UK Green Party Speculates On Idea To Shorten Copyright To 14 Years... Leading To Mass Freakout
from the copyright-term-insanity dept
Last week, the Green Party in the UK got a bunch of attention when someone noticed its "Policies for a Sustainable Society" had put in a clause advocating for lessening copyright terms down to 14 years (which you may note is the same as it was originally in the Statute of Anne -- as well as under the original US copyright law).
The vision then goes on to propose “generally shorter copyright terms, with a usual maximum of 14 years”. By this, we mean that rather than the current maximum of 70 years after the creator’s death, it should only be 14 years after their death. Unfortunately, as written, this appears a bit ambiguous and has caused confusion, so it needs clearing up!Honestly, this doesn't make much sense either. If, as the Greens claimed, they were basing the plan on Rufus Pollock's research, then "life plus 14 years" doesn't fit at all. Frankly, some of this sounds like a cop-out by a Green Party that had no idea what it was advocating. That doesn't necessarily speak well of the Party.
Either way, a bunch of folks absolutely freaked out over the idea that the Greens might support such a shortening of copyright length, with laughable claims like "how are we supposed to earn a living?"
WHAT? Green Party aim to cut down copyright to 14 years. How are we supposed to earn a living? http://t.co/JF9JBeqVfG pic.twitter.com/dvl1V9Ys06
— Sarah McIntyre (@jabberworks) April 22, 2015
Either way, as the chart above shows, it appears that the true economic life of most books was at least well short of 28 years. Perhaps there's a magic number between 14 and 28 (again, Pollock suggests it's 15), but it hardly seems like "life plus 14" is really going to create any real hardship for anyone other than the likes of Disney or other multinational corporations.
Alas, none of it really matters, as the confused position of the Green Party quickly resulted in the party backing down and admitting that it will now review its copyright policy. Going back to Tom Chance's post, he gives a reasonable discussion as to why excessive copyright terms are a bad idea, and also highlights that the nature of copyright in the UK and the US was always about benefiting the public, not providing a "natural right" for creators to earn a living.
This is something that all too frequently gets lost in the copyright debates. Copyright system supporters insist that copyright is like a form of welfare: a right to earn money. That's why you see these ridiculous and misleading campaigns lately about "fair compensation" for creators. But that's ridiculous. Many artists make no money at all because no one likes what they produced. Or not enough people. Copyright gives you one way to earn some money, but it was never supposed to be the only system by which creative people made money. The fact that some act as if it's a natural right, and some sort of welfare program that is required to "earn" them a "living" is a perversion of history, and it makes having honest rational discussions about the optimal setup of copyright nearly impossible.
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Filed Under: 14 years, copyright, copyright terms, green party, rufus pollock, uk
Reader Comments
The First Word
“What about them? Unless you have figures to the contrary, most authors who make money will make it within 14 years of writing a novel, and most people who advocate s reduction are open to an extension bring granted (limited in part of the author, not infinite on behalf of the publisher). Besides, why should copyright be beholden to one small part of one industry? Most authors don't get published at all, or didn't until self publishing became realistic on a mass level (for good or ill).
"People here at times seem to advocate a return defining copyright terms as was the case until 1978"
Some advocate a compromise based on current measures, others complete abolishment, and everything in between. It's a wider discussion than some shills would have you believe.
"but I have not the slightest doubt that even if this was to occur a hue and cry wouls almost immediately begin complaining that any term was far too long and destroying "culture"."
Many would also argue that the culture created before 1978 was far superior before corporations were able to demand effectively unlimited terms. Others would argue that even 14 years is too long given the current climates of both changing tastes and wide distribution options - that if you can't sell enough to make a living within 14 years, you're not making something worth buying. I'm not in either of those camps, but I don't hear cries to protect small businesses who didn't make money on their latest production run - we just accept that they go out of business.
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If these people can't make their money off 14 years they will never make it. I believe for transient stuff like software and so on, the limit is substantially less. 14 years or the death of the author would make a lot more sense, if its the author we are worrying about.
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There is also no point in rewarding publishers with longer rights just because an author happens to live longer. I don't want to have publishers have an interest in when an author is or is not legally dead. We don't want cryogenically preserved Walt Disneys in the fortresses of major publishing corporations.
A fixed time after publishing also renders things more predictable when looking at a work by multiple authors.
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They are not, and never have been. Copyright has NEVER been about the benefit or protection of the *author*, not ever.
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More importantly, if they create nothing else in the ensuing 14 years that earns them money then copyright obviously failed in it's stated aim of encouraging creativity.
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I don't know, how about creating new works?
They said 14 years not 14 minutes
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If you haven't created anything how the fuck can you be called an artist?
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How much talent do you need to release something at least once every decade and a half?
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Something the rest of us have to do at least 5 days a week.
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As program project leader, I also spend a lot of time on what feels like shoveling horse crap. My main job is suppressing or modifying the creation of new works that would be a bad idea.
"Creating new works" is actually done only by a very small percentage of people during a small percentage of their life time: switching actual creativity on at will is a rare skill.
And those who manage only occasionally still contribute to cultural and scientific progress. Arguably more than most of those having a "normal job description".
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Is this really true? My personal experience is that people who create do so throughout their whole life. They're driven to it. I've been constantly creating new works since I was 12, and I don't see a day coming when I'll stop.
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"none of it really matters" -- Typical Techdirt item, then, based on mistakes!
First, I'll take up with "I don't know, but in most jobs..." note characteristic Masnickism: HE DON'T KNOW.
Second, that's only true if poor and money must be spent immediately: if money is saved and carefully invested, one will likely get more money from prior work indefinitely. Note that it's written by a kid who's still getting income from work his grandfather did! Let's do away with ALL continuing income, especially inheriting money.
Third, while I'd go for 14-year limit IF "monetizing" the works was prohibited, Masnick doesn't commit, just natters.
Fourth, paying for enjoying seems due no matter how many years pass, so long as to original creator not heirs or corporations. -- HOWEVER, I propose a means test on ability to enforce: if already HAVE millions, then definitely withdraw the ability to sue.
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Re
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WFT does these out_of_teh_blue comments mean? is that same as Gwiz beggin some "Blue" for attention? old man yells at cloud? inside joke? I mean, WTF?
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He's given up his moniker, but look closely and you'll see his trademarks are as obvious as ever.
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Lol. I refer to "out_of_the_blue" as "Blue", but I wouldn't say "beggin for attention". Blue has a history of spouting nonsense, ignoring any rebuttals and then claiming that his points stand and he won the exchange. It's a hallmark of someone arguing from a weak position, really.
old man yells at cloud?
Not sure if you are referring to me or not, but I will admit that, yes, I could be considered an old man by some (and most definitely by the AARP who now send me application every month or so). I usually tend to rebut the cloud shouters though.
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Re: "none of it really matters" -- Typical Techdirt item, then, based on mistakes!
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Re: Re: "none of it really matters" -- Typical Techdirt item, then, based on mistakes!
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Re: "none of it really matters" -- Typical Techdirt item, then, based on mistakes!
If all the profits earned from exploiting the copyright to a work are invested, the additional profits, if any, are the result of the investment, and cannot possibly be said to be from the work.
Further, investment in the form of speculation (even long term speculation), as well as inheritances, are well-known to be dangerous to society. You may have heard some complaints about a certain 1%, which mainly makes money by using mere capital, rather than earnest effort, and which tries to pass it all along to heirs to keep that wealth concentrated. So while 'doing away with' it might be a little too far, severely restricting these practices is not a bad idea.
Fourth, paying for enjoying seems due no matter how many years pass
I disagree completely. Copyright is meant to encourage the creation and publication of works, while also protecting them as little as possible for as short a time as possible, because works are only truly valuable to society when they're in the public domain. Your proposal is like saying that so long as the person who built your house is alive, you should have to pay them for the enjoyment of a roof over your head. The better answer is that houses should be paid for as a lump sum (possibly financed by a mortgage, but that has nothing to do with the builder).
Accepting that the reception of a work in the market will determine whether or not the author makes money at all, and if any, about how much, copyright should be as short and as minimally protective as possible while still working as an incentive to get authors who would otherwise not create and publish works to do so. That is, the money the author gets should roughly be based on how little we can get away with paying him and not have him quit and do something else. Anything more is wasteful.
Of course, we can't tailor copyright that precisely, so in some respects we need to consider average outcomes, and in others we need to arrange ways for authors and publishers to self-select for varying treatment. It won't be a perfect solution, but it would be better.
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Re: Re: "none of it really matters" -- Typical Techdirt item, then, based on mistakes!
I wonder if he knows how much money he's implying that Hollywood and other industries should be paying for The Odyssey and The Ilyad or if that realisation makes him realise how idiotic the argument actually is. I guess not.
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Re: "none of it really matters" -- Typical Techdirt item, then, based on mistakes!
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Produce works that people desire, and will pay for. Succeed in that, and people will support you regardless of copyright, fail at that and it does not matter how long the copyright is, the work will never make money.
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Just show me the money!
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Re: Just show me the money!
And copyright itself would have nothing to do with providing for heirs if it's on something that never makes money.
A work going into the public domain doesn't mean it's no longer by the person who created it, it's still theirs to turn a buck on if they can or make an effort to do so. It just becomes unnecessary for others to pay for or even ask permission to do something with it.
One benefit of a set term is that everyone knows where they stand, where it begins and ends without having to know if the author is alive or dead, or if the rights were given over to another entity. Done is done.
It would be helpful to all if copyrights were required to be registered also, to form a searchable database of when copyrights begin (a set term would merely involve a bit of math to determine their ends).
Level the field for everyone, restore the public domain and the pact copyright is made of with society, and alleviate the monstrous legal issues we have with it today as it exists.
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Re: Re: Just show me the money!
Exactly. If you want to provide for your heirs, see an estate planner. If you want to make a living, produce works. The rest of the world has to go to work at least 5 days a week to make a living. And we don't get paid for our work but one time. Why do artists think they are special?
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compromise
This way 14 years after a book is written it can be freely distributed as an eBook for no charge but if someone wanted to distribute it with the intention of making money (printed or movie adaptation for example) it would fall under current copyright provisions and require consent/license from the author.
This would free up works for general consumption by the public while also preventing others from profiting off of the works.
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Re: compromise
That way we don't have to deal with attacks on individuals doing what they're clearly going to do anyway, but whatever money remains that the copyright can be exploited for is still directed to the copyright holder.
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Mr. Johnson, you damaged the property of Mr. Smith.
Yes your honor, but I didn't have any economic gain, so its ok!
Mr. Appleton, you walked into a police office, Lied your ass off, and your sworn testimony freed a mass murderer.
Yes your honor, but he didn't pay me for it!
Your non-commercial clause lacks needed nuance.
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Re: Re: Re: compromise
The purpose of copyright is to act as an incentive for authors to create and publish works which they otherwise would not have created and published, while imposing as few restrictions on the public for as short a time as possible.
So I don't see why it doesn't serve that purpose. Perhaps you could elaborate?
don't act like the people doing it are doing nothing wrong
Copyright is utilitarian. There is no right and wrong. So yes, the people who would be engaged in what would be lawful acts would be doing nothing wrong.
Can you imagine that logic applied elsewhere in the law?
As it happens, I can. Copying certain sound recordings noncommercially, using certain media or equipment, is non actionable (i.e. not capable of being sued over, though still illegal). You can find the relevant statute at 17 USC 1008. (In practice it's not common, but it is on the books)
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If your job is to write books/make movies, and any jerk with an internet connection can download your work for free with absolutely no repercussions, I can imagine you'd be a bit wary of pouring a year and your soul into your next novel.
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Perhaps, but you'd be overreacting if you were.
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2) You obviously have not looked around the Internet very much, as many creators put their work up for free, while also trying to make money from it; For example:
a) Cory Doctorow
b) Abigail Hilton
And may many many more creators of content
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Actually, a lot of people are hired to create works. Artists are just as able to sell their labor as any other worker. It's commonplace in all artistic fields.
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thankfully the IRS disagrees with you.
as a creative professional I can deduct my professional expenses against my income as all businesses do.
do you want creative people to have less rights than other professionals?
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The second group gain income from, and pay taxes on, the works that they have created, and while they may use the income to support them while they create a new work, they are not paid to create new works. In that sense creating new works is not a job, although it may be a hard work, and an investment in the future.
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what can you possible see wrong with someone being their own boss?
when you do ‘work for hire’ the people paying you are the creator not you.
most artists prefer working for ourselves: risking our time and resources not just for greater gain but more importantly for artistic freedom.
if you think royalties are a bad thing , search ‘ royalty free music ‘ there’s a lot of it. but you won’t like it, nobody does.
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your posting about a war that has been over for 2 years.
here’s what’s happening in the business of music.
the traditional middlemen (big record labels) have merged with the new middlemen (Silicon Valley/Wall St venture capitalists) in order to squash 21st century artists who own their own recordings.
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Royalties are part of a contract whereby a creator gives up their copyrights for future payment, and are but one way that a creator can earn from their creativity. Bringing up royalty free is therefore a red herring, and is no measure of quality.
That said, I can find more content of all forms that is available for free and which I find worth experiencing than I have time to indulge in experiencing, despite having all day every day to fill in, and no television.
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Well, that addresses half of the purpose of copyright -- the part about incentivizing authors to create and publish works that would not be created and published otherwise.
But you've ignored the other half of the purpose of copyright -- the part about offering the least protection for the least amount of time. (This is important because it reduces the harm inevitably caused to the public by restricting their use of the work)
So I don't think you did a good job of answering the question by just ignoring the part you find inconvenient. Would you care to try again, addressing the entire purpose this time? Hint: the answer will involve other incentives to create and publish works other than copyright, as well as the value that copyrights retain, particularly as to businesses, even though no copyright might apply to natural persons acting non commercially.
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Yes there are ways to 'compete with free'. However most of those involve people releasing their content for free and tapping secondary markets. You seem to be arguing that is the only kind of creation that can occur, that copyright should be burned down to the ground. But, in contrast, I have never seen a freely released story with the kind of page count I like get finished. They always slow way down and just kinda stop. Possibly because those secondary markets aren't as robust for books.
But you seem to know some other way to incentivize those create. So rather then laugh, enlighten us plebes who aren't aware of these magical incentives which not only support people who create, but retain value for businesses?
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Yes, that would certainly advance the other public interest, in being the least restricted, but now you're not addressing providing incentives to authors who would not create and publish works in the absence of copyright.
This will take a little while to discuss, but I beg you to bear with me.
A world without copyright is useful to consider for two reasons. First, it is the natural state of the world; any degree of copyright at all is artificial, and it's worth bearing that in mind. Second, it serves as our baseline. Copyright is meant to only serve the public interest. If a particular copyright law's effect on the public interest were to cause a worse result than the baseline -- that is, if it would literally be worse than having no copyright law at all -- then it would be imperative to fix or abolish copyright because it would clearly be serving no good purpose.
So straight away, the world of tolerable copyright law is limited to that which produces a public benefit greater than the baseline of no law at all. All that remains in finding the best possible copyright law is to find the one that produces the greatest public benefit. That is, after all, the only way to measure the worth of any particular copyright law.
Since we have our baseline, and since any copyright law will necessarily require some restrictions on the public, which is worse than no restrictions at all, we know that all copyright law will have some negative effect on the public.
Does this mean that we should never have copyright? No, it doesn't. Copyright is good so long as the public benefit produced by encouraging the creation and publication of works which, but for copyright, would not be created and published, outweighs the public harm caused by having that amount of copyright at all.
If the public benefit were evenly matched with the public harm, the rule of thumb that given two alternative laws, the best one is the one which is simplest and least restrictive, if all else is equal, would dictate having no copyright law at all. That's because if the benefit and harm were equal, it's easiest to just not have the law than to have it and get no greater overall benefit or harm for it.
But they aren't evenly matched.
The benefits we get from having works created and published which would not have been created and published but for copyright hinge on the number of works created and published; quality is subjective and not really able to be managed, but quantity is easy to do something about. And generally the more works there are, the more works of good quality there will be too. (This is a corollary from Sturgeon's Law, which states that 90% of everything is crap, basically)
Therefore, the more works we can get created and published as a result of copyright, the greater the public benefit of copyright will be -- but the more copyright there is (both in terms of the scope of protection, and the duration of the right), the greater the public harm of copyright will be.
At this point, the realities of the art world, and the market for goods and services related to creative works becomes a factor, and this is what makes it all work: The incentivizing effect of copyright typically hits its maximum for any particular work very shortly after it is first published in any given medium, and then declines from there. Pollock's work deals largely with this phenomenon, as I recall.
For example, a novel will make most of the money it will ever make from book sales within a few months of its publication. Book publishers wanted to try to goose book sales in the 20th century, so the paperback was invented. While book buyers might choose for hardback v. paperback on the basis of the quality of the paper, binding, etc., at least to some extent, the book publisher sees paperbacks merely as being a way to take another bite of the apple. Still though, for a typical novel in the US, the vast majority of sales -- if the book ever sells at all (most works have no copyright-related economic value whatsoever) -- will come within around 18 months. After that sales almost always decline. This is likely because there is more interest in new works than in old ones. There are exceptions, but relatively few given the vast number of works out there.
Movies are another good example. A movie will get released in first run theaters. After a few weeks, it will get kicked out, to make room for another movie. Then it goes to the second run theaters. After that, pay-per-view, then DVD sales and rental, then premium cable, basic cable, and finally broadcast TV. The first broadcasts will hopefully be on major networks, but eventually the movie can get no better slots than the Saturday Rainy Afternoon Movie of the Week. This whole process gets spread out over years, and with the exception of the paltry handful of movies that retain great copyright-related economic value over the long run, it's pretty standard. So while the 1939 Wizard of Oz might be so loved that it gets a major network to air it annually, the next highest grossing film of 1939, Jesse James, starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda is a bit more obscure, and probably wouldn't catch your attention if you ran across it whilst channel surfing.
So since the incentivizing effect of copyright is so short-lived (you can't plan to have a long-lived work, it's like winning the lottery) we can offer a relatively short duration of copyright protection to a work. As the copyright-related economic value of the work declines, so too does the need for protection, and then it can lapse.
And we know that shorter terms, and less protection are viable, because we've got a long history with them; the golden age of Hollywood existed in a period of 28+28 year protection; the golden age of rock and roll didn't even have copyrights on sound recordings; and to this day we still don't have copyrights for performing sound recordings on terrestrial radio.
An excellent example is architecture, which wasn't protected at all until 1990, but which produced many works, and many great works without copyright, and really hasn't appeared to produce any greater number of works, much less better works as a result of copyright; we could abolish architectural copyright today and it would certainly have no ill effect on the world of architecture, it's so useless. Non-copyright factors, like improved engineering and materials sciences, funds available to clients, etc. are what really matters in architecture.
So the results of the incentivizing effect of copyright protection is all front-loaded, basically, which means so is the public benefit of having those works created and published. The harms of copyright, are perpetual, however. The goal is to maximize public benefit while minimizing public harm. And the law should be as simple as possible where two alternatives would produce the same result.
So tl;dr -->
This means you want only the minimum amount of protection needed to get the most number of works created and published. The most bang for your buck, as it were.
As for where I got this, that copyright is utilitarian is well-known. The rest is just built on that, and all follows logically.
Saying we give you an exclusive right to distribute your work, unless someone else wants to distribute it for free, doesn't logically work.
Sure it does. We give you an exclusive right to commercially distribute your work, or to distribute it at all through the means of corporate entities. So if a theater wants to sell tickets to a performance of your work, you hold the relevant copyright. But if Alice owns a copy of your work, and Bob gets permission from Alice to duplicate that copy, and no money, etc. changes hands, then your copyright isn't relevant.
I mean, right now we give you the exclusive right to distribute your work only once. After that first sale, you typically have no right to control further distribution at all. We've had that rule for over a century, and sometimes authors and publishers get pissy about it (Garth Brooks, John Wiley & Sons) but no one cares what they think.
Copyright can be whatever we want it to be, because it's wholly artificial. The only rule is that it has to provide a net benefit to the public.
Yes there are ways to 'compete with free'. However most of those involve people releasing their content for free and tapping secondary markets. You seem to be arguing that is the only kind of creation that can occur, that copyright should be burned down to the ground.
No, I like copyright. But I also think that the rampant disregard for the law during Prohibition, and the attempts to enforce the law, caused more harm than good. While Prohibition might've been a good idea (most people honestly thought it was, at the time it was enacted), it would've been smarter to never have done it, and we're better of for having legalized alcohol. Now the same thing is happening with some drugs, and again, the cure of the drug war was worse than the disease of drugs ever was.
We agree that copyright infringement is utterly rampant among the population of the world. Individuals copy and distribute as they please, are basically unstoppable, and see nothing wrong with it. I think it's better to roll with that, than to oppose it. Maybe if it were really important, like shutting down racial discrimination (which was also widespread), it would be a fight worth fighting. But it's not that important; it's just copyright. The world lived without it since the dawn of time to 1710 (and not until the 19th and 20th centuries for most of the world), and if need be, can do so again.
Besides, we don't have to abolish it. While there is a widespread belief (and practice) that copyright may as well not apply to ordinary people, acting non-commercially, most of those very same pirates do support laws against commercial piracy, and do believe that commercial entities should not be allowed to engage in piracy. So my suggestion is that we abandon what we must, but salvage what we can. I think it's pragmatic and would leave us with a still-workable system. The paying market might shrink, and would certainly change, but I think a great deal of it would continue to exist.
But, in contrast, I have never seen a freely released story with the kind of page count I like get finished. They always slow way down and just kinda stop. Possibly because those secondary markets aren't as robust for books.
I've read lots of book-length, freely released stories that actually ended. I've also seen professionally published novels that did not (typically published posthumously, if the author was withholding publication until the work was complete). Maybe you're looking in the wrong places?
But you seem to know some other way to incentivize those create.
There are a lot of them: Practice. Art for art's sake. Popularity. Commissions. Patronage. Crowdfunding (a variation of the previous two, but worth mentioning on its own, I think). You get the idea, I think.
I mean, I just wrote an essay, pretty much, in replying to you, and the benefits that a copyright on this work might provide me with did not play any sort of incentivizing effect at all. (In fact, I place all my posts, including this post, into the public domain, because it's wrong for me to even be granted a copyright when I didn't need one)
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Go and sample the wide range of content available for free on the Internet. Passing on knowledge and the joy of craftsmanship is enough, for example see Tom Lipton's introductory video. Sometimes a passionate interest in a broad subject is enough, such as < a href="http://chinahistorypodcast.com/"> Laszlo Montgomery' China History Podcast. Maybe it is a passion for an art form http://blogs.gocomics.com/2014/02/meet-your-creator-gavin-aung-than-zen-pencils.html.
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Tom Liptons Intrdutory Video
and
The China History Podcast
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Even if that's what happened, I'm not sure it would be such a disaster if the people who were just creating stuff to make money found something else to do, and we were left with the ones creating because they love it.
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If you can push a new novel out every year, then under proposed terms, you would have 14 monopolies to exploit before you lose access to 1. Assuming you can produce decent works that actually attract market interest, it sounds like you could not only have a strong catelog to continue monetizing, but you'd also be able to promote a strong incentive to your growing fanbase to support you by alternate means.
Such as:
-Crowdfunding your next book by levereging your fan base
-Keeping a donations tipjar up for folks who really like your work, and want another way to support it.
-Joint projects with filmmakers, musicians or other creative individuals to push your work into other markets
-Commissioned stories where you sell your time to make OTHER peoples ideas come to life
-Monetize your growing popularity or market position (if you've gained public attention) through appearances, marketing yourself as a crowd-getter.
-Sell ancillary merchandise based on your works, like T-shirts, mugs, or other mass producable nik-naks that bear unique expression derivitive of your earlier works.
-Personify yourself in such a way so that YOUR name, rather than your books, become a draw to people and utilize your own image to make money.
-Invest money from previous projects to safeguard against decreasing popularity
-Work with communities and individuals creating derivitives of your work to not only create a more quality end derivitive, but also earn good-will with your growing fanbase for your inclusionary practices, spurring further interest and more sales.
No, the guy who wrote a good book a lifetime and a half ago should not still be the sole beneficiary of the work. No, the guy who wrote a good book 30 years ago should not be the sole beneficiary of the work. No, the only person who can use the name 'Jeb Bupkiss' shouldn't be the first person to write it on a page until 20XX.
Wanna make money as an author? Be an author and keep working. Only want to write one book? Then expect a return on that book for a few years, not until your children are in old-age homes.
I dunno about you, but if I got told 'Hey, you managed to make something popular, and you'll be making money off it in perpetuity (from your perspective anyway), I'd be alot LESS incentivised to keep working.
If you want to work as an author (and not just write books on the side or as a hobby), then you aren't incentivised to work by a promise to be the sole beneficiary of your 'year of labor' for all of your life. If anything, you are incentivised to protect, not to work.
You are incentivised to waste time trying to stop people from doing what people are GOING TO DO, waste money stopping a few random people as a 'message to the world' that is likely to lower demand for your work, and leave you less money.
In short, if you want to incentivise people to keep working, don't tell them they can coast off their early works eternally and be the only one allowed to think up a 'purple three horned polkadotted rhino' because it happened to be the random thing you put in your first work.
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Re: Re: Re: compromise
Yes your honor, but I didn't have any economic gain, so its ok!
Mr. Appleton, you walked into a police office, Lied your ass off, and your sworn testimony freed a mass murderer.
Yes your honor, but he didn't pay me for it!
Those are just terrible analogies.
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Re: compromise
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Re:
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Re: Re:
now the biggest corporate lobbyist in the United States!
http://pando.com/2014/11/13/google-is-the-biggest-corporate-lobbyist-in-america-now-says-new- public-citizen-report/
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Re:
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What about authors? Compensation as a general rule comes, if at all, at a time far removed from the act of creation, and none of the economic mandates associated with typical employment scenarios even apply.
The suggestion that authors, by virtue of copyright, are being given some sort of an economin advantage is laughable, and continuously regurgitating such a misleading and mistaken notion is disingenuous at best.
BTW, the original term under the 1790 act contemplated two 14 year terms, or 28 total. By the time of the 1909 act it was possible to secure a total term of 56 years.
People here at times seem to advocate a return defining copyright terms as was the case until 1978, but I have not the slightest doubt that even if this was to occur a hue and cry wouls almost immediately begin complaining that any term was far too long and destroying "culture".
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Re:
So the only thing “destroying culture” right now are the elongated copyright terms by which we must all abide.
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Re:
[citation needed]
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Re: Re:
assuming a song you write is recorded unusually quickly, like within weeks or months, the soonest you would see royalties would be about 3 years later.
Of course we all know that very few songs become hits. What most people don’t realize is how much music that is well known today was initially obscure or unpopular and gradually became known as a classic.
That’s why when I see Iggy Pop’s ‘Search and Destroy’ in a Nike SuperBowl ad I am happy knowing Iggy got the biggest check of his life. Or when I see ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ using Joan Jett’s ‘Cherry Bomb’ I’m glad that song is not in the public domain.
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Re: Re: Re:
Assuming you stick with the old label system.
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you’d be waiting till hell freezes over, they never pay!
I was writing about PUBLISHING royalties, paid to songwriters by ASCAP or BMI.
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if your song is being played on radio or TV, the money is waiting for you.
I guess you could choose not take it because....
you're protesting?
you're too 'cool'?
religious principles?
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Re:
What about them? Unless you have figures to the contrary, most authors who make money will make it within 14 years of writing a novel, and most people who advocate s reduction are open to an extension bring granted (limited in part of the author, not infinite on behalf of the publisher). Besides, why should copyright be beholden to one small part of one industry? Most authors don't get published at all, or didn't until self publishing became realistic on a mass level (for good or ill).
"People here at times seem to advocate a return defining copyright terms as was the case until 1978"
Some advocate a compromise based on current measures, others complete abolishment, and everything in between. It's a wider discussion than some shills would have you believe.
"but I have not the slightest doubt that even if this was to occur a hue and cry wouls almost immediately begin complaining that any term was far too long and destroying "culture"."
Many would also argue that the culture created before 1978 was far superior before corporations were able to demand effectively unlimited terms. Others would argue that even 14 years is too long given the current climates of both changing tastes and wide distribution options - that if you can't sell enough to make a living within 14 years, you're not making something worth buying. I'm not in either of those camps, but I don't hear cries to protect small businesses who didn't make money on their latest production run - we just accept that they go out of business.
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Re: Re: PaulT
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Re:
That depends on their particular situation. If you work for royalties on sales of copies, then sure. But nothing is stopping a plumber from arranging to get paid on the basis of a thousandth of a cent per flush, for life+70, other than that no one would want to make such a deal. Plenty of authors make money by selling their labor, just like most workers do.
The suggestion that authors, by virtue of copyright, are being given some sort of an economin advantage is laughable, and continuously regurgitating such a misleading and mistaken notion is disingenuous at best.
The economic advantage is a monopoly on the work. Whether it will yield a sizable advantage or not depends on the work and the market. A monopoly on water would be ultra valuable. A monopoly on being kicked in the face by a giraffe is not too valuable at all; there are more people who want to drink water than who would pay monopoly prices to be kicked in the face.
But if as you say, there is no advantage for the author, why should we bother to grant copyrights? Their only saving grace is that, through a rather circuitous scheme, they benefit the public by giving an economic advantage to the author. If they don't even do that, then they're useless for everyone.
BTW, the original term under the 1790 act contemplated two 14 year terms, or 28 total. By the time of the 1909 act it was possible to secure a total term of 56 years.
True, but remember that the second term had to be requested, and authors usually didn't bother.
People here at times seem to advocate a return defining copyright terms as was the case until 1978, but I have not the slightest doubt that even if this was to occur a hue and cry wouls almost immediately begin complaining that any term was far too long and destroying "culture".
Well, the terms were 28+28, previously 28+14, previously 14+14. The idea of 14 years came from patent law, and they got it from the 7 year length of an apprenticeship to a guild master. The idea being that 14 years was long enough to train two full sets of apprentices from scratch, in the new technology.
Term lengths should be based on serious research, not on medieval guild law.
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How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
The entitlement these people exhibit is absurd. The notion that they should be able to do something once or twice and then earn a living from that thing for the rest of their natural lives plus allow several generations of their kin to also earn a living from it is, for me, the hardest part of the copyright debate for me to stomach.
The idea that the many should be forced to seemingly permanently acquiesce to the nearly limitless and largely unchecked demands of the few is unacceptable to me. I can support a copyright regime that grants people these rights for a brief period of time, say 10 to 20 years or upon death of the original creator, whichever comes first. Beyond that, you get no support from me.
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Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
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Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
Excuse my poor grammar.
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Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
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Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
only problem is; you don’t want to give an incentive to profiting from shortening a creator’s life.
it’s probably a good idea to add 10 years so distributors aren’t tempted to murder artists so they don’t have to pay them.
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Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
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Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
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Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
Taxes.
People pay taxes on their houses, their cars, and other forms of 'property'. If copyright is to be seen, and treated as, property, then it should be taxed just the same. And much like other taxes, not paying would lead to it being seized. Don't pay the taxes on your house? You lose it. Don't pay the taxes on your car? You lose it. Don't pay the taxes on your copyright? You lose it.
Not to mention, taxes are based upon the value of the property in question, and if simply infringing on a copyright is worth tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, then the value of a given copyright, and the taxes based upon it, are likely to be immense.
Suddenly that idea of 'copyright is property' isn't looking so great, is it?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
I certainly pay taxes on the INCOME from my songs and if someday the government becomes an infrastructure provider for songs (like suppose they took over the functions of ASCAP or BMI ) then I would happily pay taxes for that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
Isn't using tax dollars to enforce copyright via the court system and the DOJ also providing "infrastructure to maintain [the] assets" of the copyright holders?
Would you happily pay a copyright tax to offset those expenses?
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Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
Why? What reason to do you have for copyright to be the life of the creator? What about works with multiple creators or when corporations own the copyright? When does the copyright expire, when the first creator dies, or the last? Do corporations keep the copyright until they go bankrupt?
None of what you wrote makes sense to me. Please explain.
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Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
I was commenting on a discussion about individuals and their progeny. and to be even more specific, I can only speak about musical artists as that’s the only thing I have deep and hard earned knowledge of.
Naturally when one collaborator dies the survivors still own their portion.
Corporations don’t write songs so that’s irrelevant but I would like to say that ‘corporate personhood’ is a repellant concept and a vile abuse of the english language.
I don’t think corporate entities should EVER own the works of artists, they should only be allowed to license them.
Legal protection for musical artist in their dealing with a traditional label is quite evolved .
Even if an artist is coerced into selling or giving away their publishing, they still get 50% of the income.
Sound recordings revert to the artist after 35 years , though of course the labels are now trying hard to change that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
Almost the entirety of a songwriter’s income comes from publishing royalties . Almost the entirety of publishing royalties comes from broadcasting and film/TV/ad licensing. When a song becomes public domain it is STILL generating income.
Why should the creator be cut out just so Clearchannel , Google, Pandora or Disney Pictures can collect what used to go to the songwriter? And then probably the aged songwriter has to go on public assistance that you and I pay for with our taxes!
Do you think Pandora or Spotify charges you less for streaming a public domain song? Do you think they charge advertisers less? No, they just get a bigger cut for themselves.
All the songs in Disneys’ Guardians of the Galaxy are 40 or 50 year old.
Do you really think Disney would charge you less if the songs were public domain? No, they just get a bigger cut for themselves.
I personally prefer that the artist continue to receive the income stream of his product rather than that stream being diverted to the bottom line of Disney Pictures or the fuel tank of Daniel Eks private jet.
Not because of fairness or justice but because artists put their income back into the cash ecosystem we all live in as opposed to the venture capital closed loop that the corporations are sucking all the assets of the world into.
It’s May 1 !
Workers of the World Unite!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
That still does not answer the question. The creator is still free to make money from a song even if it's in the public domain.
And then probably the aged songwriter has to go on public assistance that you and I pay for with our taxes!
They can't make money from the song they wrote 50 years ago so now they have to go on the dole? Wow you lot really do have an overblown sense of entitlement.
Do you think Pandora or Spotify charges you less for streaming a public domain song? Do you think they charge advertisers less? No, they just get a bigger cut for themselves.
And what's the problem with that?
I personally prefer that the artist continue to receive the income stream of his product rather than that stream being diverted to the bottom line of Disney Pictures or the fuel tank of Daniel Eks private jet.
How would short copyright terms divert money from artists to Disney? If you mean it's because Disney could use works that have fallen into the public domain without paying, keep in mind that every other artist could do the same thing. Disney can easily afford to pay licensing fees and royalties, whereas the struggling small time artist might not be able to. A richer public domain helps the little guys more than the big corporations.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
What's wrong with investing some of your income into a pension fund; that is what other people do?
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Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
Why? Benefiting creators is the side-effect of copyright, not the goal. The goal of copyright is to benefit the public, by incentivising creators to make more stuff, and have that stuff enter into the public domain so other people can use it to build their own creations.
And I don't know about you, but locking a creation up past the lifespan of pretty much anyone living when it was created, and allowing someone to coast by on one creation for their entire life doesn't seem to be incentivising more creations, or serving the public by enriching the public domain.
it’s probably a good idea to add 10 years so distributors aren’t tempted to murder artists so they don’t have to pay them.
This is hardly the first time I've seen this particular argument, but honestly, it never gets any less stupid. Murder is already illegal, very much so.
Make other arguments for why copyright should be a certain duration, or not tied to the lifespan of the creator, but leave the completely ridiculous 'We can't make it last the lifespan of the creator, because someone might murder them so they don't have to pay licensing fees' argument at home.
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Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
I assume you are referencing the Constitution, a document that also protected slavery and defined black people as 3/fifths of a person?
The popular arts had not yet developed during the writing of the Constitution. The evolution of the artist from being a back door servant dependent on the whims of the rich to being able to take his art directly to the public and so being self sufficient without the patronage of lords and kings is a social phenomenon that developed over the course of the 19th century.
I don’t understand your outrage that a creative person is allowed to share in the profit from his work.
The public benefits from artists being able to sustain their careers .
I feel deeply indebted and inspired by the careers and works of the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Bowie, Stevie Wonder and songwriters like Holland/Dozier/Holland, Burt Bacharach and Lieber and Stoller.
The careers and works of these creators was only made possible by the control , security and freedom that they derived from owning their compositions.
When an artist gets his royalty check , he spends it at the grocery store or buys equipment, and so enriches the community he lives in.
As opposed to the monetization of music as practiced by Google, Pandora and Spottily where the money just gets recirculated in world of venture capital, thus reinforcing the current dilemma of the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer.
Many songs from 50 years ago are still valuable and making money for broadcasters , advertisers and digital distributors.
Why do you feel a sense of injustice if some retired bluesman is able to use his royalties to buy an oxygen tank?
Should the music of the past only fill the tank of Daniel Ek’s private jet?
Or buy Pandora’s Tim Westerberg another yacht?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
'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.'
Pay close attention to those bolded words, as they define what parts are the goal, versus what parts are the means to reach that goal. The 'exclusive rights' granted by copyright are not the former, but clearly fall under the latter category.
I assume you are referencing the Constitution, a document that also protected slavery and defined black people as 3/fifths of a person?
And freedom of speech, ending slavery, various other rights, and oh yes, providing the legal justification for US copyright in the first place. Yeah, that's the one I'm referring to all right.
The evolution of the artist from being a back door servant dependent on the whims of the rich to being able to take his art directly to the public and so being self sufficient without the patronage of lords and kings is a social phenomenon that developed over the course of the 19th century.
Say instead 'the last couple of decades', and you'd be more accurate. The difference between rich patrons, and major labels was primarily a matter of clothing, how they treated artists was pretty much the same. In either case, if you wanted to be known, or have any chance at all of becoming famous, you had to go through them, both sides knew it, and the 'patrons' used this fact to make the 'terms' be completely in their favor.
It's only as new services have shown up that have allowed creator to connect directly with fans and would-be-fans, rather than having to go through a parasitic middleman(labels rather than rich patrons), that musicians and other types of creators have begun to truly be able to offer their works directly, and maintain control and ownership over their creations.
I don’t understand your outrage that a creative person is allowed to share in the profit from his work.
My 'outrage' stems from the fact that copyright was meant to be a deal between the public and creators, wherein the public would give up certain rights for a limited time period in order to incentivise the creation of more works, and in exchange those works would, after the limited time period was over, pass into the public domain, so that the next 'branch' of creativity could grow from those works.
My 'outrage' stems from the fact that the 'deal' has been completely broken, such that the public gets nothing out of it, leaving the 'deal' utterly one-sided.
My 'outrage' stems from the fact that copyright has been 'amended' several times, every single time in a manner not in the public's favor, and always retroactively and thanks to rich parasites who abhor the idea that the public domain might actually grow, ever.
I don't have any problem with the idea that a creator be rewarded for their creation, so long as that 'reward', and the means to it, are within reason. Durations that are for all intents and purposes eternal, the ability for copyright owners to threaten people with absolutely obscene amounts over minor infractions, the constant and unrelenting pushing to have third parties do all the work and foot all the bills in order to 'protect' the 'poor artists'... none of that is within reason.
The public benefits from artists being able to sustain their careers .
Just because something is good for the copyright owner(rarely the actual creator until very recently), does not automatically make it good for the public. The public is best served by creations moving into the public domain, so that they can build upon them and make even more stuff, yet copyright law has been twisted to such an extent that that pretty much never happens in the US anymore.
The careers and works of these creators was only made possible by the control , security and freedom that they derived from owning their compositions.
(Ignoring for the moment I'm almost dead certain that very few, if any of those artists actually owned any of the rights to 'their' music...)
Or it could have been because they all had hair, or spoke languages understood by their fans, or made music that people wanted to listen to and were willing to buy so they could support the musicians and listen more.
A good number(the majority I would guess) of other musicians also had that 'control, security, and freedom...' and never struck it big, never got famous, never got rich, and were forgotten, their music ignored or gathering dust, with the musicians themselves stuck looking for other work.
Why, it's almost as though copyright wasn't the thing that made them rich and famous... /s
As opposed to the monetization of music as practiced by Google, Pandora and Spottily where the money just gets recirculated in world of venture capital, thus reinforcing the current dilemma of the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer.
Please, you want to talk about the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer with regards to music, look no farther than the recording industry, where they've honed fleecing artists to a form of art. Whether it's completely one sided 'take it or get out' contracts, 'advances' that get re-paid several times over by the time the band makes any money at all, being forced to sign over the rights to their own music, and various other tricks, no one screws artists over like a major label.
Why do you feel a sense of injustice if some retired bluesman is able to use his royalties to buy an oxygen tank?
Should the music of the past only fill the tank of Daniel Ek’s private jet?
Or buy Pandora’s Tim Westerberg another yacht?
...Or pay for a record labels exec's multi-million dollar 'bonus'?
Funny thing about using an appeal to emotion based upon royalties, as example after example after example after example after example after example after example show, record labels and 'collection' agencies hate actually paying those out, and that poor retired bluesman is probably completely out of luck, unless he was smart enough to save up some money to cover his retirement, because he's not likely to get anything from his music a couple of decades past.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.
OK, really? You mean the Constitution written right during the end of the Renaissance period? I'd recommend against using history as a basis for your argument when you clearly don't understand it at all.
Most people don’t nor does a single creative professional I’ve ever met.
And this (among other statements) is the core of your issue. Not the anecdotal evidence used to strengthen your point (it doesn't). The "creative professional." You use it again when you say "The public benefits from artists being able to sustain their careers."
This comes from the false belief that three things are true...there are "professional artists" and "consumers" and that the two are never the same, that money is the primary motivation for artists to create, and that those artists must make their living from royalties on previously produced content.
The fact is few people are able to make art a career, and even fewer on their own. Like any business, you need a market and demand for your goods; the demand is not automatic, and a business is not guaranteed to succeed.
Likewise, never in human history has monetary gain been the primary motivation to create art. For those few that are able to produce enough quality art that has a high enough demand they can make a living off it but the majority of "artists" make content because they enjoy it. I've written books, made videos, wrote poetry, made (bad) music...and I've never made a dime. And I never needed that incentive to make it. Maybe I'd be able to make more stuff if that's all I needed to do, but really there's no guarantee that's the case.
Lastly, if you believe that publishers are giving a fair deal to content creators, you're either incredibly ignorant or delusional. The very services you claim are harming artists are making them more money with royalties than their publishers ever did. Even Megaupload, the boogie man of the anti-piracy crusade, helped artists. I find it very interesting that the last Megaupload commercial before its shutdown was a group of actual, well known musicians, including Kanye West, Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Will.I.Am, Alicia Keys, Lil Jon, Chris Brown, Jamie Foxx and more [1] thanking the service for the money it was bringing them...and this was because Megaupload's paid content was actually making more money for them than their record labels.
Again, I ask, why are you entitled to get paid for something your created previously for the rest of your life? No other industry gets the same benefit, unless you count banking investments, but even that is not a guaranteed return (as we all discovered circa 2008). And why are royalties on previous works your sole source of income?
No wonder so many "artists" are poor. If they're hoping the scraps fed to them by publishers will sustain their income I can't imagine any other outcome. Go read some books on economics, business, and entrepreneurship and stop playing the victim.
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I don't know, not rely on mommy's residuals?
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I felt sorry for him: he makes a living from his work now, but seems to think that long after his death, somebody is still going to be keeping his self-published works available for purchase and that this will be a substantial income for his descendants.
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Re: "pirate mike"
If it weren't so boring and, well, kind of pathetic.
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Bad idea, but...
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http://jabberworks.livejournal.com/703055.html
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curious
I) Copyright can only be held by the creator of the work to be copyrighted.
Ia) Creator is defined by a physical entity which can be jailed (JE, Jailable Entity).
II)A copyright my not be bought or sold only transferred to another party upon the death of the creator.
III)The duration of copyright will last not less than 20 years, unless the copyright is waived.
IIIa) Transfer may only take place between the creator and another JE upon the death of the creator providing that it is within the first 20 years of the copyright and is only good till the end of those initial 20 years. (20 years chosen because the JE most likely to receive the copyright would be a spouse and should there be kids, after 20 years, should a child be born the day the creator dies after finishing the new Harry Potter replacement, would allow for the kid to be raised and hopefully be able to make a good start in life, get school paid for, that kinda thing.)
IIIb) Once the initial 20 years is up, proof must be supplied by the creator that further copy protection is required. This further protection will cost 10% of gross revenues derived from the protected media. Furthermore each year, till the death of the creator, the average interest rate charged by credit cards must be paid on the previous years derived revenue from said work. (no reason why i chose that interest rate just liked the idea)
Sorry it so long, was longer but ya get an idea and ya just gotta share it. Go figure, i created an unworkable idea even though it is better than what is around now, and i didn't get paid for it
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Re: curious
Bad idea. Works usually don't have any copyright-related economic value. Of the handful that do, the value is typically almost entirely to be had straight away after publishing in a given medium. Only the tiniest fraction of works have 20 years of value in them, and they were typically valuable right from the get go.
An author who did nothing to provide for his spouse and children but leave them a copyright would be as irresponsible as someone who left a whole box full of scratch-off lottery tickets.
If you are concerned about people who will survive you, the proper thing to do is to do a job that is certain to make at least a reasonable amount of money, to invest it wisely, to take out a life insurance policy, to minimize expenses, and as a last resort, to take political action to ensure that there is a good system of social welfare available if it should be needed. Plus, this works well for everyone, not just for a handful of successful authors.
The widows and orphans premise for copyright is utter crap.
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Time and Money
For example, if I write a book and sell $10k of books every year for fourteen years, I should be allowed to renew my copyright and keep that revenue stream. As with a trademark, let me file a sworn statement showing my continued use in commerce, on the basis of either direct sales or licensed use, with some minimum requirement. Also as with trademarks, sham transactions would be disallowed. The copyright would then be renewed but go to the public domain after that period expires.
But if I write a book and sell $10k of books every year for four years and then sell only a few copies for the next ten years, the copyright office should refuse my renewal. First, I probably no longer care about the copyright and wouldn't seek to renew it in the first place, so the system would be self-correcting (as it used to be). Second, if I did care, I would not be able to make the required showing of continued use in commerce and so the renewal application would be refused. Either way, the book would go into the public domain.
The benefits are two-fold. First, I was given 14 years to find a way to make revenue from my copyrighted material. If it takes me 12 years to get it off the ground, so be it. I just have it get it going and keep it going at the renewal time. Second, if I can't make it happen after 14 years, maybe someone else can. But there is no reason to allow me to protect something that I am no longer using in commerce, whether through inability or lack of market.
Finally, by allowing copyrights to expire, I will be incentivized to create new works because I must to keep revenue coming. Hunger is a powerful motivator. And if my existing works are still popular after 28 years, letting them become public domain might make people willing to buy my new works. Someone who might not have paid for books one and two in my series might be willing to read them for free down the road. Now, my audience has expanded for the rest of the books in the series that I am motivated to create because of copyright expiration.
P.S. On a side note, isn't it ironic how everyone observes the shortening of product lifecycles, etc., in our modern world, yet we need to extend the 1701 Statute of Anne's time period to infinity?
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Re: Time and Money
True, but pleasing the various parties should not be part of the equation. The "right" duration for copyright should be based on only one consideration: what is the shortest duration that adequately encourages the creation of new works?
All of the evidence I've seen indicates that whatever this length is, it is less than 28 years.
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Re: Time and Money
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Re: Time and Money
I like the idea of steeply increasing registration fees. First, a work must be registered to be copyrighted. The first X year term (probably between 10 and 20) is free. The next is some significant fee - maybe $10,000 (to be inflation adjusted). Then every ten years the fee is multiplied by ten. If you want the 40 year extension, it's going to cost you a million dollars. Now there is no messy argument about whether something is used in commerce, and I would think nearly everything would pass into the public domain after ten years. Even if you cut my suggestion to a tenth, we would still see very few works copyrighted longer than 20 years.
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Maybe she should write better selling books..
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Why even have extensions
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Re: Why even have extensions
If we had a legion of psychics working at the Copyright Office, we could just figure out what the least amount of copyright was that the author needed to get him to create and publish the work, and then only grant that, and no more.
Instead, with an opt-in system, authors only get copyrights if they care enough about them to fill in a simple form and pay a modest/token fee. The hurdle needn't be high, but should require some active effort to clear. Renewals are the same way; if an author doesn't care enough to renew, it's safe to assume he doesn't care about the additional copyright term and the work can enter the public domain all the faster. If he does care enough to apply, presumably he needed it.
It's not perfect, but it basically worked. I'd suggest having one year terms, and therefore annual renewals, and varying the number of renewals available on the type of work and the general economic lifespans of such works (books and movies might get longer overall terms than software or newspapers).
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Blame SCOTUS
However, SCOTUS declared a few years back that a period longer than 100% of the lifespan of the population is still a limited time.
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Sonny Bozo
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Re: Blame SCOTUS
So according to their argument, infinite duration copyright(more than just the 'effectively infinite' version we've got now) is perfectly fine, as long as the steps to get there aren't themselves infinite.
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Here's how to earn your living
Copyright actually increased the number of works available, because authors had to *CREATE* new works to assure a continued income stream.
In return for protections given to the author, they were allowed a limited period of time to control their work, and then it passed into the public domain.
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Re: Here's how to earn your living
Previous to copyright, everything was public domain.
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HAHYAHA
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A Form of Welfare
What a great phrase! Let's rewrite the debate: start calling Copyright "Authors' Welfare" or "Publishers' Welfare". The term "welfare" has negative connotations to much of the American public, so if we can reshape the debate with these terms we can perhaps shift public sentiment against these insane copyright terms.
We can state something like, "It just makes sense to reduce the time that authors and, especially, publishers are feeding at the Welfare trough of excessive Copyright at the public's expense." There, you've insulted Copyright by equating it to Welfare and made it clear that these excessive Copyright terms are stealing from the public by taking Public Domain works away from them.
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From that, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years are all also valid, based on how much certainty you want about the overall value.
I would be against any term renewals for copyright. It's too annoying to know if a work which is past the first term length (which you can determine from the copyright date on the work itself) was actually renewed. I'd prefer a fixed length, non-renewable form.
The main problem with shorter lengths is abusive exploits by other industries (ie: movies vulturing books). For example, the first Spiderman movie was 40 years after the original comic publishing date. Maybe not the best example, but you can certainly count on such exploits being attempted.
From all of the above, I would go for 30 years (95th percentile), but with an additional factor — loss of copyright.
Loss of copyright would be an explicit removal of copyright, reverting it to the public domain. I would designate this as being 3 years after it is considered 'abandoned'. The creator can also explicitly give up his/her copyright at any time.
What constitutes being 'abandoned' depends on the type of work.
For commercial works, like books or DVDs, that would be when they're considered "out of print" — no longer published or made available for sale from the copyright holder.
For software, it would also include when the software is no longer supported (ie: no more updates or bug fixes). For example, Windows XP's support officially ended April 8, 2014, so it would lose its copyrighted status on April 8, 2017.
For non-commercial works, such as webcomics, fan movies, freeware, etc, it's a bit more difficult to decide what constitutes making something available. Is a freeware program on SourceForge that hasn't been touched in 15 years still valid? You might actually have a similar contention with commercial works. Is something that's only sold on VHS or laserdisc still 'available'? I would probably add the condition that the product still be 'consumable' on a standard, modernly-available device (ie: runs on a current OS, can play back on a system that you can buy at Walmart, etc).
So, basically, anything that is considered "out of print" (which isn't the same as "hasn't sold any") for 3 or more years reverts to the public domain, since it clearly shows that the original copyright owner no longer finds value in maintaining the work themselves.
Of course, it's fairly easy to use that as a loophole with digital works. Since there's basically no cost to 'make them available', they can bypass any risk of loss of copyright even if there's no real value in maintaining them. There are other nitpicky bits that would need fine-tuning, but overall I think this seems a reasonable approach.
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Re:
From that, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years are all also valid, based on how much certainty you want about the overall value. 95th precentile to determine what? Are you saying the longer the copyright duration the more likely that 78% of works will be in the public domain? Or are you trying to say that the actual analysis suggests that the optimal length based on usage is 30 years, with a 95% confidence level? If so, you are looking at the data differently then Mike. Therefore you aren't explaining your conclusions very well in light of the portrayal of his work on Techdirt, the summary of which is that 15 years is ideal because we find parity in percentage of public domain works in the late 1700's.
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Re: Re:
Then, describing the percentiles I was referring to:
That is, the cumulative probability that the optimal copyright term length is N years or less. Thus, 25% chance that it is 11 years or less, 50% chance that it is 15 years or less, 75% chance that it is 21 years or less, etc.
This leads to:
And the concluding remark:
That is, 15 years if the estimated value, but the confidence interval stretches up significantly higher (38 years for the 99% confidence interval).
The lower limit isn't given, and I don't feel like doing the math, but assuming an arbitrary value of 7 years as the lower 99% limit, you could present it as: a 99% probability that the optimal copyright length is between 7 years and 38 years, with the median estimate being 15 years.
Mike's use of 15 years is not 'wrong', but it is misleading, because it ignores the confidence interval. And, in fact, it's almost certainly not the actual ideal value, simply because of statistical variance. The most likely value is in the 18-19 year range.
As an aside: There are actually errors in the paper, where the written text does not match up with the charted graphs, so I'm somewhat skeptical of the 15 year value, in and of itself. For example:
However if you look at the referenced chart, the calculated value for 5% decay/6% discount is 18.5 years, not 15.5 years.
In addition, Figure 3, being a graph of probabilities, looks like its midway point should be around 22-24 years or so, not 15.
Given that there are reasonable arguments to be made in favor of a longer term (that is, no 'ideal' value will survive contact with humans intent on exploiting it), and that there are some questionable elements in the paper (I should really see about running the numbers myself), it makes sense to tilt a legislated value towards the conservative end of the confidence interval. I could see anything between 20 and 30 years as being reasonable.
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Re:
Or to put it another way, it's probably not higher, and it's probably not lower? Sounds like a workable definition to me.
I would be against any term renewals for copyright. It's too annoying to know if a work which is past the first term length (which you can determine from the copyright date on the work itself) was actually renewed. I'd prefer a fixed length, non-renewable form.
I disagree. Copyright should be as short as possible. If a particular author of a particular work is okay with a shorter span of time, as evidenced by a failure to renew, that's a nice bonus for the rest of us. I'd prefer annual renewals. If there's a registration system, it won't be hard to stick the registration number on published copies post-registration (or to lookup the registration from the title, name, etc. on the work) to facilitate looking up whether the term has run out. That's already the rule for patents and trademarks, and again, it works out okay. If you're lazy, you could wait for the maximum possible time to elapse, though.
The main problem with shorter lengths is abusive exploits by other industries (ie: movies vulturing books). For example, the first Spiderman movie was 40 years after the original comic publishing date. Maybe not the best example, but you can certainly count on such exploits being attempted.
This is neither abusive nor an exploit. You're supposed to wait for a work to enter the public domain, if you want to use it without an applicable exception, license, or assignment. You're complaining about people obeying the law now. I don't understand that at all. Copyright isn't a permanent right to control the use of a work; it's a time-limited right. If you can't get any customers in the time allotted the problem may well be your own.
(Also Spider-Man had TV shows as early as 5 years after first appearing; if they couldn't get a film actually out the door until 2002, I think it's because they had problems with the financing, not because of a cunning plan to wait out the rights)
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Re: Re:
You have that backwards (or maybe inside out). It probably is higher or lower, but there's no preference as to which direction to lean (ie: not more likely to be higher, or more likely to be lower, vs the other option).
Also, as I said, Spiderman isn't really a good example, but then there aren't any examples right now because of the way the current copyright system works. Maybe the Harry Potter series would work better to illustrate.
The point is, the shorter the duration, the easier it is to wait out the copyright rather than license. And, given that part of the point of the copyright monopoly is to have control over that licensing, the easier it is to avoid it entirely, the less value copyright has at all. Despite the fact that that's fundamentally part of how we want things to work, it's still an exploit because it lets you game the system.
So you want it long enough that licensing is preferred if someone wants to ride the popularity of an existing work, but not so long that someone can't easily pick it up within a generation (~20 years).
On the issue of renewals, I'll grant that there are valid approaches on that side, numerically. However the maintenance overhead for both the producer and consumer seems like it could be far more trouble than a mere handwaved dismissal. A searchable database like the patent office's, though... maybe.
For a renewal system, I'd probably propose something like: All works are automatically copyrighted for 10 years. After that, a work can be given renewals of 5 year durations, for an initial fee of $1000, and tripling every additional renewal. The total cost of renewing a work out to 20 years would be $4000, and to 30 years would be $40,000, and would cost $81,000 for the next step. An alternate version would be a 15 year initial duration, $10,000 fee for the first extension, and doubling thereafter.
There would be no upper limit, except the point where the copyright holder decides it's no longer worthwhile to continue to pay the renewal fee. Due to the exponential growth, that point will be hit eventually.
However, despite the fact that it would eventually force a work to the public domain, I don't really like it, as it's far easier for a large corp to tie works up even if they take a loss, so there would be a tendency for small-time creators to have fairly short durations, while big corps would have much longer durations. That would tend towards a preference for assigning the copyright to a larger corp that can more easily afford to stockpile longer-held works, shifting the balance of power away from the smaller creators.
Thus a money-based limiter is probably not a good solution. Any limits should be built in directly.
Thus I'm back to a preference for ~20 years as a flat duration, or up to 30 years if it includes an abandonment expiration.
Of course.. a forced abandonment expiration system could be exploited to. If a company has a contract with an author that prevents them from publishing with someone else, and then just sits on the work without publishing it themselves, they could force a work to be abandoned via the 3-year clause I proposed.
So perhaps the flat 15 year automatic, plus optional renewals of either a single 15 year block, or maybe three 5 year blocks, would give the best balance, while putting a hard cap on the duration that isn't based around money. That would give you a range between the 50th percentile and the 95th percentile, to be flexible enough to give a near-optimal result for almost all cases.
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Re: Re: Re:
Why wait, though? The major licensees who you'd want to deal with during the term aren't going to want to wait, because then they're all in competition with one another. While that is acceptable sometimes, with long-standing, proven works (e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan), it's quite nice to have exclusive control. Remember, copyright originated with publishers; claiming that it would help out authors was just an excuse in the beginning. And even now, the system still favors publishers, because authors are a dime a dozen.
I don't think there'd be so much waiting as you expect.
However the maintenance overhead for both the producer and consumer seems like it could be far more trouble than a mere handwaved dismissal.
There should be some overhead for copyright holders. Not more than a change of address form; certainly nowhere near the level of doing your taxes. But enough that it's not automatic, and therefore requires a conscious decision and at least a token fee. If a copyright holder doesn't care enough to undertake that minimum level of effort for something we're told is so valuable, I don't see why we should care enough to grant it.
For a renewal system, I'd probably propose something like: All works are automatically copyrighted for 10 years. After that, a work can be given renewals of 5 year durations, for an initial fee of $1000, and tripling every additional renewal. The total cost of renewing a work out to 20 years would be $4000, and to 30 years would be $40,000, and would cost $81,000 for the next step. An alternate version would be a 15 year initial duration, $10,000 fee for the first extension, and doubling thereafter.
I'm happy with a simple form, and a dollar fee, but the system is opt in from the beginning, and renewals are frequent, meaning that terms are short. The rationale of not wanting to grant copyrights where they are not necessary (as evidenced by the author taking action to get one) applies from day one. Why wait ten years? (Though for manuscripts intended for publication and works published contemporaneously with their creation, a lesser degree of protection could subsist for a little while, depending on the general circumstances)
History is a good indicator that not everything will get copyrighted, and not everything copyrighted will get renewed. And if some big company pays all the fees and fills out all the forms to protect everything, I'm willing to put up with it; after all, it can't be worse than the present situation.
the flat 15 year automatic ... to be flexible enough to give a near-optimal result for almost all cases.
You just copyrighted everyone's text messages, and for no good reason. Remember, the majority of creative works don't require copyrights as an incentive for their creation and publication. Therefore, they don't merit copyrights. Opt-in worked fine from 1790 to 1977. Why not go back to that?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Basically, it needs a heavy dose of "How can I break or exploit this system?", as well as tackling a large number of user experience issues, more mathematical analysis, and lots of thought as to "Why should it work this way rather than that way, and what's the ramifications of each?" (regarding things such as copyrighting everyone's text messages, where edge cases matter)
Regarding the specific question of "Why not go back to that?" (for opt-in), that ignores the question of "Why did they change it in the first place?" I don't have a transcript of those discussions, nor do I have experience in the use of the pre-1977 system, so all I can say is: Don't change the system if you don't know what the problems with the old system were. If you don't know what the problems were, you can't fix them, or properly compare the competing options.
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Why are artists so special?
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Re: Why are artists so special?
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Re: Why are artists so special?
from royalties. publishing royalties from copyrighted works.
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Re: Re: Why are artists so special?
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Sadly though, they all thought it was a new Green policy, rather than just copying the existing Pirate Party policy :-(
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Making a living.
Um, here's a crazy idea: Produce NEW content.
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Who hated to process of due
Each film that he'd paid
Was DMCAed
And shoved up his ass with a screw
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The cost and "forever" copyright.
Why then such a guaranteed protection should be free? In case of patents it is not, maybe it should be the same with books, songs and movies. For example - $0.01 for the first year. $0.02 for the second one. $0.04 for the third. And so on.
And why limit this - let it run forever. As long as the fees are paid, let it be protected. Otherwise the works would become public domain, with no return.
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welfare?
Talk about Orwelliian double-speak!
Are you prepping to be a commentator on Fox News?
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Re: welfare?
If an architect designs a building that a company then uses, does he get a cut of their profits?
Does someone who builds and sells a chair get paid each time someone sits down on it?
In pretty much every other field of business, the creator gets paid once for their creation, when they sell it, rather than creating one thing and then getting paid for it for the rest of their lives(plus several decades after).
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Re: welfare?
It's welfare to set up the copyright system to ensure a living for an artist, his children, and their children, for works created in the distant past.
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I could tell him: I can’t pay you up front for a new engine, but if you put one in , I’ll pay you a quarter every time I drive it.
Please lemme know if you can find that guy! My mechanic won’t take that deal, believe me I’ve asked.
If I could be paid for a hit song up front I would like that , who wouldn’t?
how is one paid for a hit song? All people are created equal,
all songs are not!
the only way to arrive at VALUATION of a song is when it makes it’s way thru the marketplace . That process can take months or years. that’s just one of many reasons why royalty compensation is the most efficient and fair system for creators, for the public and for enterprise.
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