a court rule that the possibility of retroactive copyright extension is incompatible with the Constitution's wording ("for limited times"), and that Congress therefore does not have the power to grant copyright extensions.

Re:Here's one

[PeterBrett]

Your Supreme Court already ruled that any finite duration of copyright is, in fact, constitutional.

Eldred v. Ashcroft

Re:Here's one

[metacell]

Maybe they should have complained on the grounds that retroactive extension violates the "for the promotion of the arts and sciences" part...

Re:Here's one

[zippthorne]

Well that's because everyone involved had shoddy math skills.

infty
Sum a_n = undefined
n=1
 
where a_n is arbitrary.

You can only claim an infinite sum of arbitrary constants converges to a finite number if the constants themselves converge to zero quickly enough. So, they can't, in fact, each be arbitrary and still be able to make the claim.

The supreme court, in its capacity as "final arbiter" is not only far from infallible, but in fact, frequently woefully lacking in justice. Copyright is far from the most egregious incident, though.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[sugarmotor]

Well, then there would be the equivalent of Patent-Troll-Companies.

They would just run websites to claim that their are still distributing the work (against a fee)

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, as an Economist author, I'm very offended by the implication that

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[sys.stdout.write]

The Economist is actually one of the more thoughtful news periodicals, in my opinion. Moreover, having a non-American perspective is very nice for those of us who get a majority of our news from American sources. The political coverage is especially enlightening, as it manages to transcend the Democrat / Republican talking points in a way that not even the New York Times or Wall Street Journal is able to.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Anonymous Coward]

It also loses sight of why we grant such protection: To promote the progress of science and useful arts
Then again, I have heard it argued that indefinite copyright extensions encourage artists to sit on their laurels instead of creating more.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[symbolic]

Considering that much of Disney's stuff is a knockoff of earlier works that are out of copyright, I don't see your point of view as having much validity. Second, this whole "lock it up for eons" mentality has spread beyond copyright - there has been talk of incorporating patents on things like plots or the very subject matter of a given story. This whole ownership thing is WAY out of hand.

Ironically, today's technology offers copyright holders means of distribution (opportunity to make money) that FAR exceed what was available when copyright was first enacted. So to be fair, what do they do...demand longer copyrights? No, they should be feel lucky that the term of a copyright hasn't been reduced. I don't think it was ever the intent of copyright to provide for multi-generational revenue streams.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Trahloc]

The simple response to your argument is this. Make copyright limited to something like 7 years but give an option to extend it. Even if its infinite. But it has to be renewed every 7 years and has to be produced continually during that time. If Disney is still around in year 2500 and Mickey Mouse is still going strong and worth protecting then let them protect it. But your 2 year olds doodle with crayons and snot don't need automatic copyright protection that lasts until she dies of old age.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[mark-t]

If they are distributing the work, then it is still readily obtainable from them... I have no qualms with copyright holders charging money for their stuff, nor paying fees to access it, what I have a problem with is stuff that the copyright holder abandons, but still holds onto the copyright for and there is NO legal avenue through which to obtain it.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[hedwards]

What's wrong with that? Part of the problem has been that these works aren't being distributed at all in any sort of legal sense. Meaning that for a bunch of them, even if one is willing to pay for a copy, one might well be out of luck because they're not being sold.

Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for this, but there needs to be some balance and if somebody isn't trying to make money off the idea, then perhaps it should go into the public domain.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws

It's a little specious to imply that it was the lack of copyright and patent laws that caused this, no? I would contend that what really caused the greatest achievements in science and art is the ignorance/narrow culture preceding its creation.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Wildclaw]

I have a problem with long copyright terms as long as the definition of derivative work is as large as it is. I also have a problem with the preventative scope of copyright in general. Exclusive rights to profit from a specific production used to be the basis of copyright. But nowadays, that is just a minor aspect of copyright.

Protect Mickey Mouse with trademarks instead

[jasmusic]

Copyright? No, Mickey Mouse is more like a trademark that ought to be maintained in perpetuity by the legal person who owns it. We don't need long copyrights for any reason. This way, people can't misuse Mickey for cartoon porn, but Walt Disney can't sit on their ass either.

Re:Protect Mickey Mouse with trademarks instead

[Maxo-Texas]

What? Does it make you Grumpy instead of horny?

Re:Protect Mickey Mouse with trademarks instead

[Dekker3D]

i've spent too much time on the internet; i laughed instead of crying.

Re:Protect Mickey Mouse with trademarks instead

[metacell]

The better example would be doing a porno version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the Disney style. Seriously are we all being damaged by "not" seeing that?

I would like to see it :-D

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[timmarhy]

no one gives a shit about mickey mouse. it's the endless milking of idea's and preventing anything remotely similar that is the issue. thanks for tackling a non issue.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[Bob9113]

I never read anything useful in The Economist.

There are a number of reasons for this that I find plausible. Here are two:

1. You are very well-versed on the topics covered by The Economist that you have read. This is very likely true in this specific case, as our community is very sensitive to copyright law and history. The Economist, while targeting a highly educated audience, must sometimes seek common ground even among such heady heights. Copyright is a topic most people have not considered so deeply; so even the brightest of those outside our community are likely to require a more elementary starting point than we.

2. You have read a few articles here and there in The Economist, but have rarely read entire issues. The Economist covers such a broad range of matters -- so many things touch the global economy -- that it is easy to find many articles which are of little use to any given individual. In my case I find the majority of their articles to be, while well researched and written, relatively uninteresting to me. In such a broad space there is bound to be a great deal of chaff relative to each reader's mind.

A possibility that I find extremely implausible is that The Economist is, in fact, utterly lacking in significant content. I say this based on the variety of people I know who find it to be one of the few truly substantial periodicals. Off the top of my head, there's a couple Ivy League grads, a PhD computer scientist, a PhD candidate in some field of biology, and three college drop-outs who are nonetheless among the smartest people I know.

All of which is to say; I can completely understand that you may have found some articles you have read to be shallower than your own knowledge of their topic space (assuming you are fairly astute regarding said space), and others that covered a subject you found inconsequential. I think it is unlikely, however, that the magazine is objectively and entirely mere fluff.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Wildclaw]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.

I disagree. The biggest achievements has happened in the last couple of hundred years. However, I also think that there is a huge difference between correlation and causation.

To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement

Agreed.

If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?

Because neo-mercantilist companies and individuals have lobbied to extend it so that they can profit more. And don't expect it to change. With an expected resource crisis due to massive consumption and popultion growth on earth, the mercantalist ideas will just grow strong among those in power.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[yuhong]

Incomplete.

Copyright should never be extended.

[Solarhands]

The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.

Suppose that copyright is now 50 years. Now supposing that the government thinks that say 100 years is a more optimal time period for copyright. They write a law which changes the time period for copyright law.

Why do the copyright end dates for those works already under copyright change? There is no reason for them to. There is no way that the new law is going to affect whether or not people 50 years ago write more books and music. But clearly the government seems to think that if they keep pushing the date back on existing copyright that they will reach some point where the financial incentive of the new law will convince the Beatles to write another album back in the 1960s. Perhaps they believe that we will soon have time traveling agents, who can inform the artists of the past of their rights.

Re:Copyright should never be extended.

[Concerned Onlooker]

You keep insisting that the government is "thinking." If it is, it's not thinking about copyright as related to what is good for our society, it is thinking about it in the way that gets senators and representatives re-elected. It's lobbyists that get copyright extended.

Re:Copyright should never be extended.

[RAMMS EIN]

``The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.''

Looking at how things have worked out in practice, it seems the terms have been chosen in such a way as to make copyright simply not expire. Perhaps the reason for that is that those pushing for the extensions are afraid of what will happen if works do go into the public domain. For example, it might then be found out that this actually _promotes_ the arts and sciences. Obviously, they can't have that, because it would wash away all their argumentation for extending the term.

Perhaps, however, the explanation is much simpler: the difference between a work that you hold the copyright for and a work that is in the public domain is that, in the former case, you are in control, and thus in the best position to profit from the work. In fact, you have a monopoly - nobody else is allowed to do certain potentially profitable things without your permission. Given the choice, who wouldn't prefer to keep control over losing it? If someone has an idea that you approve of, you can always grant them the necessary permissions.

Re:Copyright should never be extended.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The one thing that makes absolutely no sense in all this is that copyright gets extended when new laws come out.

You are far too kind in your analysis. I say that copyright extensions are wholesale theft on such a massive scale that it dwarfs all the piracy that ever has, and ever will happen. When copyright is extended every single piece of work from the minute and arcane to the titans of their genres is stolen from every single member of the public. Compared to all of that, a few billion downloads on the internet is a drop in the ocean.

Re:Copyright should never be extended.

[metacell]

I think you've found out their secret. The real purpose of the copyright extensions is not to promote the creation of the arts, but to ensure large corporations' profits from existing art.

Re:Copyright should never be extended.

[Gorath99]

I'm not an accountant, so I may well be way off here, but maybe it also has to do with not upsetting shareholders with losses on ip.

As long as you have intellectual property, that's an asset on your balance. If you've arbitrarily valued your Steamboat Willy copyright at, say, $50,000,000 USD, that's a sizable loss when the copyright on it expires. A loss that you can avoid by having the copyright term extended. Easy way to keep the shareholders happy, even with property that doesn't actually generate any real money anymore.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[MartinSchou]

Actually, a fun and ironic way of handling this issue is extending copyright to 500 years, retroactively. Add a clause that breach of copyright on works where no direct descendent can be found, the infringing party will be subject to a fine equalling 200% of all sales (pre tax) on the items in question AND the infringing work becomes public domain.

At the very least it'd give Disney such a kick in the balls, that they'd shut up about copyright extensions

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Sparx139]

Agreed. I'm an amateur playwright, trying to write a musical at the moment. As I write, I hear how the songs sound in my head. Some time later, I'll be humming a tune from it to myself and then suddenly say "crap, that bit sounds one heck of a lot like this song that was sung in the 70's/80's. Damn. Now I have to go back and change it to avoid any crap I might get into on the off-chance this might get published and become successful in the future".
Think I'm willing to risk it? There was recently an idiotic court ruling in my country. I'm not taking any chances.

Easy Solution

[dghcasp]

Simple Solution:

1. Copyright lasts for some period of time (say 20 years)
2. An single individual copyright can be extended perpetually by paying an annual fee (say $10,000)

That way, Disney can keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted forever, but anything that isn't generating more than 10k of revenue a year is cheaper to let lapse. Plus, it's another source of revenue for the government.

Of course, simple solutions never survive politics.

Re:Easy Solution

[yotto]

Of course, simple solutions never survive politics.

It won't even survive Slashdot.

Is that $10,000 per idea? Per character? Per story? Per song? Album? Lyric?

Does Disney have to pay $10,000 to copyright Mickey, and another $10,000 to copyright Steamboat Willie? What about that song he sang during the short?

Not that I'd mind making Disney pay for an infinite amount of $10,000 copyright units... But I'm also curious what I personally can expect to have to pay.

Re:Easy Solution

[Tiger4]

I like it, but two things I'd change there.

2. An individual can assign copyright to another, and the assignee, or the person, can renew up to two times. After the second, the copyright expires.

3. In order to renew, the copyright must be centrally registered. After the end of the first period, copyright expires if the work is not registered.

Rule two lets the corporations milk their employees, but still ensures that copyright finally ends. Rule three puts a final definitive stake through the hearts of ghost copyrights. If the original creators do not assert their ownership publicly, the public should have to respect them 30, 40 and 70 years later.

Re:Easy Solution

[mcgrew]

An single individual copyright can be extended perpetually by paying an annual fee (say $10,000)

That's both too much and not enough. It's too much for an individual author, who may only earn $50,000 while a book is in print, but is nothing to the billion dollar publishing company.

No, let the copyright expire after twenty years; if it's profitable for the author, let him extend the life by a single ten year period for a nominal fee (say, ten bucks). Copyright IS about intellectual property, only Disney doesn't own the property, humanity does. Disney is simply granted a lease; a limited time monopoly.

Don't give mankind's treasures to to the rich and powerful. Disney owns Mickey Mouse (trademark) but it doesn't own Steamboat Willy, and we shouldn't continue letting them think that it belongs to them. It doesn't.

As a software developer

[brit74]

As an independent software developer who lives off of my copyrighted work, I'm perfectly fine with shorter copyrights - even 14 years. I really don't think long copyrights (beyond, say, 40-50 years) help anyone other than corporations, who have an insatiable appetite to maximize profits, and grandkids who want a trust fund. A 50 year copyright is going to extend copyright beyond the life of the author in most cases, and even if the author is still alive, he should've saved some money for old age - that's what everyone else does.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor. If it's a truly magnificient work of art or at least popular, he will make heaps of money with it, most of which his heirs will inherit.
But why should his heirs or even worse big media conglomerats have any right to something that was created 60 years ago? I sniff a little whiff of feudalism in this line of reasoning.

I can see the argument, that to market media nowadays costs a lot of money and therefore we need publishing companys and such. But to have a copyright term of life+75 years stinks of greed.
As long as the artist lives he should reap the fruits of his creativity, but if he is dead, the copyright should fall into the public domain.
For copyrights transferred to publishing companys I propose a progressivly higher cost for copyright. First 7 years are free, every new 7 years term costs 10% of profits gained by the work of art times the number of prior renewals.
So after 70 years the cost of copyright renewals will be 100% of profits gained, +/- creative accounting and it'll be not cost-efficient to renew the copyright. This will be a win-win situation for both sides, the company will reap enough money to regain the costs of marketing and the public will gain access to the work after a reasonable timeframe.
Companys want the rights of persons, than they should act like persons and die after 60-90 years.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[jayke]

Incomplete.

Not at all, the rest of the post is simply behind the Murdoch paywall.

Super-Nonsensical Argument

[CuteSteveJobs]

All that would do is give Disney and large corporations copyright in perpetuity. That is, forever. They would love this even more. Compare that to an artist who can't afford the filing fees, or simply forgets, or a photographer who isn't going to file extension applications for 10,000 photos. They lose. Disney wins. Corporations are Supercitizens. They live forever. People don't. People have moral and civic obligations. Corporations can instead argue they're "looking after their shareholders." Copyright laws need to be adjusted to recognise that supercitizens don't deserve copyright above and beyond that of normal citizens.

Re:Super-Nonsensical Argument

[swillden]

All that would do is give Disney and large corporations copyright in perpetuity.

I'd be okay with that if it stopped them from pushing for ever-longer copyright terms on everything. With requirements of periodic renewal and continuous distribution to maintain copyright, most stuff would fall into the public domain fairly quickly.

And it couldn't actually be perpetual. Not in the US, anyway. Copyright must be for a limited time per the Constitution. However, we could fix the maximum number of renewals at 100 or something, which would make it limited but long enough even for Disney.

Re:Super-Nonsensical Argument

[thetoadwarrior]

But really why does Disney need this? Walt is dead and can't benefit from his creation. Surely Disney, as a huge corporation can come up with one new idea to milk for a few more decades rather than leeching from the dead.

It's not just Walt's mouse either. Most of their content is a rehash of someone else's work.They're quite happy to take advantage of someone else's work and make millions from it. They're just afraid some other corporation will do exactly what they're doing and I have zero sympathy for them.

Re:Super-Nonsensical Argument

[swillden]

But really why does Disney need this? Walt is dead and can't benefit from his creation. Surely Disney, as a huge corporation can come up with one new idea to milk for a few more decades rather than leeching from the dead.

No argument, philosophically. As a practical matter, if allowing them to keep Mickey forever will get most of everything else into the public domain, it's a good trade. As of now, what we have is that copyrights are perpetually extended so that nothing will ever enter the public domain again.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[AK Marc]

Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor

But copyright wasn't invented to repay them for the fruits of their labor, but to encourage things to be released to the public that wouldn't have been released without copyright. If it would have been released anyway (the obvious stuff) then it shouldn't be copyrightable. And it should only be protected for the minimum term to encourage discoveries. That it is not hampering discoveries indicates copyright is in violation of its charter and unconstitutional from any plain-English reading of the Constitution.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[tool462]

It is by far my favorite news publication. It benefits from being a weekly paper, not subject to the constant rush of a daily or hourly news cycle. Their articles tend to be more balanced and more considered, in part I think due to the extra time they have to devote to research and fact-checking.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Bemopolis]

If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?

Because corporations never die and they have a lot of money to spend indirectly on political campaigns. Oh, and now they can spend it *directly* on political campaigns. Let the kleptocracy be complete!

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it is a massive fallacy that copyright promotes creativity and that we'd be far more creative without it. It's never been proven that a world without copyright will be less innovative.

What copyright actually promotes is for-profit art (which isn't really art at all. read: pop music) and monopolies on innovation. If an innovation is required, someone will get to work and think it up and if it's not required then it's not required. We don't need a law to create artificial markets for the sake of promoting the arts and science. This distorts the market for innovation which can only hurt us in the end.

How can one say that restricting the free flow of information will somehow inspire creativity? I think the problem is that most people just can't imagine a world without copyright; they are too attached to the way things are. Maybe some corporation will imagine a world for them and happily trade it for some paper.

On an unrelated note...

[billsayswow]

Just proves why I enjoy The Economist as much as I do. Remind me to renew my subscription...

Re:On an unrelated note...

[Anomalyst]

Don't forget to renew your subscription to the Economist. HTH.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[mpe]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.

Even in modern times there are plenty of examples where copyright appears to have been more or less irrelevent. Typically obscurity is more of a risk that "piracy".

To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement.

Ironically "advancement" is one of the justifications for such laws in the first place. Though this may be an example of "too much of a good things is bad for you".

If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?

There are also much more (literate) people around compared with the 18th century, thus many more potential customers.
In many cases the majority of money is made in much less than 14 years. With movies and popular music this may be closer to 14 days...

A new way for IP

[UglyMike]

Copright was from the time that multi-media was limited to books. So for books, the idea is still valid. One should have to pay the creator/writer for the right to print ('copy') his work for larger diffusion.

So, one could revise current copyright to say that copyright on books should be something like the livespan of the author or 40 year, whichever lasts longest.

Voila, author and family protected without going overboard.

The same could be extended to music, although this becomes difficult as you have the music and the performance(s). For the music itself, no problem. Music notation is almost like a book. That could get the same rights. Performance is a different thing. One could of course argue that the performer is already paid for his/her performance (certainly the case with live shows, they will have been paid for the music video etc) and thus no copytright needed whatsoever on the performance, just on the music itself. Music video's would be treated more like film. So, write music and get copyright protection lasting 40 years or lifespan.

In both cases, this copright protection would extend only to commercial copying (books, sheet-music) of the articles. No legal shenannigans like music in a Taxi, elevator music etc. Some negotiation could of course be done to see where non-commercial and commercial meet.

Note that I extend this copyright to the original author! Transfer of ownership of a copyrighted work to another entity (a company or maybe a benefactor wanting to help the author) would automatically lead to a copyright period of 10 years, not to exceed the copyight period that would have been the case were the item would remain property of the author. Same as for work done as a service, which is how I beliieve the music inustry works. The music creators 'create' for the company and are paid by the company for this. So no need for additioanl protection, they are already paid. Since however ownership of the copyrighted work does not reside with the creator but with the company, copyright would be limited to 10 years (and lets be fair, todays Lady Gaga song will have limite value in 2020...)

Now, films are a different matter. There is no single 'creator'. Usually, the rights will belong to a company. I would buy the argument that the film roll containing all the frames of the film is the same as a book and thus should get the same treatment, but in the absence of a single 'creator' and allowing fo the enormous cost of such a project, I would limit this to 30 years fix with a stipulation that a non-DRM encumbered verion needs to be deposited in a central 'storage' à la Library of Congress or so.

However, films can have 'additional' value. Take Star Wars... The initial film should already be public domain, free for anyone to copy, use excepts from, change the soundtrack etc. Public domain of the film and all its frames. This however would not extend to the characters. The StarWars 'franchise' is worth a lot more than the first movie itself. To a lesser extent the same is true for 'serial' books (Harry Potter, Hercule Poirot, Jack Ryan ...) Just because a film/book they star in is PD does not mean everyone can use the characters to their liking or make their own commercial follow-ups. (non-commercial fan-movies are somewhat different but here again, some give and take would be required). Just the reproduction would be allowed. This would mean all the 'old' Mickey movies would be PD but the mickey character would still be protected. This protection would NOT be based on copyright but on a new kind of IP, maybe a 'renewable' 5-year license. So as long as the character 'owner' (human or company)is interested in it, he/she/it would pay the fee to be allowed to commercialize it practically indefinitely. If he no longer pay for the protection, the character becomes 'public domain', free for everyone to do with as he pleases.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[timmarhy]

" I would contend that what really caused the greatest achievements in science and art is the ignorance/narrow culture preceding its creation."

sweet so we are in for a boom in achievements in art and science any day now.

Absolutely not!

[91degrees]

Why, my short story took me almost an hour to write. And I only get to keep copyright on it until 70 years after my death. I certainly wouldn't have bothered were I only going to keep making an income from it for 50 years after I die. What would be the point?

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Laser Dan]

Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor

But copyright wasn't invented to repay them for the fruits of their labor, but to encourage things to be released to the public that wouldn't have been released without copyright. If it would have been released anyway (the obvious stuff) then it shouldn't be copyrightable. And it should only be protected for the minimum term to encourage discoveries. That it is not hampering discoveries indicates copyright is in violation of its charter and unconstitutional from any plain-English reading of the Constitution.

If they don't make enough to last them until they can create a new work, they will have to have another job, which takes away from the time available to create such works. It needs to be a balance: Too long and there is no encouragement to make anything new, too short and there is no time to do the creation. Considering that every creation may not be successful, I think 14 years or so is reasonable.

I'd actually like to see a gradual reduction

[91degrees]

I have a lot more sympathy for the rights of someone to control the original version of their work than for absolute control over derived works. I'm sure Psycho is still making money, and even though it's made several dozen times its initial cost, I can live with that. However, if I wanted to write a story from the point of view of Norman Bates' split personality, why should Paramount have a right to stop me? It's not going to displace sales of the DVD. It's become as much a part of our culture as King Arthur or greek legends, but we're not allowed to do anything with it.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[mpe]

Sorry, but 7 years is too short.

Most books, movies, etc make the majority of the money they are ever going to make soon after publication/release. Those which continue to make money for many years are exceptional. Those which suddenly start making money after a period of time are very exceptional.
Typically if you havn't made a profit after X amount of time then you are never going to. Where X is often considerably less than 7 years. A short copyright term is likely to be better at encouraging the creation of new works too.

Spider Robinson's Take on Perpetual Copyright

[Rollgunner]

Is well worth a read:

Melancholy Elephants

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[Hognoxious]

I think you missed off the third option - it doesn't have enough celebrity gossip, sports, alien abduction stories and birds with their tits out.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Hognoxious]

If we assume "useful arts" is olde-tyme speak for "engineering" that belongs with patents, not copyrights.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[Bearhouse]

Who reads The Economist? The same people who read any publication. Those that find it interesting and useful.
But also those who, broadly, tend to share it's viewpoint.

Their articles tend to be more balanced and more considered

I'm an Economist subscriber, and although I clearly enjoy it, would point out that the Economist does have strong right-wing, free-market bias IMHO.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If they are distributing the work, then it is still readily obtainable from them... I have no qualms with copyright holders charging money for their stuff, nor paying fees to access it, what I have a problem with is stuff that the copyright holder abandons, but still holds onto the copyright for and there is NO legal avenue through which to obtain it.

What's the difference between abandonment and charging a million dollar fee per copy?

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Bert64]

You need to ensure that the distribution is fair, for instance a company might decide that instead of stopping selling a given work, they will simply increase the price to such an unreasonable level that noone will consider buying it even tho technically they are still publishing it. They should be required to continue offering the work on the same or better terms.
There are also DRM schemes, whereby even tho a work is technically in the public domain it may be difficult for someone to exercise their rights in that area.
Also in this age of global communication, 5 years is an awfully long time.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[silanea]

I very much doubt that. The fines for their knockoffs of works by Shakespeare, Brothers Grimm and the likes alone would likely leave them with empty pockets.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Always! ;-)

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[TheLink]

When I first heard "Down Under", that bit reminded me of the kookaburra song. The song's called "Down Under" after all, so I thought the person who came up with the flute part intentionally wanted it to resemble the "kookaburra" song.

To me copyright and patent terms should be getting shorter and shorter instead of longer and longer since:
1) We're supposed to be encouraging progress and innovation right?
2) Marketing, distribution, manufacturing and outsourcing is supposedly easier nowadays right? ( http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/ )
3) So if you create something that people want, getting them to pay for it ASAP shouldn't be so hard.

Example: the recent Avatar movie did very well - it made 1 billion within one month.

If you need a 95 or 120 year monopoly to make enough money, IMO you should earn a living some other way. It's just bad economics - you are either not good at what you are doing and should do something else, or you are too greedy.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[devonbowen]

So your suggestion is that nothing good ever enters the public domain?

Devon

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[metacell]

*lol* *Pictures the Economist website, where authors type in their articles in web forms, and then the editors scour them to find something publishable*

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[metacell]

But your 2 year olds doodle with crayons and snot don't need automatic copyright protection that lasts until she dies of old age.

But my child will be the new Picasso when she grows up!

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[metacell]

What artist takes 14 years to complete a work, working full-time?

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Philip_the_physicist]

Mickey Mouse knock-off t-shirts are a trademark issue, not a copyright issue, which is an area which could do with reform but which is a separate (and far less important) area than copyright.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Hognoxious]

But copyright wasn't invented to repay them for the fruits of their labor, but to encourage things to be released to the public that wouldn't have been released without copyright.

Different sides of the same coin. The only difference is the relative timing.

If it would have been released anyway (the obvious stuff) then it shouldn't be copyrightable.

Define "obvious".

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[putaro]

You have to maintain the infrastructure for taking that million dollar payment. One of the difficulties in today's world is that many older works are still "under copyright" but you have no way of finding who owns them to license them, effectively taking them out of circulation.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Bert64]

Why should an artist be able to continue making money from some work he did 7 years ago? Copyright is intended to promote the arts, but letting an artist sit on his ass collecting money from work he did 7 years ago doesn't achieve that... Look at amy winehouse, hasn't produced any new material for 3+ years, wastes all her money getting completely off her face on drink and drugs setting a terrible example for young people and getting away with things that any non-celebrity would be thrown in jail for...

Doesn't anyone else think that artists should actually have to WORK for their money like anyone else? Not just sit around getting fucked up?

Incidentally, marketing media these days is a lot cheaper than it used to be thanks to the internet...

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Hognoxious]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.

I never knew airplanes, computers and cars existed in Queen Anne's reign.

But even if your premise (there was more progress withoout than with) is true that's far from proving that it was the absence of IP law that caused it. There have been a few minor changes in the world since Bacon and Newton...

Re:Grr

[metacell]

Screw getting paid for 95 year old work - I want to get paid for what my PARENTS did 95 years ago !

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[demonlapin]

Unless you're a really big author - Stephen King, James Patterson, Sue Grafton - no one of your books will pay your bills. Genre fiction like SF/F, for example, is just not the same as the mass market, and you might need three or four books generating royalties at a time in order to keep you going.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Hognoxious]

If you're anything to go by a second renaissance is just around the corner.

Re:In the year 2525

[metacell]

That's infringing, you insensitive clod!

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[dougisfunny]

But the rights holders would already be due that money. Just like The Verve "Bittersweet Symphony" all the money they made on it they lost, and they lost the rights to it. Disney wouldn't have enough money to pay off anyone.

For their animated feature films, the following they didn't have to get rights for but would have had to with a 500 year copyright term:

Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Alice in Wonderland
Beauty and the Beast
Cinderella
Fantasia
Fantasia 2000
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Jungle Book
Lion King
Little Mermaid
Make Mine Music
Oliver & Company
Pinocchio
possbibly Aladdin
possibly Fun and Fancy Free
Princess and the Frog
Sleeping beauty
Snow White
Tarzan
Treasure Planet
the yet to be released Tangled

And that doesn't even touch on their live action stuff, or on things where they didn't get the music rights to classical music.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[selven]

Hi, would you like to buy a copy of $BOOK_WE_NO_LONGER_CARE_ABOUT for $49,225?

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Bert64]

Cause and effect...
It's the other way round from what you state - if we'd had long copyright and patent terms earlier, then much of what we take for granted today would never have existed...
Even Bill Gates admitted this a few years ago, if software patents had existed when he first set out IBM would have patented anything worth having and MS (or anyone else for that matter) would never have been able to get anywhere...

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Bert64]

Mod parent up...

Commercial interests are often at odds with the greater good or even common sense... They only make sense in certain areas, and even there need to be controlled to prevent them distorting the market and becoming too powerful...

Look at healthcare, even the US is moving towards non commercial healthcare because the commercial model is simply flawed...
Consider drug research too...

It's simply more profitable to keep someone sick and coming back for continued treatments, there is no incentive to provide a cure as then that revenue stream would dry up unless they became sick again. Corporations will always do what's most profitable for themselves, even if that is detrimental to everyone else.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You have to maintain the infrastructure for taking that million dollar payment.

Which has zero effect on actually making that content available.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[delinear]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws

It's a little specious to imply that it was the lack of copyright and patent laws that caused this, no? I would contend that what really caused the greatest achievements in science and art is the ignorance/narrow culture preceding its creation.

You're missing the point - that the lack of copyright didn't cause this, obviously, but more crucially it didn't prevent it, either. None of the great artists/scientists of the period ever said, "Oh, I'm not going to get paid over and over for this one piece of work for the term of my life +95 years? Well, screw that, I'm becoming a banker", which disproves the oft-cited argument that artists need these guaranteed rights or they'd refuse to work. Sure there's risk for them because they often have to put in a lot of effort upfront without a guarantee of repayment later, but generally an artist will know whether their hard work has paid off decades before the current copyright expiration date.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Sparx139]

Well said.
Avatar - there's another work getting into crap over supposed plagarism. I'm kind of wondering how long it'll take one of the supposed authors of the "copied" works to try and stake a claim.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[pbhj]

A publisher can then cease to publish your work for 5 years and thus do away with copyright restrictions, they then republish without paying you (the author). You need to work in protection against such abuse IMO. Not that it would be widespread, as copyright works tend to be catching the zeitgeist, but it would be abused.

If I work 30 years on a book the publisher isn't going to worry about waiting 5 to get that book for free.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[pbhj]

Daily newspapers can commission the same authors/reporters to spend the same amount as the Economist does if they wish. They do not wish to. The fact that a publication is daily is not the reason they spend less time on articles. They could announce a scoop and then produce a proper article later.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[TheRaven64]

Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor

Speaking as someone who makes most of his income as a writer, I think you need to look a bit more closely at the economics involved. Publishers generally only look at the first three years of sales when deciding whether it's worth publishing something. This is when most of the profit is made. It's very rare for things more than seven years old to be making a significant income, and these things are generally works that made a massive profit during that time.

Take something like Harry Potter. The first book in the series is now more than 7 years old and is still in Amazon's top 500, which means that it's selling very well (the best I've managed in that list is around 7,000). However, J K Rowling made more from that book alone than most people make in a lifetime. At this point, there is no real incentive for her to finish the series - she could have lived quite happily on the earnings from just that book - but she did anyway. Each of the subsequent books made a similar amount. If copyright had been only 7 years, the start of the series would just be coming out of copyright now. I don't see J K being unable to eat or pay rent as a result of this.

At the other end of the scale is someone like me. Writing a book takes somewhere from a few weeks to six months. I expect to earn enough from the sales to cover my modest cost of living from that period. Like the publisher, I don't expect much income from a new book after about three years. My first book is just getting to that age, and has just hit the publisher's sales target. It's still selling in a trickle (and the Chinese translation is selling quite well too), but I probably wouldn't notice a reduction in income if the copyright expired now.

After four more years, quite frankly, if I'm still relying on income from something that I did seven years in the past, then I'd deserve to be unable to eat or pay rent. By then I expect to have written a lot more and to be being paid for my new work.

Sure, it would be great to be able to write one book and then milk it forever and never have to work again. I expect most people would like to be able to work for a few months and then get income from that work for the rest of their life too. That doesn't mean that it's fair, sensible, or rational that they should be allowed to.

There are two sides to the argument...

[divisionbyzero]

Traditionally supporters of long copyrights have claimed that unless the copyrights were for substantial amounts of time there would be no incentive to create (a similar arguments is made for patents, etc). Well, the other side of it is that if a company is continually reaping revenue from a copyright what's the motivation to create again? Giving people an opportunity to reap a just reward is one thing but ensuring them an entitlement is quite another. Reward is a great motivator but ruin is as well. Innovate or die.

Re:There are two sides to the argument...

[divisionbyzero]

You have no right or power to force an "innovate or die" choice on me or any other author. You can SAY it, but it's meaningless; a fart in a windstorm.

In most first-world countries, we authors earn control of our work for our lifetimes. After our death, our children control our work for some period as well (either 70 or 95 years, I believe, depending on country). This is a Very Good Thing. It prevents corporations from stealing our work right out from under us and making a profit that they did not earn.

So, regardless of what corporations are doing with their copyrights, copyrights are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to individual authors and creators, and the copyright terms the government enforces are quite well suited to our needs.

Incidentally, the "incentive to create" is not so much an incentive to create as an incentive to SHARE our creations. We would still create no matter what happened, but without copyright, we'd keep our creations to ourselves, benefiting only our families. Thanks to copyright, we're free to share our work with the rest of the world. We know our works will be protected by the government. We know our works are safe from interference or sabotage.

I'll leave you with 3 amusing thoughts.

Without Copyright, Bill Gates could take all the GNU utiliites and wrap them up in a proprietary closed source Windows 7 system, and there would be nothing Stallman could do about it.

Without Copyright, right-wingers could take respected history books, rewrite them, and republish them in place of the originals, making red states EVEN DUMBER.

Without copyright, if you were an author people could rewrite your books in any way they wanted, potentially ruining them and humiliating you; the risk of such a thing happening would drive you from the market entirely. The risk would be great; the internet is full of people who love being cruel to others for no good reason.

Get it yet? Do more thinking. Your philosophy is not yet mature.

Oh, I get it. Did you read what I wrote? Apparently not. I didn't say copyright should be eliminated.

Do more reading. Your skills are not yet mature.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

They might make most of the money in the first 2-3 years after publication. But ...

First, lately there has been a lot of talk about the long tail and I grok the arguments for it, second, as the artist I want to have a copyright on my art for at least as long as I live.

My proposal of life+7 years with a more costly renewal every 7 years is based on two reasons: First as long as I life I want to reap the fruits of my talent. If I or other artists decide to put something in the public domain before my death, hey even better. But this decision is mine or theirs to make. That's the reason for life.
+7 years is to discourage somebody to just kill me and make an early and unearned buck. If somebody has to wait until my heirs decide to not pay the renewal fees, lets call them royalities, after 7 years, that would discourage at least the people who are after the quick and easy money.
7 years strikes me as a reasonable timespan, it contains the lucky number 7, and if I, as an successful artist, die my death will push the sales of my pieces of art into the sky and beyond.
My heirs should profit some from this unlucky occurence.

The amount of royalities to pay for a renewal has to grow, so that it outgrows the profit gained from having the copyright at sometime in the foreseeable future. There may be better models for this outgrowing, but have i to do all the thinking?

As for the transfer of copyright to companys, I would equal this with the death of an artist. Companys want to be persons, but they ain't. They should have not all of the same rights as natural persons. On the other hand they are more capable of marketing and selling a piece of art/product and should be able to make a bit of cash for all the money the invest into their sponsored artists.

So for a natural person copyright till death+7years and progessivly more expensive renewal royalities, for companys 7 years from the transferal of copyright and progessivly more expensive renewal royalities.

If the artists decides to transfer the copyright into the public domain earlier or per last will, hey it's their decision as a human being.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[TheRaven64]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.

Absolutely! Well, unless you count antibiotics, electricity, computers, quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, the works of Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Johan Strauss, The Beatles, bob Dylan, the steam engine, the aeroplane, the hot air balloon, nuclear fission, recorded and broadcast sound and video, electromagnetism...

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

This may have been the reasoning in the year 1709, but nowadays you have to consider something like cost of living, long-term contracts and ROI for the sponsoring and creation of more art and science. Entertainement, art and science is no longer a hobby for the aristocracy, its big business.

Information wants to be free, but artists and scientists also want to be fed.
Copyright is needed to protect the rights of an artist or scientist from "theft", but as with everything capitalism gets it's dirty hands on, greed corrupts it.
Please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1612656&cid=31787862 for further arguments.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

If somebody is talented enough to make a work of art/an scientific discovery that pays for his living, you want to rob him of this lucky course of events? Do I smell a whiff of envy?

Look at it as something akin of winning the lottery, if you are lucky and get the jackpot, you can live the rest of your life happily ever after. Sometimes you win only enough to pay for the new car, sometimes you can only invite your SO to a fancy dinner.

Oddly, that is how we were set up

[WindBourne]

And for the EXACT SAME REASON. That is also why ppl like Ben Franklin invented his stove and then left it in public domain. So that an industry could be started from it. In addition, Walt Disney himself made heavy use of works that had gone into public domain. He likely would not have gotten off the ground except for that.

Re:Oddly, that is how we were set up

[Nimey]

To be fair, Franklin didn't need the money from patenting his stove.

Copyright is a deal

[Comboman]

Copyright is (or at least is supposed to be) a deal between the creator and society as a whole. We grant artists exclusive monopoly control (both financial and creative) on their creations for a limited time. In exchange, at the end of that time the work becomes part of the common cultural heritage and the property of the public (i.e. Public Domain) to be reproduced and expanded upon by others. If artists want the first part of the deal, they have to agree to the second part as well. If artists want to maintain absolute control of their work forever, they can do that by not publishing it.

When copyright terms were extended, a greater benefit was given to artists with no corresponding benefit to society. Returning copyright terms to reasonable periods of time restores the balance.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[infalliable]

That system wouldn't work. It is too hard to people to figure out whether something is copyrighted.

It needs to be much more cut an dry. Even the original 14+14 had some issues in that it's not originally apparent if something is copyrighted between year 15-28, but at least you know 28 yrs later it is public domain.

Does dead companies Copyrights default to the peop

[Joe The Dragon]

Does dead companies Copyrights default to the people any ways? What happens when a companies go under and no one buys the copyrights?

With characters like the Mouse

[night_flyer]

I can understand why the Mouse shouldn't be in the public domain, its still being used & still making money, but what about movies, games and books that are no longer producing any revenue for the owner (or anyone else for that matter)?

Im of the opinion that you should get a short initial copyright length. After that you need to pay a fee to keep it out of the public domain, which increases each time it comes up for renewal (every 5 years?), or tax it according to what it is worth at the time.

Re:With characters like the Mouse

[mcgrew]

I can understand why the Mouse shouldn't be in the public domain, its still being used & still making money

Then you misunderstand, and I shall quote the US Constitution: "The Congress shall have power... 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".

Not ownership, but a limited time monopoly. We, the people, own the created works, not Disney. Also note that it doesn't give anyone but authors and inventors any monopoly rights; Walt Disney and everyone else who made Steamboat Willie is dead, so too should any rights to that work. It should be in the public domain, as should anything made before 1990; before 1980 at the earliest.

The constitution doesn't allow one to sell or inherit a copyright; it gives Congress no such power to write such a law.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[infalliable]

The life +70 is pure greed.

If a work is going to make money, it is going to be in the first few years. Overall, it is rare for a work to continually make money for their owners for decades. Does anyone really buy the NYTimes bestseller from 10 years ago in any real quantity? They're all sold in the first 2-3 years. Disney wouldn't be making movies if it took them 20+ years to turn a profit. They make all their money back and substantial profit in the first year.

Just to point out how absurd the current copyright system is, here is a simple example (for the life+70 rule). Say I'm 25 when I write a novel, and I have a child that year. I live to 75, and each of my descendants has a child at 25. When the copyright on that original work expires, my great great great grandchild will be 20.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Jason Levine]

How many copies do they need to distribute? They could make a limited run of 25 copies every 5 years and keep their copyright while not letting many people own a copy. In addition, they could charge more than market price for the copies because they are "Super Special Limited Edition."

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[hitmark]

or insanities like a author that have an agreement with the publisher that copyright will revert to him if the book goes out of print, with the end result that you cant find the book anywhere, but the publisher still claims it being in print.

(C) term should be less than avg. human lifetime

[davidwr]

At the very maximum, "a limited time" should be the average lifespan of a child born at the time the work was created. Today that's 70-odd years.

What's the logic in this you ask?

If I create something you can argue that I and any heirs that are already alive should benefit from it for life, and you could make a weaker argument that direct heirs not yet born have a claim. By heirs I mean people, not organizations. By limiting it to the "average" rather than "actual" lifetime it provides greater certainty as to when copyrights expire.

Personally, I think 70-odd years is too long for complete control, it should be about half of this for complete control for most works, with mandatory licensing at some reasonable scheduled rate after that point for most works, and mandatory licensing at a likely higher rate when new works are used as a minor part of a greater work, such as a song used in a movie, technical documentation or journal publication is copied into a larger work, etc. The devil would be in the details of course.

This is separate from the problem of orphaned works, which is a whole 'nuther ball of wax.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[hitmark]

i wonder, would the clean room implementation of the bios, that compaq made for its PC clones back in the day, be acceptable today?

or would it get slapped silly by DMCA?

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[hitmark]

mostly those are the realm of patents, not copyright.

still, there have been issues where rapid improvements on basic ideas have been held back by patents. Like say steam engines, revolvers or airplanes.

Re: 3 years!?

[TaoPhoenix]

I'd say that's too aggressive. Because of the explosion of new everything, you may not even know something existed before that time period is up.

All the tl;dr TFA stuff we see here means that something wasn't yet appreciated. We know the best response to comments comes within the first 2 days of an article, so people race to post to get quality replies.

There's no easy answer, but I think commerciality is involved. I wish more artists would voluntarily offer stuff under CC attribute - noncommercial, and save the big-gun protection for their magnum opus.

Different types of works feel different too. Songs are quick. Listen to them 12 times, remix it, and forget about it in 6 months. Software is becoming ponderously cumulative, so even "8 year old software" is still a reference implementation. (Hello XP, and Win2000 before that.)

28 years for software would be interesting. In 2012 the very first public versions of MAC OS from 1984 would be up, aka the foundational underpinnings of today's computing. But the "modern foundation of Windows" aka Win 3.11 from about 1993 wouldn't be up until 2021.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[mark-t]

I hadn't initially thought of that, although it is trivially fixable by not permitting exclusive any publication agreements to last more than 1 year past the last date of publication.

Thomas Jefferson's perspective

[gweeks]

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without
darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the
globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his
condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by
nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without
lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe,
move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive
appropriation.

Thomas Jefferson

He was talking specifically about patents, but the idea is still relevant for copyright.

Copyright should be completely eliminated

[chainLynx]

http://questioncopyright.org/what_we_lose_when_we_embrace_copyright

Wait what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple laws? Ones normal people can understand and obey?

We simply cannot have that.

Sincerely,
Lawyers, Politicians

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[bertoelcon]

birds with their tits out.

I thought only mammals have tits.

Article contents

[seanthenerd]

...for future reference when the article gets locked: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15868004

Copyright and wrong
Why the rules on copyright need to return to their roots

Apr 8th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

WHEN Parliament decided, in 1709, to create a law that would protect books from piracy, the London-based publishers and booksellers who had been pushing for such protection were overjoyed. When Queen Anne gave her assent on April 10th the following year—300 years ago this week—to “An act for the encouragement of learning” they were less enthused. Parliament had given them rights, but it had set a time limit on them: 21 years for books already in print and 14 years for new ones, with an additional 14 years if the author was still alive when the first term ran out. After that, the material would enter the public domain so that anyone could reproduce it. The lawmakers intended thus to balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has in free access to knowledge and art. The Statute of Anne thus helped nurture and channel the spate of inventiveness that Enlightenment society and its successors have since enjoyed.

Over the past 50 years, however, that balance has shifted. Largely thanks to the entertainment industry’s lawyers and lobbyists, copyright’s scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years’ protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”. They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.

Annie get your gun

Lengthy protection, it is argued, increases the incentive to create. Digital technology seems to strengthen the argument: by making copying easier, it seems to demand greater protection in return. The idea of extending copyright also has a moral appeal. Intellectual property can seem very like real property, especially when it is yours, and not some faceless corporation’s. As a result people feel that once they own it—especially if they have made it—they should go on owning it, much as they would a house that they could pass on to their descendants. On this reading, protection should be perpetual. Ratcheting up the time limit on a regular basis becomes a reasonable way of approximating that perpetuity.

The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work’s dissemination, impact and influence. It can be difficult to locate copyright holders to obtain the rights to reuse old material. As a result, much content ends up in legal limbo (and in the case of old movies and sound recordings, is left to deteriorate—copying them in order to preserve them may constitute an act of infringement). The penalties even for inadvertent infringement are so punishing that creators routinely have to self-censor their work. Nor does the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of protection. Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for protection.

The moral case, although easy to sympathise with, is a way of trying to have one’s cake and eat it. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. From 1710 onwards, it has involved a deal in which the creator or publisher gives up any natural and perp

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[mcgrew]

The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws.

Patents and copyrights don't cover science, patents cover technology and copyright covers the arts. The biggest and most important achievents in science and technology have happened in the 20th century*, but artistic achievement is debatable. If patents lasted as long as copyrights, technological progress would come to a standstill.

To tell people that they cannot freely share the ideas of another person for one hundred years...it just seems to fly in the face of advancement.

Ideas can't be patented or copyrighted.

If 14 years was considered an adequate amount of time to capitalize on an idea back then, before the days of speedy digital distribution (and speedy analog distribution!), why is it so long now?

Because corporations all over the workd have bribed and hornswoggled politicians all over the world.

* The world my grandmother was born in, in 1903, was not much different than it was for people 1000 years earlier; kerosine lamps, horses, blacksmiths, hand tools, no such thing as antibiotics. The Write brothers flew the year she was born, and she lived to see men land on the moon. Progress in just my lifetime has outstripped all progress that came before I was born. Hell, most of the "impossible" futuristic stuff in the original Star Trek has come to pass. When I had my tonsils out when I was six, they put me out with ether -- automotive starting fluid, incredibly primitive. See Sickness, pain, and death. And Star Trek for what it's like today. Technology is advancing at an incredible pace.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[molo]

So it would be okay for them to offer for sale at $1000 per copy a DVD of a movie? That won't work.

-molo

The length of US Copyright Law

[Delusion_]

It was originally fourteen years, and swiftly amended to twenty eight years.

If fourteen years was originally considered sufficient protection when culture traveled at the speed of horseback, then five years is more than sufficient when culture travels at the speed of light down a fiber optic cable.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[Nesman64]

"Just released from the Disney Vault, a timeless classic that now your children can enjoy."
Seems like this would do the trick.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Smauler]

Your assumption is that artists should have absolute control over their work, which many people here, including myself disagree with. You haven't actually given a reason _why_ you should reap the benefits of your work for the rest of your life by using a government enforced monopoly.

OpenMouse

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I've already registered the domain "openmouse.org" and am just waiting for copyright reform to happen so I can release my Creative Commons version of Mickey!

Some things are over 120 years

[davidwr]

"Life plus 95 years" can mean things written or photographed nearly 200 years ago could theoretically be under copyright if they weren't published until 1923.

The most likely candidates would be childhood or early-adult works by famous people that were not published until after 1923 and whose copyrights were renewed when necessary, and whose creator died less than 95 years ago.

Hypothetical example: A political leader or other famous person who died at a very old age in 1924 and whose life works back to childhood were published under copyright shortly before or after his death and whose estate renewed the copyrights. We could be talking pre-(US)-Civil-War stuff here.

On a more real note, there was a photograph related to a famous person, I think Anne Frank, first published 2-4 years ago. The "120 year presumption of public domain" would have lapsed in 2008 or 2009, but it was unclear initially if it was already in the public domain when it was published.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[david_thornley]

No, there are birds called "tits". I found out that the Great Tit Watching Society is not nearly as interesting as it sounds. Much like "strip mall".

Re:Idea is right implementation is wrong

[PeterJFraser]

There should be a fee to renew, and it should be an ever increasing fee. The first 7 years would be free and automatic. The next 7 years relatively cheap say $100, and the fee would double for each renewal, so at 70 years the fee would $50000 (inflation adjustments should also occur).

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[tool462]

Yes, they do have an economic/business bias, as would be expected by the title. But even then it tends to avoid a dogmatic approach to most issues (all regulation is 100% bad, etc), and they'll have a reasonable argument when discussing issues of regulation, taxation, monetary policy, etc that doesn't always fall along, say, libertarian policy lines. Yes, they are blatantly pro-capitalism and anti-communism, but balanced to me does not mean equal time for all sides, but rather a rational discussion of the issues they do examine. To put it another way, I've never come away from an Economist article angry about blatant misrepresentation of the facts or feeling that I'm being manhandled into a certain viewpoint, whether or not I agree with it. I also don't get the impression that the Economist has a monolithic viewpoint. I've read articles covering similar topics that reach different conclusions within the same issue.

Re:Who reads The Economist?

[bertoelcon]

So birds have ruined boobies and tits now? We need a new word then.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[AK Marc]

This may have been the reasoning in the year 1709, but nowadays you have to consider something like cost of living, long-term contracts and ROI for the sponsoring and creation of more art and science.

You state 1709 and compare it today, as if 1709 was the last year that would apply. You should at least use 1790, when the provisions I'm talking about were ratified.

Additionally, are you arguing what should be, or what should be legal? For one, I'd argue that "life of the author" is not a limited time. That everyone born over 150 years ago is currently dead doesn't mean that everyone alive will be dead within 150 years (or even 1500 years). Aging is a disease, which, at some point, could be cured. Not to mention it's widely varying between people. Why do you think young people should get more value than old people? Why should there be any term past death if the copyright has been held for more than 14 years? Why do you allow transfers to corporations when the Constitution explicitly states that it secures "rights" to the author? You can't transfer your right to vote, so why can you transfer your right of copyright? Are you asserting what you would like to see, without regard to current laws and the Constitution, or talking about what's legal? It seems you answered my "this seems to be legal" discussion of the Constitution and legal framework for copyright, and your response seems to be "but that's bad" without explicitly addressing anything I've ever written. Are you disagreeing with what I said the Constitution says, or disagreeing that I said we should follow the Constitution or change it?

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[cpt kangarooski]

Require authors to register their works if they want copyrights for published works (have, say, a 1 year deadline from the date of publication to the date of filing), to renew those copyrights annually (or perhaps biannually) to keep them, to register transfers of copyright to others in order that the transfer might be effective, and to print identifying information in their works upon publication (e.g. title of work, year of publication, name of author) and more information (i.e. copyright application number, copyright registration number) once that information is issued to the author.

Copyrights traditionally have had registration, renewal, and notice requirements. Patents have registration, renewal, and notice requirements. Trademarks, if registered, have renewal and notice requirements. Real property requires deeds to be filed and records to be maintained with the government. Certain personal property, such as cars and boats, are usually the subject of recordkeeping requirements.

It's not an unusual requirement, it needn't be costly or time-consuming or difficult, and it is traditional. And it solves the problem: if you want to know whether something published is copyrighted in the US, a quick search based on the registration number or other identifying information will tell you. Unpublished, unregistered works would still be a bit tricky, but it would help to limit protections on such works so as to encourage authors to publish or perish, as it were. Unpublished works don't benefit the public, after all, so we don't want to encourage authors to let works molder in such a state. The only reason to even minimally protect them is to let authors finish a work, then shop it around without having to fear someone pirating the manuscript.

No. The length of copyright MUST be predictable

[symbolset]

Straightening out exactly when a work is no longer covered is already nearly impossible - which would be a serious problem if any more works were expected to expire ever. Introducing different terms or other complexities just inserts opportunities for hair splitting legal practice and that's not in the public interest as it drives up the cost and risk of absolutely everything. So the date on the copyright notice should start the clock, and run to a set limit and no more. If an author wants to revise his own work while he lives, call that a new work and register it again, that should be fine - but on expiration day the original in its original form is public domain. I think people would pay for the newer version for as long as the author lived, though his authorship might convey less of a premium on revisions to expired versus new works - as it should to inspire him to get back to work.

Also we should be rid of anonymous copyright, automatic copyright, and free copyright. If you can't be bothered to put your name on it and upload it to the copyright office it ought not be considered protected in any way whatever. Keeping track of who owns what costs money - that's why you have to register your car and your real estate and pay the associated fees for recording and transfer, and copyright should be no different. The fees should cover the cost of storage, retrieval, transfer of title, maintenance and overhead not just of the material, but all of the various costs of all of the courts who have to handle this stuff - plus a tax to the general fund to cover enforcement if there's to be any. TANSTAAFL. No free lunch.

And on copyright expiration day the files should be moved over to the Library of Congress for public distribution. No exceptions. Because that's what we get for giving you a temporary monopoly - your contributions to our culture upon which to build our own creations as you built on the ones who went before you. Because that's the "progress of science and the useful arts" that the monopoly is supposed to promote.

Re:No, it's just as worthy killing them now

[Miseph]

Fixed length implies that death or other arbitrary events are irrelevant. 20 years is 20 years is 20 years.

Muzak

[tepples]

IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DON'T WATCH/READ/LISTEN TO IT

How do I not listen to it if it's blaring over the speakers in every grocery store?

Intellectual property tax

[tepples]

Of course, the problem with that is that someone who doesn't want to bother distributing any more, but doesn't want their stuff to fall into public domain can just make a webpage saying "one copy of book - 10 trillion dollars".

There's a solution to copyright owners overvaluing their works: a tax on unused copyrights proportional to such self-assessed value. If the copyright maximalists want copyrights to be more like real estate, remind them that real estate has a property tax.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

Because it's my work and I want to reap some benefit from it? The products of my brain are, at least for me, akin to my children. And nobody else but me should have a right of control over my children, at least until they are old enough to decide for themselve.

People are motivated by base instincts and one of these is hunger. I want to eat, I want to have a roof over my head etc. True artists create art just for the sake of it, see e.g. van Gogh. True scientists just want to know why, see e.g. Tesla.
We are currently living in a capitalistic society. Everything has it's price. Some people sell the power of their muscle, some people sell the power of their brain. If a work of art/ scientific breakthrough/ brilliant idea is perceived to have a worth, why should the originator of this product not gain some profit from his work?

So why life? It seems a natural boundary.

Wise people will see that, if an idea is shared and multiplied, it will blossom and become more, see e. g. the proliferation of the WWW. So I suppose, that great ideas will be put into the public domain before the originator dies. If this does not happen, one reason might be greed.

That I have a copyright over my work does not mean that others shall not benefit from my ideas, but at least I want something in return for it.

Sorry for the late reply, but Error 503 raised it's ugly head.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

You state 1709 and compare it today, as if 1709 was the last year that would apply. You should at least use 1790, when the provisions I'm talking about were ratified.

For my mentioning of 1709, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne, the base for the provision ratified 1790.

IANAL, and so I just voice my opinion on the matter of copyright.

For one, I'd argue that "life of the author" is not a limited time.

for the foreseeable future it is. There may by quantum leaps in medical science in the next 50 or 1500 years, but I will not benefit from them.
My proposal is just a suggestion to mitigate some harms or problems currently visible. We might have to iterat the wording of our laws a bit more, maybe every 7 years?

Why do you think young people should get more value than old people?

Because they have a longer time to enjoy the fruits of their labor?

Why should there be any term past death if the copyright has been held for more than 14 years?

With the same reasoning as for normal inheritance of physical objects?

Why do you allow transfers to corporations when the Constitution explicitly states that it secures "rights" to the author? You can't transfer your right to vote, so why can you transfer your right of copyright?

Ah, playing with words and their meaning. IANAL, but from my point of view, right of copyright and right to vote are two different shoes. I'm sure a flock of lawers may argue, that you have the right to sell/transfer your work, i.e. right of copyright, but not the right to sell/transfer your will, i.e. right to vote.

Are you asserting what you would like to see, without regard to current laws and the Constitution, or talking about what's legal? It seems you answered my "this seems to be legal" discussion of the Constitution and legal framework for copyright, and your response seems to be "but that's bad" without explicitly addressing anything I've ever written. Are you disagreeing with what I said the Constitution says, or disagreeing that I said we should follow the Constitution or change it?

As you may have seen from my eamil-adress, I'm not a citizen of the US and so I'm not well versed with the wording of its Contitution and interpretation of it's wording. I can just state, that laws are not always in the best interest of the citizens the law relates to and times and laws and Constitution have to evolve. Revolutions happen, some people are put against walls, and hopefully we will learn from our errors in the past.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[AK Marc]

Ah, playing with words and their meaning. IANAL, but from my point of view, right of copyright and right to vote are two different shoes. I'm sure a flock of lawers may argue, that you have the right to sell/transfer your work, i.e. right of copyright, but not the right to sell/transfer your will, i.e. right to vote.

Yes, it's just semantics, but 99% of language meaning is semantics. The rights are secured to the authors. A corporation isn't an author. They can't "secure" copyrights because they can't author anything.

And no "rights" may be assigned. If copyright is a right, then they can't sell it. I'm not saying they can or can't, but by definition, if they actually do, they they can't call it a right. And people with arguments seem to be arguing that it's a natural ownership to own ideas, or a right to control what they create or such. So I was addressing part of that philosophy, not anything specific you said.

As you may have seen from my eamil-adress, I'm not a citizen of the US and so I'm not well versed with the wording of its Contitution and interpretation of it's wording.

Then take my word for it, your ideas are illegal in the US. It would take a constitutional amendment to allow for your ideas to be legal. And the basis of the idea in the Constitution is clear in its purpose and methods, and "profit" was never a motive for copyright except so far as that profit encourages the creation of more works. If the profit is excessive for that purpose, it is illegal. If the term isn't "limited" then the law is illegal. Retroactive extensions for an unlimited time seem to violate that, but the court said that so long as the number is finite, it doesn't matter. Though I expect that if there is another extension, there will be another court case that will address this for clarification.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Smauler]

The products of my brain are, at least for me, akin to my children. And nobody else but me should have a right of control over my children, at least until they are old enough to decide for themselve.

Not really the best of analogies. You do not, for example, have complete control over your children - you are not free to abuse them for example.

If a work of art/ scientific breakthrough/ brilliant idea is perceived to have a worth, why should the originator of this product not gain some profit from his work?

I'm not saying they shouldn't. However, I am paying taxes to the government so that they can enforce the artificial monopoly that is copyright so that you can benefit. Also, you're implying that without copyright it would be impossible to gain profit from your work. That's not the case.

So why life? It seems a natural boundary.

Because it's way too long. 90% of copyright protected works make 90% of their money in the first few years, so it's pretty unnecessary too.

Wise people will see that, if an idea is shared and multiplied, it will blossom and become more, see e. g. the proliferation of the WWW. So I suppose, that great ideas will be put into the public domain before the originator dies. If this does not happen, one reason might be greed.

The www is a good example of an invention that has not relied on copyright, yet still has netted its inventor a good profit. Much of that profit is not direct - people don't pay to use or write it - however, indirectly, Tim Berners-Lee has become relatively wealthy as a result. I'd venture to say that had he restricted the www's use via copyright, it would never have become the success it has.

You seem to feel that you have an automatic right to say how something you've sold or given to someone else is used. This right is not automatic, it is entirely artificial, and enforced by the government. I personally agree with copyright, I think it does encourage artists to produce and release work to the public. However, the entire point of copyright originally was to foster this release to the public, and now it is having the opposite effect because of the ludicrously long terms, and nothing is getting released at all.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

A corporation isn't an author. They can't "secure" copyrights because they can't author anything.

Why not? Last time I looke at the back of a game there was (c) Company. So they can allready secure a copyright. For the sake of argument let's assume that a company is a conglomerate of authors, who decided to merge their individual copyrights into one, to simplifiy the handling of their right. Since companys are not natural people, f.e. they may exist for longer than a humans life, I split the length of copyright for natural people, i.e. authors (life+7 years+paid extensions), and for companys (7 years+paid extensions).
We may argue about the length of the term, but I would argue, that 7 years is a reasonable length of time. This timespan is even mentioned in the bible for the freeing of slaves. If you don't want to pay for your copyright as an company after 7 years, the work will fall into the public domain, if you pay it doesn't, but you have to pay more every time you want to extend the time you can gain profit, to counter greed.

if they actually do, they they can't call it a right. And people with arguments seem to be arguing that it's a natural ownership to own ideas, or a right to control what they create or such.

Copyright law has its origins in the license by the king to make copies and distribute prints. So it should be called permission to make copies and sell them. Somehow this got shortend into copyright.

Then take my word for it, your ideas are illegal in the US. It would take a constitutional amendment to allow for your ideas to be legal.

Since when can ideas be illegal? Do you have thought crime in the US? There allready have been precendeces for amendments to the constitution, that rectified errors, or to be more precise no longer valid assumptions about the way the world works. In Germany we have the "Grundgesetz" which is akin to the Constitution. It can be changed by a 3/4 majority, except for the first 21 articles.
If a law is against the spirit of the Grundgesetz it will be struck down by the Bundesverfassunggericht (constitutional court) as has the Voratsdatenspeicherungsgesetz in February.

Re:Most nonsensical argument

[Kong the Medium]

Also, you're implying that without copyright it would be impossible to gain profit from your work. That's not the case.

Without copyright there is no incentive to go public with my works, because other people will steal it. I, as an author, can't produce the necessary physical representations of my work, a huge company can and will, if it sees a chance for profit just flood the market with cheap copys, if i don't have the protection of copyright law.

Because it's way too long. 90% of copyright protected works make 90% of their money in the first few years, so it's pretty unnecessary too.

That's the reason, lifelong copyright exists only for natural persons, not for companys. Natural people will get life+7years+paid extensions, if they transfer their copyright to a company or a company copyrights the work of it's personell, it will be 7years+paid extensions.
To deny authors a lifelong right to copyright seems to me to be akin to communism.

I'd venture to say that had he restricted the www's use via copyright, it would never have become the success it has.

So we concur on this.

You seem to feel that you have an automatic right to say how something you've sold or given to someone else is used.

Yes I have. You don't have a right to steal my brain's children. If you use them fairly, do as you please, but don't use them to make a profit without paying me a share.

This right is not automatic, it is entirely artificial, and enforced by the government.

Every "right" is artificial. Without a code of law or goverment to enforce this rights, the one with the bigger gun will have it's way.

I personally agree with copyright, I think it does encourage artists to produce and release work to the public. However, the entire point of copyright originally was to foster this release to the public, and now it is having the opposite effect because of the ludicrously long terms, and nothing is getting released at all.

I agree. So we have to modify copyright law, to shorten the terms, which i have done by splitting the length of copyright between natural persons, i.e. authors and companys, who will not die.

Reminder

[cffrost]

Dear Mr. Wow, please remember to renew your subscription to The Economist.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[TheLink]

Plagiarism? I watched Avatar for the graphics. Not for the plot or idea. A frigging computer program could generate the plotline/ideas[1].

It resembles other works as much as the other works resemble each other.

What next? Some pizza company suing another pizza company for making their pizza taste like pizzas?

Cheesy stuff has been done for ages.

I doubt a Michelin chef is ever going to claim Frozen Supermarket Pizza Co made a billion dollars ripping off his recipe for melted cheese, pepperoni and dough ("invented" back when he was young and thought he was great).

FWIW, most inventors who patent stuff are like 6 year old kids who just came up with the innovative idea for a ham and cheese sandwich.

This guy here must be pretty disappointed at how stupid we all still are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#Anecdotal_Notes

Too bad for him, humanity hasn't booted to the next stage yet. That's his dream I think. I doubt he's so disappointed that he didn't make billions from the mouse.

[1] There are computer programs that invent stuff - provide a bunch of parameters and they can vary them to find various "interesting" points.

Re:I have no problem with longer copyright terms..

[mark-t]

Yes it would... as long as they did this for at least 6 months every 5 years.

That said, although I don't have a problem with longer copyright terms, I don't think they should be interminable... personally, I'd draw the limit at 50 years past the first publication.

Re:Science & art flourished better w/o copyrig

[Hognoxious]

mostly those are the realm of patents, not copyright.

GP: "before the existence of copyright and patent laws".

still, there have been issues where rapid improvements on basic ideas have been held back by patents. Like say steam engines, revolvers or airplanes.

It wasn't many years between the Wright brothers' flight that planes were in common military use. i don't see that it was held back at all. As for steam engines, I see nothing to back up your claim.