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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.'"
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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?
You know, as an Economist author, I'm very offended by the implication that
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.