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EU Parliament Group Opposes Long Copyrights and Oppressive DRM
the_arrow writes "Apparently there are some politicians who 'get it.' At least it seems that way after reading an entry on the blog of Rick Falkvinge (founder of the Swedish Pirate Party). He says the Green party group, fifth largest in the European Parliament, has officially adopted several of the Pirate Party's stances in a new position paper (PDF). The Greens say, 'the copyright monopoly does not extend to what an ordinary person can do with ordinary equipment in their home and spare time,' adding that a 20-year protection term is more reasonable than 70 years. They go on to say, 'Net Neutrality must be guaranteed,' and also mention DRM: 'It must always be legal to circumvent DRM restrictions, and we should consider introducing a ban in the consumer rights legislation on DRM technologies that restrict legal uses of a work.'"
and there were some people who thought a "pirate party" is crazy and nobody will vote for them. The old saying is always true "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Well, for the Green Party they skipped the 3rd step.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
They're just trying to get Big Media to toss some cash their way.
"getting it" and doing something about it are 2 different things. Poloticians can talk the talk, hardly do they ever walk the walk.
1. Masterpiece (Potter/Tolkien/Shakespeare/Jane Austen/Picasso etc.) These usually make a tone of money in the first 5 years - or don't make any till after the author is dead. In either case, there is no point in extending the length of the copyright. It won't affect the author significantly, either way.
2. Profitable, but not masterpieces. These make their money in the first year, and then fade out quick. By the 5th year, it is practically nothing. But they might do a sequel, which can extend profits. Still, 10 years after the first original work, it won't matter. Either the series has made someone very rich, or their new profits come from the new books, not the old ones.
3. Not profitable. Not in 1 year, not in 10, not in 20, not in 70. NEVER profitable.
There is zero reason to extend copyrights past 10 years, let alone 20.
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Perhaps you should actually read the summary. The founder of the pirate party is talking about something much larger green party has taken a position on.
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The proposal in the Swedish Pirate Party's program is 5 years from publication. I don't know why the Greens in the EP thought that they needed 20 years, but either way it's infinitely better than today's life + 70 years which is usually 3 or 4 generations from publication and is obviously insane.
The problem is that there are more in every government that can be (and are) bought by the media conglomerates.
The pirate party is a member of the Green group in the EP. The group as a whole has adopted the position described.
No, the article is about the copyright policies adopted by the Green group with 56 elected representatives in the highest legislative body of the European Union. Which happen to coincide to a large degree with the copyright policies of the Swedish Pirate Party, probably because they have a MEP who is a member of the Green group.
Which one does Disney fall under?
Disney would generally fall under masterpieces. They are already highly profitable within 5 years, so we don't need to give them more than 5 years to convince them that it's a worthwhile investment.
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If we could just get *SOME* politicians here in the states to understand that... It's a shame the entertainment industry has so many of them in their pockets...
* The US of A, the best government that money can buy....
With Hollywood accounting, all movies are failures on paper.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=star+wars+david+prowse+profit
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I wonder if the comparatively weak global demand for any entertainment media coming out of the EU helps explain the hostility to American IP principles? :)
No but common sense does.
Content creatores make content, big media makes money, big media evades taxes.
Perhaps I am a minority here, but I see prolonged copyright protection is a good thing. I don't want my nurtured stuff to be sold on some thieves bazaar by hoarders and internet opportunists. Why would anybody be against copyright? What is the motivation against it? What is their plan? To release and disseminate our works for free under tenancy of untouchable server masters? A pirate world reigned by some advertisement fed vultures serving our hard work over the Internet?
I'd go so far as to say there's no reason to have copyright for ANY number of years.
The discrete value of a copy of information is zero.
Business models need to change to cope with a technology that is far, far more deeply revolutionary than the invention of the printing press ever was; after all, for all it's percieved game-changing nature, the Gutenberg press, and all that came after it, merely puts information on paper, just like the scribes before it.
Interestingly, without changing business model to access-control-by-production (as opposed to the "current" -- now functionally obsolete -- access-control-by-individual-copy), producers faced with shortened copyright terms may not have as much money on hand to produce new works, since all the funding for new works comes from people paying for otherwise worthless copies of previous works. Hopefully there'll be a smooth transitional phase where works shift from "funded by production company" -> "funded partially by production company and partially by audience" -> "funded by audience."
Probably not, though.
American IP principles? That's a good one. The US had much weaker laws than most of Europe for over a century (Berne convention was 1886, and the US joined in 1988, and we didn't really pass Europe up until the DMCA in 1996). During that period, global demand for US entertainment media rose dramatically. Perhaps some Europeans were paying attention and realized if they had a more permissive culture, they might get their own Hollywood.
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Harry Potter is a masterpiece? When did that happen?
I'm sure I'm feeding a troll here, but ... my interpretation is ...
Their stance is that both the public (consumers in your statement above) and creators have rights. Creators' exclusive rights should not be for an absurdly-long period, but if a particular property proves to be profitable the creator has the option to extend their exclusive rights for a nominal cost. In any case all rights revert to the public within approximately one generation.
To me this seems like a very realistic and sensible way to handle copyright.
And it is worth noting that the Scottish National Party are part of the Green group, and they are the party of government in Scotland. However copyrights are a reserved matter for the Westminster Parliament, so it doesn't help Scotland that much.
Having said that, the Liberal Democrats, part of the coalition government in Westminster and part of the Liberal group in Europe which is the third largest party there, have very favourable views on the Digital Economy Act that was passed by the previous administration here.
IMO, the law on DRM should be this: you can protect your property with DRM or you can protect your property with copyright law but not both. If you elect to protect your property with DRM, you can still seek injunctions or collect real damages but you are no longer eligible for statutory damages under copyright law.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Do your creative endeavors require eternal copyright to be profitable? I would love if people could use my 20 year old code, for me that was a mix of perl and c with a lot of assembler for odd processors/platforms. Creators have the rights they were artificially given by copyright law pre printing press there were no real protections. You always have the choice to not publish or only publish to a select clientele. It's not property it was artificially made into something resembling property by act of law. DRM is poised to destroy our common culture, were unable to run applications from 25 years ago in some cases already. None of this is going to particularly impact revenue. If anything a shorter length of copyright is a reason to create more rather than sitting on ones laurels.
No sir I dont like it.
I didn't read the article, but where do you get the creators don't have rights from?
From the legal DRM circumvention? Which is, I buy a CD, I rip the CD and store it on my PC. Not the I go to TPB and download the CD. Remember the word legal.
Or from only getting paid for your work for 20 years after? Can you point me to any artist that after 20 years still gets paid from his work but didn't already earn enough money on it before that 20 years was over? And I am talking about revenue from CD sales, not from live performance.
About thirty years from now.
in keeping with his theme of mentioning authors by (mostly) surname, we can only assume he is speaking of
alexandra potter, not that no-talent hack rowling.
I don't want my nurtured stuff to be sold on some thieves bazaar by hoarders and internet opportunists.
And I want free ponies, doesn't mean the government should spend taxpayer money forcing confiscating and giving me them.
Why would anybody be against copyright?
They're not. They're for a more limited copyright. One which doesn't impose an unreasonable burden on the government and on society.
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The creators (or rather publishers) have far more rights than they ever should have to begin with. The systems in place have been abused to the point that we won't see half the things from our childhood enter the public domain in our lifetimes. DRM makes everything a pain in the ass and they know damn well they aren't stopping piracy but instead making it a hassle for normal people to use their devices the way they see fit. These practices need to be shot down now. To say that content owners are being granted NO rights is ridiculous. They're being regulated back to sane levels again where they can no longer be hostile assholes to their customers.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Believe it or not, this is to follow a proposition originally made by Stallman. He said that one must be careful if you want to preserve free software while limiting copyright.
The proposal is therefore that an author gets a minimum of 5 years of exclusive commercial exploitation of his work but can get 10 or 20 years if he authorizes (from the start) derivative works under a free license.
In the absolute I think it is a good idea, and politically it gives room for negotiation, which is always a good thing. Anyway, even during the 5 years period, non-commercial filesharing would be perfectly legal.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Never forget that. Long copyright steals our public domain.
Before digital distribution, 5-7 years was considered an adequate amount of time to monopolize an idea. You'd think that number would go down with faster distribution because the creator could get it out there faster.
Mathematically, 14 years it the optimal time.
And you are pretty naive about the publishing industry. Sometimes as book won't find a market for years.
You also ignore the new economy where the long tails is, effective, infinite.
Which means books that didn't mkae money* and got buried will ba available for years.
Potter, masterpiece? please. It's an enjoyable series, but the story is simple, and the dialog is often like listening to kids talk like what they think an an adult would talk like as a kid.
Potter is an interesting example in that the first book is still make a lot of money for the author. and will for quite some time.
However, the issue isn't money, it's culture. With Potter, she has made so much money, they having the first book go into public domain will not harm her. remember , the reason we have copyright they way we have it was the 'widow' argument.... which was effectively the 'think of the children' argument 200 years ago.
It was about the poor widow not starving to death because her husband dies and she can't make any money.
Many of the founding fathers didn't want copyright because of it's abuse in Europe. F only the mandated a length. sigh.
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Perhaps I am a minority here, but I see prolonged copyright protection is a good thing. I don't want my nurtured stuff to be sold on some thieves bazaar by hoarders and internet opportunists. Why would anybody be against copyright? What is the motivation against it? What is their plan? To release and disseminate our works for free under tenancy of untouchable server masters? A pirate world reigned by some advertisement fed vultures serving our hard work over the Internet?
Copyright is a kind of social contract between creators and society. You want to create and not be burdended by the thought of your work falling into the public domain after x years ? Go live in a cave with the savages. Problem solved. Copyright is not a one way sign to eternal profit.
We can debate on the length of copyright, but one thing is sure, copyright should never extend beyond the death of the author/artist/musician/etc...
Which happen to coincide to a large degree with the copyright policies of the Swedish Pirate Party, probably because they have a MEP who is a member of the Green group.
It should be noted that the Greens were already fairly critical and that is why the Pirate Party joined it rather than be an independent, but I'm glad to see they're moving in the Pirate Party's direction. For all those that don't know the EP though, it has 736 representatives so the Greens in total are 7.5%, obviously fighting most for their green policies. They're a long way from changing EU politics, but hopefully they can at least be the critical voice.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Of course, a lot of Stallman's concerns and hypothetical were rooted in EULAs. While I often find myself in agreement with him, I think it's simpler to just make certain elements of EULAs unenforceable. Another alternative might be that copyright degrades over time. For example, you only get 5 years for the right to prevent derivative works, 10 years for outright copies.
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"I'd go so far as to say there's no reason to have copyright for ANY number of years."
False, or -1 you don't get it.
W/O copyright, how many people would have published the Harry Potter books? How many would have given the author a single cent?
You're argument is why the middle man will go away.
It will never be funded by the audience, it will be funded buy the author.
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I lol'ed
Putting Potter next to Shakespeare makes literature majors cry. Sure, Potter isn't bad, but DAMN.
You wrote Perl 20 years ago? wow. I assume you also own a Delorian that can get up to 88 mph?
That was the snide remark I was going to reply with, then I realized, SHIT I wrote Perl 20 years ago. I can't believe it's been 20 years. Shit.
Now get off my Primordial Soup.
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For most people on here, the issue isn't the existence of copyright - not even the summary states that. The issue is the fact that, in America and apparently the EU, most works copyrighted in our lifetimes will not enter the public domain until the overwhelming majority of us are dead. In America, the copyright laws have essentially ensured that the songs I hear on the radio today won't enter the public domain until my grandchildren are due for retirement.
Ideally, the working principle of copyrights should enable the author to recoup their time and monetary investments in a work, and then provide a platform upon which subsequent works can be based. If copyright worked the way it is supposed to, sampling in the style of Timbaland (roughly one old song sampled per new song) wouldn't be the norm; sampling as originally started with the Beastie Boys and De La Soul in the late 1980's and early 1990's would have continued throughout the decade (interesting article on sampling here: http://clearance13-8.com/AShortClearanceHistory.htm). That article discusses the fact that the budgets for sampling royalties for many of those records far exceeded the recording budgets, because everyone and their cousin wanted a slice of the album sales because a five second sample of a song recorded 30 years prior was being used.
The general consensus here, as much as I can group it together, is that copyright isn't *bad*, it's simply being abused. As a mobile DJ, my clients don't owe me money every time they watch their wedding video, nor would I expect them to. No one is saying that it's bad for your "nurtured stuff" to be protected and earn you a living. What is generally held with disdain is the fact that it's kept that way for decades past the point where the original work has earned the creators a profit, and THAT is what is being fought against.
I don't mind copyright. What I do mind is that my tax money is used to protect your profit.
Disallow people to copy your work all you want, just don't spend my money doing it.
I wonder how we could get them to release Song of the South. (I know it's not PC, but neither is Huckleberry Finn.)
It's nice to see some support, however, this is just a small group within the parliament that shares those beliefs. Still a long way off from enough support to become law.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Why would anybody be against copyright?
In Against Intellectual Monopoly, economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine make a case against copyrights. Read it here.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Data seems to suggest that authors often do better without a copyright system. Royalties are in practice a false hope that non-superstars will never see any significant money from. Lump sums are generally better. We have data from Germany and England when the former had no effective copyright and the latter did. Germany had lots of books printed cheaply, with the authors getting decent lump sum payments, because their concern was to sell as many copies as they could before competitors had a chance to. England sold fewer books at higher margins, and led authors on with the allure of royalties.
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Of course, a lot of Stallman's concerns and hypothetical were rooted in EULAs.
EULA is a license which allows you to use software.
GPL is a license which allows you to distribute software. It does not apply to the end-user.
Except the new works would be covered under a new copyright. Also, a lot of the remasters look worse. I recall seeing a commercial for the Peter Pan remaster, and it made the animation tricks they used horribly transparent. And we have some stuff like Han shooting first.
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and other old stuff that you can no longer buy other then used and or having to hunt the barging bins.
Let say you want a older game or app and there is no store that has it that can be found easily. Now amazon marketplace and or ebay does not count as they used copys and there is the issues with e-bay scams as well.
Now why should have to drive store to store and hunt for older games when it is alot easier to just download them off a torrent or a abandonware website?
also what about lost games and software where the rights seem to be in a black hole of who owns the rights to it right now.
Masterpiece (Potter/Tolkien/Shakespeare/Jane Austen/Picasso etc.)
Potter, masterpiece? please. It's an enjoyable series, but the story is simple, and the dialog is often like listening to kids talk like what they think an an adult would talk like as a kid.
You twant, he's not talking about Harry Potter, but about the master author Stephen Potter, who indeed is on the level of Tolstoy (misspelled as Tolkien) and Shakespeare.
That's not the proposal in the Greens' position paper though. It says that you need to register after five years if you want an extension (to 20 years, I assume). It doesn't mention any requirement to allow derivative works.
Even if it did stop some pirates, I still don't think it would be worth it. There are likely few implementations that can actually stop any pirates whilst not creating a hassle for actual customers.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Don't forget as much as the extending of copyright terms angers the public, the reduction angers the so-called "creators".
How about we reduce copyright to 40 years, and then reduce this by 5 years every 5 years until it is 20, 15 or 10 - whatever the consensus will be? This would mean anything created today would keep its 40 year protection (this doesn't reset the clock on older works, 1970 and older is public domain immediately); and newer works would slowly get less lengthy protection.
H. G. Wells's work seems to be some of the most recent stuff that's in public domain without the author explicitly saying so. With Disney trying to protect Steamboat Willie forever, I don't see that changing. So from now on (almost certainly for the rest of my life, at least) there will be essentially two bodies of work that can be gotten: reprints of stuff older than about 1920, and whatever is currently for sale. That's it. And that's not fine. That's not "Progress in the Useful Arts" in my book.
So while I understand why you as an author want your rights protected, and I'm happy to keep you fed and housed and producing new work if it's any good, I'm not happy enough to keep your grandchildren fed and housed off your work that I'm willing to watch the good-but-not-fantastic stuff just vanish.
Not only that, but Hollywood started as a pirate operation. You know all those people wanting to make movies, why did they choose to go to california instead of staying on the east coast? For the weather ? No, they went to the west coast to get out of reach from Edisons' patents. Isn't it ironic, that the pirate industry par excellence is giving lessons of morality to the entire world. Fuck Hollywood, they are a cancer to society. Edison should have sued the hell out of them, and if not he should have sent his thugs to fix things.
H. G. Wells's work seems to be some of the most recent stuff that's in public domain without the author explicitly saying so.
Under current law, the works of H.G. Wells won't enter the public domain in the EU until 2017.
I just want the right to create without the incumbent publishers breathing down my neck claiming that my work is a "non-literal copy" of a mainstream publisher's work. Do you remember what happened to George Harrison with his song "My Sweet Lord" (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music)?
You also ignore the new economy where the long tails is, effective, infinite
Unfortunately, the new economy also renders the long tail effectively valueless.
Being independent was never an option, since committee positions, speaking time and other resources in the EP are mainly allotted to party groups, not individual MEPs. There is an "independent" party group of otherwise unaffiliated parties, but it consists mainly of racists and loons that no one else want to have in their group.
The plans of the Pirate Party, as they were announced before the last election, were to negotiate with any of the serious party groups and join the one that made them the best offer in terms of resources and positions. As far as I understand they were in negotiations with both the Greens and the liberal group ALDE, and apparently the Greens made the best offer.
Since then, it's been increasingly clear that it probably was the best choice politically as well. ALDE often joins the conservative groups in voting for more draconian copyright laws, more surveillance and so on.
Maybe it's somewhere down there on the list of reasons, but I doubt it'd even make the top ten. Lot more languages, lot more different cultures and once you cross that border it's a "foreign film". Some countries go a little better together like Scandinavia but there's us, the English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and then some with dubs of varying quality losing a lot of lip sync and intonation. Hollywood is the exception in penetrating most of Europe, not the norm. I would say it's due to two things. One, by already having the entire US market most Hollywood movies have solid budgets and look good. Pretty much everything breaking new ground in special effects has been from the US. The other is the gun crazy culture the US has making for good action movies, that other countries can watch without caring much for a bad dub. I just don't see any country in Europe making anything like Rambo or Terminator.
You can still see this in music, apart from the international superstars singing in English I got no clue what's popular in France or Germany or Spain or Italy or Finland right now. When I visit Germany they've barely heard of a Norwegian artist and I've barely heard one or two of theirs. Huge, huge domestic artists are complete nobodies one or two states over, by US standards. While I'm pretty sure a guy from California will have a lot more in common with what's popular in New York, Texas and Florida. If they go to cinemas they're likely to have much the same movies. The only movies youÂre likely to find everywhere here are those from Hollywood....
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False, or -1 you don't get it.
Incorrect.
W/O copyright, how many people would have published the Harry Potter books? How many would have given the author a single cent?
You say that like you know the answer to that question. It's cute.
You're argument is why the middle man will go away.
No, my argument is why copyright can't work anymore, unless we break or illegalize nearly every computer. The disappearence of producers in a market where production capacity is ubiquitous and production cost is infitessmal is just a side effect.
It will never be funded by the audience
False, or -1 you don't get it.
It's happening right now, here and there. Not at all difficult to research.
Increasing use of this model is inevitable.
You're welcome to join the rest of us in the future any time you like.
Wow, the Pirate Party must be pissed that they can't take everything they want. Twenty years is way too long to wait for copyright to expire - based on many of the pirate comments I read about how "information wants to be free" and how the top pirated movies are always one that were released within the last year. Personally, I'm fine with a 20 year copyright, but I can't imagine why any pirate would be.
Of course it make sense, since almost all works belong to some publisher. A company can "live" for 50 or 100 years or more. Then it's quite different:
1. Masterpiece, ton of money in first 5 years, more money with the "long tail" in following years - or no money, then it's in some safe or storage room and after the dead of the author it's like described earlier. The more the copyright term the better, to get the "long tail" profits, and exclusion of competition (think of the Beatles, Mickey Mouse, etc).
A long copyright term makes only sense if we talk about the publishers.
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That the Pirate Party was willing to negotiate was clear, it wasn't all that clear how well received they'd be. The groups mostly mirror traditional party blocks and PP didn't really fit in any of those. A lot of the mainstream press and probably representatives considered it to be one of the "loons" based on the name alone. If nobody wanted to give them time from the group, being in the group would be pointless. ALDE didn't offer much of anything from what I remember, about on par with just being an independent. Luckily they didn't have to make that choice, because the Greens and PP got along well.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Han shot Captain Hook?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
No, my argument is why copyright can't work anymore, unless we break or illegalize nearly every computer. The disappearence of producers in a market where production capacity is ubiquitous and production cost is infitessmal is just a side effect.
And we should legalize child pornography (it's on computers!) and legalize money counterfeiting, too because you can't make every copy machine illegal. I just love how people who use this argument are really just rewording the old "might makes right" argument - you can't stop us, therefore we're right.
Yeah, Lucas was off his meds when he released that version.
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I'm going to suggest that everyone in here is forgetting about secondary rights. A masterpiece book makes a lot of money in the first few years. Ten years later, somebody gets around to making a movie version. The author of the original book deserves to get royalties from that. It isn't fair to allow freeloading by a major industry off the hard work of an individual, as would be the case if copyright durations were so absurdly short.
Copyright durations should be 14 years, with the option to extend for a second 14. Anything shorter and content creators will be exploited by big corporations. You know, as in, "Why would I pay you royalties for your story when I can just keep that submission instead of shredding it, and publish it in ten years for free?"
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I cried. I also bought the film rights.
Um... no.
Publishers have even more resources than single authors and have a broader reach. If they can't sell a particular book well in twenty years, well, I don't see how another thirty is going to make it better. If it does sell well then twenty years is about time for everyone to have a copy if the publisher has done their work well and made boatloads of cash in the process but you can only sell so many copies of a book before everyone has one or two copies. Even after the copyright is done they are a good book maker and can likely still sell loads of reprints over time but the main rush is gone.
Twenty years is a nice good maximum copyright for publishing a book. Maybe twenty five. Movie rights might be something that is worth something longer given how movie makers love redoing old movies but not the book itself.
And we should legalize child pornography (it's on computers!) and legalize money counterfeiting, too because you can't make every copy machine illegal.
This has nothing to do with anything I wrote. Why did you write it?
"Copyright depends on the access limitations inherent to physical media. Those limitations do not exist for digital media. They cannot be made to exist for digital media."
Seriously, answer this question if you can: what does the previous sentence have to do with child pornography?
Counterfeiting is inherently physical. All the limitations of physical media apply; each piece is unique and potentially traceable, and there is no inherent means of production (that is to say, you don't need to make two or three copies of a dollar bill every single time you use one). You simply cannot photocopy a dollar and get another dollar. The opposite is true of digital information; you cannot make a copy of a file and get anything BUT an identical copy that cannot be differentiated in any way from the original, unless instead of copying you (copy+introduce changes). You are REQUIRED to make copies of digital files in order to even look at them.
I just love how people who use this argument are really just rewording the old "might makes right" argument - you can't stop us, therefore we're right.
You didn't even read my argument, not even one time. You have no idea what I'm talking about. How can you love anything about it?
The author of the original book deserves to get royalties from that.
So should Disney track down the ancestors of the people who wrote Snow White and Cinderella and pay up?
You can legitimately argue that extending copyright beyond some point ceases to be a motivator for the creative process, but cutting off copyright at ten years is basically cutting the knees out from under book authors. Indeed, if you're even asking about people who have been dead for hundreds of years, you completely missed my point. I'm not talking about somebody digging up something written fifty or a hundred years ago and thinking, "I'd like to make a movie version of this." I'm talking about the fact that with the relatively rare exception of books and movies written simultaneously (pre-greenlit movies), it normally takes more than ten years to go from "Hey, this book got published" to "Hey, this movie got released":
So even in the best case, the movie company would be barely halfway through their release process when they stopped owing the author a penny. Drag their heels another two years, and they'll still be able to easily leech off of the author's success without having to give anything back. That's just not right.
In effect, limiting copyright to ten years would ensure that only three types of people continue to write:
If ever there were a way to guarantee that the quality of creative works will go into the toilet, a 10 year maximum copyright duration is it. That's just absurdly too short for any sort of literary work, and anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly not thought through the effects of such a change.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm not talking about somebody digging up something written fifty or a hundred years ago and thinking, "I'd like to make a movie version of this." I'm talking about the fact that with the relatively rare exception of books and movies written simultaneously (pre-greenlit movies), it normally takes more than ten years to go from "Hey, this book got published" to "Hey, this movie got released":
I was merely questioning your use of the word "deserve."
As someone who makes a living off of creative works, I strongly disagree. Say that you have an author who writes an incredible book. He or she dies a week after its publication. Under your scheme, the author's family gets one week's revenue even though the author put in five years of his or her life to create the book in question. That's hardly reasonable.
What you're failing to take into account is that unlike other occupations, unless an author, painter, sculptor, composer, or performer is working for a corporate overlord, he or she gets paid over time as the product sells. That means that he or she has spent years creating something that will help support his or her family afterwards. The incentive to create is based on the promise that the creation will be worth something to his or her family going forward, and it is that promise that encourages authors to accept that delayed payback. If you change the law so that the delayed payback won't happen at all if you die too soon, you're encouraging people to limit themselves to jobs that pay you as you go along, and thus significantly reducing the incentive to create.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage people to create creative works. It's unimportant whether copyright will continue to encourage a particular author to create new works. The promise that the new work would pay to feed his or her family after its creation was what encouraged the author to create the existing work. Therefore, it should not matter whether the author is alive or dead; the author's kids or other beneficiaries should have the right to that income.
Further, your scheme could encourage less reputable publishers to off their authors so that they don't have to keep paying royalties. :-)
I'm strongly of the opinion that copyright terms should be for a period of 14 years, renewable by the author or his/her descendants for 14 more. The author's death should have no part in the copyright term whatsoever.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Perhaps I am a minority here, but I see prolonged copyright protection is a good thing. I don't want my nurtured stuff to be sold on some thieves bazaar by hoarders and internet opportunists. Why would anybody be against copyright? What is the motivation against it? What is their plan? To release and disseminate our works for free under tenancy of untouchable server masters? A pirate world reigned by some advertisement fed vultures serving our hard work over the Internet?
Why would anyone be for copyright? Oh, wait, that one's easy -- because they were a bunch of London publishers that wanted a government-granted monopoly for more profit, or because they saw those guys get the Statute of Anne passed and decided "Hey, I should be getting governmnent-mandated artificial scarcity to drive up my profits, too!" and lobbied for expansion of copyright from books to images/audio/whatever.
Or, I guess, if someone sees the big businesses making money through copyright, and lobbying for each new copyright law, and believes what they say about an artist's inherent right to compensation, an implied social contract, and all that, instead of what they do with making artists sign away that right with contracts that guarantee "expenses" will always match any income, preventing the artist from getting that compensation, and extending the "social contract" every decade or so, always to their benefit. Dupes like that would definitely be for copyright.
Copyright exists because businessmen have always found it easier to enlist government aid in making a bigger profit than to just work longer/harder/smarter like the rest of us have to when we want more pay.
Longer terms of copyright is no solution but short copyright terms means FLOSS programmers end up contributing to proprietors as if they were public-minded charities while giving the public nothing in exchange. Considering a 5-year term of copyright, Richard Stallman correctly points out:
[W]hat would be the effect of terminating this program's copyright after 5 years? This would not require the developer to release source code, and presumably most will never do so. Users, still denied the source code, would still be unable to use the program in freedom. The program could even have a “time bomb” in it to make it stop working after 5 years, in which case the “public domain” copies would not run at all.
Thus, the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years. The Free World would get the bad, but not the good. The difference between source code and object code and the practice of using EULAs would give proprietary software an effective exception from the general rule of 5-year copyright — one that free software does not share.
I think the Pirate Party should take Stallman's warnings more seriously than I've heard Falkvinge take them in the past (I believe it was a Google talk in which Falkvinge merely dismissed Stallman's concerns without ever responding to them seriously and the questioner, perhaps not recognizing the dismissal, didn't follow-up to get a serious answer). Like Stallman says, "I'd rather not be an advocate for a stronger copyright" and I would rather not have to forgo FLOSS development because copyright law is written to favor proprietors in the form of gifting FLOSS contributions to proprietors.
The form of time bomb Stallman speaks of could be done in a way that would not qualify as DRM in most people's minds, so any discussion of disallowing DRM would not necessarily save anyone: a program that is designed and built to require a server to run and provide any functionality coupled with server-side accounts that are built to expire after 5 years. The program runs but becomes useless to most people running the program in the ordinary fashion. Couple this with no source code under a free license and the user is not only left out after some planned obsolescence but possibly facing a community of apologists who claim that the user should expect no better.
Most computer users today are taught to think of personal convenience and price first, not ever taught to think of the consequences of their choices. Thus most users are left vulnerable to arrangements they won't discover until years after they've paid for service (buying Major League Baseball recording viewing privileges online, or doing business with most media services like iTunes or Wal-Mart, are a few examples).
Digital Citizen
I think 20 is still an acceptable. Take A Song of Ice and Fire for example. G R R Martin won't get anything from HBO from the first book if that is the case and god forbid he won't finish the series
As someone who makes a living off of creative works, I strongly disagree. Say that you have an author who writes an incredible book. He or she dies a week after its publication. Under your scheme, the author's family gets one week's revenue even though the author put in five years of his or her life to create the book in question. That's hardly reasonable.
The author's family didn't create anything. One week's revenue sounds good to me in that case.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage people to create creative works.
And being able to receive money while they're alive (for a time) isn't enough for them? As far as I know, most jobs don't continue to pay the family years after the employee is already dead.
I don't think this is encouraging creation at all.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
...you may get more of it than you want.
Watch this "trusted platform" drama unfolding and tell me again: with Microsoft dictating the policy and hardware manufacturers following along... will we have to build our chip fabs from ground up?
The EU just extended copyright terms to keep the Beatles songs from falling into the public domain. So these people obviously don't have much say.
That 14 years you mention was not just the original length of time, but also the optimum calculated by someone who attempted to put numbers on the problem:
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf
Make it renewable for 14 extra under condition that € 4000 has been paid into a literacy fund and a certified correct DRM-free digital copy has been deposited in the national library, and you've got:
This last point sounds silly but I think it's the most important reason. See Raymond van het Groenewoud's song "Cha Cha Cha":
Now THAT's what culture means. Not having to wait 90 years before you're allowed to recycle old crap.
To illustrate: Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was published in 1937, that's only 74 years after the death of the last of the Grimm Brothers in 1863, so it would have still been under copyright with the current 90 year rule.
I know a student who suffers from dyslexia, because of his disability the educational support board (a government institution) have lent him laptop with expensive reading programs and stuff... They've also granted him some money (5000 USD) for getting books scanned at 3 USD per page, because none of his books are available in digital format without DRM that makes text-to-speech impossible.
IMO, these publishers should be fined, obviously they have digital versions of their books, but because of DRM they must be scanned at 3 USD per page (And yes, of course there's a new edition of the books every year).
Though, the state maintains a library of scanned books, and he can use an earlier version, this is still a gigantic waste of resources, all because of DRM.
Note: In my country of residence the government is by law obliged to cover additional expenditures that people with disabilities may experience.
I copyright was 5 years, we would all be running obscure hacked versions of Windows Xp :)
Oh, what horrors - Things would crash all the time...
I also think Harry Potter is a masterpiece, but sadly lack the words to explain properly why.
:-)
:-( Too few kids nowadays have listened to the stories of their grandparents under Nazi occupation, I think.
:-)
<vague_handwaving>
J.K. Rowling succeeded in conveying concepts about the interplay between interpersonal loyalty and obedience to society's yoke (which got a LOT heavier as the series progressed) which are difficult to describe in any shorter form.
And if you can't write it in a shorter form then it's a masterpiece
<extra_hyperbole>
This could well be the only vaccine to budding fascism now that western civilization is in decline. No one else seems to see it coming
</extra_hyperbole>
</vague_handwaving>
Kinda like Terry Pratchett developed his witches and watchmen of the Discworld to convey ideas so large they make you cry. Well, me at least. E.g. "The Fifth Elephant": I'm quite sure I didn't even understand that one. It's about love, isn't it?
Both authors clearly love humanity, and they clearly love story-telling. It shows.
P.S. To add insult to injury, I also think "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a masterpiece because of the dialogues. I do get ridiculed for it, but that's OK
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I ran into this when doing historical research into the commercial software of the 1980s. Difficult or impossible to get seminal software like WP 4.x or Turbo C 1.0 without actually breaking the law. This is wrong! The software is worthless, but someone still owns the copyright on it, and sharing is illegal. So for someone to give me a copy of historically important software, they have to break the law. That's not right. A huge chunk of software development heritage is being lost.
Shareware from the 1980s is hard to find for another reason - when version x+1 came out, the limited disk space of the era meant version x was usually deleted. Most archives are from the early-to-mid 1990s.
Harry Potter is a masterpiece? When did that happen?
I assumed it was Beatrix Potter given the others were all authors
The only insightful comment in the whole. I guess I'll stop voting the greens because of this. Lovely.
Most EULAs elements are already unenforceable (unless you're in US, but then you've got bigger problems).
If you're worried about dying penniless then get life insurance or a pension like everyone else instead of proposing the right to sponge off of people without good reason.
Copyright's purpose is to encourage artists to create work, please explain to me how you are going to create work after you're dead?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Not that I need to persuade you (Slashdot is the choir on this one), but we all know that 70 doesn't mean 70 in this context- it means forever. In a decade, they'll up it to 80. Another decade, it'll be 90. Frankly at this point I don't know why they don't just cut the crap and make it an eternal copyright period; who do they really think they're kidding?
Maybe only themselves...
We can debate on the length of copyright, but one thing is sure, copyright should never extend beyond the death of the author/artist/musician/etc...
Oh, I disagree. I'd rather have a fixed term of years, and whether the author dies before it's up, or doesn't die until after it's expired, is totally irrelevant.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'm not sure you're right.
First, in most cases, authors just aren't paid all that much for the film rights to their books (or at all). It might seem like a lot to an author, but it's not very much by the standards of a movie studio. Usually they'll pay for an option to adapt the book, which is a small fraction of the full cost of the film rights; only if they decide to exercise the option is the full amount paid. And unless the book -- or at least the author -- is a huge success, the full price (which most authors won't see, since most books that are optioned are never made into movies) is usually in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
Second, the movie studios are probably more concerned with rival movie studios than with authors. The advantage of being the first to release a movie based on a particular work, and perhaps having a few years of exclusivity, are probably greater than the cost of paying for the film rights in the first place.
Thus, if copyright terms were very short, I'd expect to see that where movies are adaptations of books, that they're made much faster than now, and that studios develop closer connections with book publishers and literary agents, so that they can find popular books faster (or make better predictions about popularity before the book is even published). And I'd also expect to see more original movies, that avoid the issue of being tied to the book's copyright term.
Also, your timeline is wrong. These days movies are in first run theaters for somewhere between 4-8 weeks, I'd say, and out on DVD within about 12 weeks. Even a smash hit like Avatar was not exclusively in theaters for 1-2 years before hitting other distribution channels. I don't think that's happened since the 70's, what with home video and movie channels.
Finally, authors just don't make much money no matter what, with very rare exceptions, just like all forms of artistic endeavor, and while the few thousand dollars every few years from options is nice, there are probably better ways to help them get by than with long copyright terms, e.g. universal health care, which has the nice side effect of helping everyone, and not just authors.
I think 10 years is probably too short -- I'd rather have 1 year terms renewable up to a maximum of 5 to 20 years (depending on the class of work; a computer program or a newspaper probably doesn't need more than 5) -- but if I had to choose between a 10 year term and the current regime, I'd take the 10 year term. I bet it would produce better results than you think. (And anyway, quality is irrelevant in copyright policy; the government isn't competent to judge artistic quality, and shouldn't even if it could. Quantity is what matters)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
That's completely orthogonal. Most jobs pay the person while they are working. Authorship doesn't. It starts paying off after the work is finished, and spreads that payment out over a period of time.
The payoff from that copyright is not equivalent to paying someone a salary after he or she dies. It's equivalent to back pay that the company owes that person for having agreed to a temporary suspension of pay to help the company get by during difficult times. The death of the recipient does not negate the fact that the money is owed. It is repayment of a debt, pure and simple.
As someone who has done this, I can tell you that the copyright most certainly did encourage that creation, and continues to do so.
What creative works have you produced without any prepayment, with the intent to sell them? When you toil for a year on a work of art or literature in the hopes that someday you'll be able to sell it and make money off of it, then we can talk. Until then, your view of whether that copyright guarantee encourages creation or not is as utterly meaningless as an Ayn Rand novel.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That's completely orthogonal. Most jobs pay the person while they are working.
And even so, the money they get paid while working eventually runs out.
It starts paying off after the work is finished, and spreads that payment out over a period of time.
Yes. And it's such a shame if it doesn't sell well. Too bad. I think it's worthless to pay people who created nothing (the family).
As someone who has done this, I can tell you that the copyright most certainly did encourage that creation, and continues to do so.
Which creation? How many people can honestly say that they wouldn't create anything if it wasn't 100% guaranteed that their loved ones would continue to get paid after they died?
When you toil for a year on a work of art or literature in the hopes that someday you'll be able to sell it and make money off of it, then we can talk.
We can talk right now. It isn't necessary for me to be in your situation for me to criticize it. Anyone could be biased. Especially the people in the situation themselves.
However, I still do not believe that the family of dead people need to be paid money. I do not believe it encouraging much, if any, creation at all.
Until then, your view of whether that copyright guarantee encourages creation or not is as utterly meaningless as an Ayn Rand novel.
Interesting way to ward off criticism. "You're not in my situation. Therefore, all of your criticisms are invalid!" It's about as effective on me as the, "Well, let's see you do better!" argument.
Even if you do create things, that does not mean that you can speak for all people that do.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Nobody is arguing about that. It doesn't, however, stop simply because the person died, and that was my point. It stops when the specified amount is paid out. In much the same way, copyright should end when the specified number of years has expired, without regard to when the person dies.
Whether a work sells or not has no bearing on this discussion whatsoever. That risk is a natural risk based on the quality of the product, which is largely under the author's control. The risk that the value of the work becomes zero on the day of the author's death is an artificial risk based on something outside the author's control. That's a pretty big difference.
No, you have it backwards. The question is how many people can honestly say they would bother to create something if it was 100% guaranteed that their loved ones would get nothing after they died? And that answer depends largely on how long the person thinks he or she has to live. Someone given a year to live will only write memoirs if that person is exceptionally vain or if his or her family will benefit. So there's one pretty clear case where it affects whether a work gets created or not, and arguably a fairly important one in light of this week's events.
Either way, you're still failing to come to grips with or in any way refute the core of my argument, which is that the author agrees to take payment later, and you're arguing that the author should lose that payment simply because he or she died. That just doesn't make sense in any sane universe.
Further, it makes even less sense because corporations don't die, which means that authors will be able to completely dodge it (for a small percentage) by writing it as a work for hire, and getting paid on the back end. Therefore, in practice, your scheme will have no effect on copyright duration whatsoever. The only real effect will be the addition of additional layers of corporate bloat to the creative process and the relegation of copyright to being almost the exclusive domain of the megacorps. That's hardly a win in anybody's book.
I argued out of logic and fairness, with lots of justification along the way. Your answer, by contrast, completely ignored my points, and merely repeated your opinion, providing no justification whatsoever for that opinion. Repeating an opinion over and over does not make it more right. It just makes it more tedious. My response was merely a reflection of the resulting exasperation.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It stops when the specified amount is paid out. In much the same way, copyright should end when the specified number of years has expired, without regard to when the person dies.
Well, I'm going to have to disagree.
Whether a work sells or not has no bearing on this discussion whatsoever.
I was demonstrating something that could be considered unfortunate. The work didn't sell, the creator died, etc. Too bad.
The question is how many people can honestly say they would bother to create something if it was 100% guaranteed that their loved ones would get nothing after they died?
Okay. So why not tell me how many? It doesn't matter to me. Poll every artist and creator in existence (or most) and get back to me instead of seemingly pretending that you speak for all of them.
Either way, you're still failing to come to grips with or in any way refute the core of my argument, which is that the author agrees to take payment later, and you're arguing that the author should lose that payment simply because he or she died. That just doesn't make sense in any sane universe.
I understand your argument. I simply don't agree with you. Do you believe that anyone who disagrees with you must be 100% wrong and you must be 100% right? I might be "wrong," and I accept that possibility, but I do not believe that I am. This is simply my opinion.
"Sane" is subjective.
Therefore, in practice, your scheme will have no effect on copyright duration whatsoever.
My scheme would also be to drastically shorten copyright terms. I cannot account for all possibilities or abuses, but who can? There are likely no perfect solutions.
Someone given a year to live will only write memoirs if that person is exceptionally vain or if his or her family will benefit.
That's a very special case. I don't care if my proposed solution doesn't work for every case (expected deaths). That is simply too bad.
I argued out of logic and fairness
Of course you would say that. I probably would, too. That's why we're having this argument. I personally hope that you're at least accounting for the possibility that you may be "wrong." Otherwise, I feel that this will get nowhere.
Your answer, by contrast, completely ignored my points, and merely repeated your opinion, providing no justification whatsoever for that opinion.
Not only do I not need a justification for my opinion (certainly it helps if you're trying to convince someone), but I believe I responded to all (or most) of your arguments in a suitable way.
Repeating an opinion over and over does not make it more right.
I didn't say that it did.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I agree that limited copyright length is a GOOD thing, but once that runs out companies would rely more on trademarks to protect their products.
Please cut and paste this paragraph and send it to all American law makers.
Say that you have an author who writes an incredible book. He or she dies a week after its publication. Under your scheme, the author's family gets one week's revenue even though the author put in five years of his or her life to create the book in question. That's hardly reasonable.
Funny. If I die I don't think that my company will continue giving my wage to my family. And the weird thing is that nobody thinks it should be any other way!
What does an artist's family have that's so special compared to anybody else's?
Copyright serves many purposes and situations - and there aren't clear boundaries, so it may not be so easy to legally separate them.
Take a traditional work of literature - a published book. The author wishes to write it in the hope of receiving money. It may advance his career or he may have personal reason for writing it, or it may be purely professional, but whatever it is he's going to want some compensation, and some way of paying the bills. There may, or may not, be enough readers out there who, between them, will be prepared to pay enough. The author doesn't know whether or not there are. The publisher doesn't know. The readers don't know either.
Whatever price is chosen there will also be people who are prepared to pay less but would nonetheless be able to benefit. Economically, the ideal is that, if the sum of everything everyone is prepared to pay is greater, than the author is paid enough to induce him to write the book and then the book is distributed to everyone who can benefit for less than the maximum he is prepared to pay, possibly free. This isn't really possible in any practical economic system, so we have the fundamental dead-weight-loss vs incentive problem copyright has to solve in commercial contexts: to optimize the balance between access to published works and the incentive to create them.
There are two things which must be shared between publisher: the rewards and the risk. The publisher could pay the author a salary to write and take on all the risk himself. This is typical in software, for example, and in many other less artistic contexts. Or, the publisher and author could share the risk by taking a percentage each of sales. Or the author could take all the risk and pay the publisher to publish. The latter two may be the only way any sort of agreement between publisher and author can be reached because publisher and author may dispute the value of the work, or because the publisher isn't prepared to take on a risk he has much less influence over than the author. All three of these arrangements are common and copyright should support them all.
If copyright expires on the author's death there are two problems: in the latter two cases older authors may not experience incentives (you may have noticed that people /do/ like to leave something to their spouses, descendants or charities), and in the first two cases publishers may be less willing to pay the salary/publishing and promotion costs because they now also have to take on the risk of losing all returns as a result of the author's death. Not to mention that I'm sure the system could be comprehensively gamed using co-authors. I don't believe 70 years is necessary, but zero would be both costly (in terms of works not written) and inefficient (because the cost of a given level of reduction in works written could be borne in a way that has a greater improvement in access to works by not concentrating so much more on reducing the copyright term more for older authors than for younger ones).
Finally, think of other uses of copyright. Most copyright material is not published - it's personal correspondence, internal e-mail and so on. Copyright protection is still useful here. It isn't, IMO, appropriate for someone's personal correspondence to lose its protection instantly on death. A lot of it may contain personal information about people still living, or which relates to a business. Yes, information isn't directly subject to copyright, but in practice there's a big difference between making your own claims about what someone said and directly publishing what they'd written.
For what it's worth the last UK government commissioned an independent report into intellectual property and the report (known as the Gower's review) recommended that 20 years would be the best option, but that at very least it certainly didn't need extending beyond 50.
The government ignored it of course, and went for 70 years instead.
in the latter two cases older authors may not experience
The key word here is "may." We don't know that. I suspect most people just want to make some money like with every other job. Not only that, but old book authors writing books and planning to die soon afterwards is a very specific case that I don't care about.
And I'm fairly certain that most jobs don't give the employee's family money years after the employee's death. The author may not get paid writing the book, but the money the employee makes will dry up anyway and both of them will end up in the same situation.
At the very least, I don't think money should be given to those that didn't create anything or assist the author in any noticeable way.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
in the latter two cases older authors may not experience
The key word here is "may." We don't know that. I suspect most people just want to make some money like with every other job. Not only that, but old book authors writing books and planning to die soon afterwards is a very specific case that I don't care about.
It's a case that their publishers or commissioners might care about. And their readers. And certainly older authors, including those who are not 'planning to die' but just happen to have grown old. The case is important because your proposal puts drastically different incentives on younger and older authors and their publishers/commissioners, so OF COURSE the case is interesting.
There will always be some people who don't need the inducements of copyright protection (or of a particular period of protection) to produce works, and there will always be some who do. The law can't separate them. That's why it should set a term to balance all the costs - including limiting access to works - against its benefits - increased creation. One of those costs is unnecessary protection in some cases in order to provide necessary protection in others. Hence 'may'.
Yes, there may be authors who would prefer to make money like any other job. They don't get that choice. In theory a publisher could raise some money, pay the author a fixed wage, then use copyright to make a return which will cover the cost often enough to make them a profit (sometimes a huge one). The problems of moral hazard (authors not trying hard once they get the money anyway), disagreements over the value of the work and the publisher's uncertainty of the value of the authors work meant that this doesn't happen often with books. Although it does, of course, with software (and it seems absurd that a 70 year old programmer should be paid less because the value of his copyrights is lower - though IRL the term is decided differently for software, but the same absurdity arises with non-software).
So, normally, it's up to the author to raise the money to invest in it themselves - by saving and forgoing consumption while they write in order to make money later via the copyright.
And I'm fairly certain that most jobs don't give the employee's family money years after the employee's death.
No, except for some pension schemes which pay spouses. Why is it relevant? How does considering it help determine the optimum balance of dead-weight-loss vs incentive to create new works?
The author may not get paid writing the book, but the money the employee makes will dry up anyway and both of them will end up in the same situation.
At the very least, I don't think money should be given to those that didn't create anything or assist the author in any noticeable way.
So if an author is paid a salary by an investor who makes his return later through copyright and then saves that salary he should not be allowed to bequeath it to his children? That fits your definition. And if the investor commissions a book, makes money over time from the copyright and then dies he shouldn't be allowed to pass his company on to his children, even while the author remains alive? Or maybe you think that an outside investor should be privileged compared to a self-investing author?
It's a case that their publishers or commissioners might care about. And their readers. And certainly older authors
I don't care. Too bad for them. Anyone could die at any time. If they don't publish anything because of that, then they can just vanish. If older authors do not want to take risks then I don't think they should be doing much of anything.
Why is it relevant?
It is to me. I think essentially paying an employee's family years after the employee's death through the use of artificial scarcity is idiotic.
And unless either of us poll every creator in existence (and somehow determine if they're lying or not), whether it truly plays a large role in them creating anything will likely remain a mystery.
So if an author is paid a salary by an investor who makes his return later through copyright and then saves that salary he should not be allowed to bequeath it to his children?
If the children didn't make anything, then yes.
he shouldn't be allowed to pass his company on to his children
The company? Maybe. The copyright for the books? Unless they created the books, then I don't think so.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's a case that their publishers or commissioners might care about. And their readers. And certainly older authors
I don't care. Too bad for them. Anyone could die at any time. If they don't publish anything because of that, then they can just vanish. If older authors do not want to take risks then I don't think they should be doing much of anything.
So if you pay a designer to design you a website, or write you some marketing literature, then you don't care that those things could become public domain if he dies next week, but remain yours for much longer if he lives? This seems unreasonable. It's creating a new, synthetic and essentially pointless additional risk for you to bear with no real advantage. It'd be much more sensible to make the copyright term predictable. You could have the same average copyright term - a fixed one, say - and yet have greater incentives for the creation of works because that additional risk is not there. Your scheme is simply inefficient: there could be greater benefits for the same costs if it were designed differently.
Why is it relevant?
It is to me. I think essentially paying an employee's family years after the employee's death through the use of artificial scarcity is idiotic.
And unless either of us poll every creator in existence (and somehow determine if they're lying or not), whether it truly plays a large role in them creating anything will likely remain a mystery.
Whereas you seem to have no problem paying an investor's family years after the investor's death through his shareholder's right to share in profits. I don't see why 'idiotic', either. There's a clear rationale: the creation of appropriate incentives for works to be created for the overall benefit of everyone, not just by authors hoping for a return for their children but also by authors being paid a salary by a commissioning company who goes on to recoup that salary cost over a period of time which includes time after his death.
So if an author is paid a salary by an investor who makes his return later through copyright and then saves that salary he should not be allowed to bequeath it to his children?
If the children didn't make anything, then yes.
Presumably, then, you're against all forms of bequest? And, by logical extension, gift? Or is it only people who earn their salary through writing who should not be able to bequeath and people who, say, make fridges should be treated differently? Though you'd have a seriously hard time dividing up the money in to heritable and non-heritable pools if you did think that.
he shouldn't be allowed to pass his company on to his children
The company? Maybe. The copyright for the books? Unless they created the books, then I don't think so.
So if I pay someone else a salary to write a book then I should be able to pass on the income from the copyright to my children when I die, but if I pay myself a salary to do so I should not? Unless I make them co-authors, of course. That'd be a logical step for older authors and completely neuter your proposal.
After thinking about it some more, I think you may have a point. I think it would be useful is copyright terms were more predictable and didn't end simply because the original creator died. Though I still think that copyright terms need to be drastically reduced.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
They'll NEVER get into the public domain. Not even necesasry to extend copyright. They can delete the master copy and all secondary copies they made and stop anyone else making a copy available on any medium. Then when that DVD-R is 50 years old, the copy is no longer readable.
Oh? I didn't realize that. It seems to be PD in the US, and I assumed erroneously that it was PD everywhere. My mistake. Good thing his stuff is popular enough to stay in print.
Last time I saw this proposal, the idea was to give a five years extension if you paid for a small fee (if you are not ready to pay 100â then it is probably better to just put it in the public domain) and there was 2 sets of rights I do not remember that you could give to users of your works, each adding 5 years. I think it was something like "authorization of derivative works" and "authorization of commercial uses".
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.