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Canada, Japan Cave On Copyright Term Extension In TPP
An anonymous reader writes Last month, there were several Canadian
media reports on how the work of Ian Fleming, the creator of
James Bond, had entered the public domain. While this was oddly
described as a "copyright quirk", it was no quirk. The term of
copyright in Canada (alongside TPP countries such as Japan and New
Zealand) is presently life of the author plus an additional 50
years, a term that meets the international standard set by the Berne
Convention. Those countries now appear to have caved
to U.S. pressure as there are reports that they have agreed to
extend to life plus 70 years as part of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
The American people don't want this.
The music corporations are entirely non-US companies.
Copyrights are not beneficial to Search or Share Internet industries.
The only remaining beneficiary is the movie industry, a relatively small group of people.
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Further, the European Union initially demanded that Canada extend the term of copyright in the Canada – EU Trade Agreement, but that too was effectively rebuffed.
The EU wanted the extension too. Maybe the EU alone could not apply enough pressure but it looks like the EU and the US can. The US is such a good target but they are not the only bad actors.
PS. I am Canadian
Because a house is rival while a novel in the abstract is non-rival. You can't have a million people occupying a house simultaneously, at least without great risk of damage and danger, but you can have a billion people reading the same book at the same time without the book or the people being harmed. The tragedy of the commons only applies to rival goods. That's why it's a good idea to remove 'intellectual property' from your vocabulary, because economically, the subjects of copyright and patents have completely different traits than physical objects.
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This isn't just about a few early 007 tales going public domain. James Bond as a character in books and movies is only fully protected if the entire series is in copyright, as the Conan Doyle estate found out about Sherlock Holmes.
In the end, this kind of scheming and legal pressure is disgusting. There's no sane nor sensible reason for copyrighted material to fund a life of ease for anyone past the lifetime of the author and often elderly spouse. Let the kids, grandkids and so-forth go out and work for a living. It'll do them good.
And tying up all copyrights to protect a few lucrative ones is bad for society and authors. With little demand, books that might have remained as available in the public domain (i.e. Gutenberg) become unavailable. Everyone loses.
My own attitude is that past a certain point that's several decades less than copyright now covers now, copyright should become pay-to-keep. Let these estates keep their precious little money machine in copyright another 50 years or so. But require them to fork over say a flat amount plus 25% of the resulting income to be used for literacy projects, restoring old films, and creating high-quality digital libraries.
Most works would then go into the public domain while the greedy few (i.e. Disney) wouldn't have to buy off politicians and get every copyright extended just to extend theirs.