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Russian President: Time To Reform Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "While most of the rest of the world keeps ratcheting up copyright laws by increasing enforcement and terms, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appears to be going in the other direction. He's now proposing that Russia build Creative Commons-style open and free licenses directly into Russian copyright law. This comes just a few days after he also chided other G8 leaders for their antiquated views on copyright."
Fifteen to twenty year terms would be a more than adequate incentive for the creation of new works, as well as providing a huge catalogue of new public domain works every year which would, in turn, stimulate further creative re-use. Essentially infinite terms coupled with DRM that is illegal to remove have very little impact on infringement, but they practically obliterate the possibility of legitimate resale or re-use that would actually help the industry as a whole.
I think even 15 to 20 years is too long. To me it makes more sense to have a very short initial term, say 5 years (which can change depending on industry circumstances, e.g. motion pictures might get longer terms than music because of heavier initial investments). Then rights holders may extend the term by another year at a small cost (say $100). To extend a second year, the cost doubles. Then again, and again. As long as the ownership of the rights remains profitable, it's worth extending, but the exponential increase in price means that the ownership of those rights will become untenable pretty quickly ($102400 within 15 years of original date). You can even put a cap on the maximum term duration, again, possibly different for different industries.
The idea being, that if your idea hasn't paid off by the end of the initial term, it was probably crap anyway. At least everyone else thought it was! Your work can be considered the equivalent a defective material product; something for which nobody should be forced to pay, but can freely use the parts of to repair something that does, i.e. remixing. If your idea has paid off, you can hang on to it for as long as it stays profitable, but there's a check/balance that ensures others will eventually get access to your work. Also, as the costs of keeping the rights increases, the government, and indirectly the taxpayer, benefit from the profits of the work too