There's a pretty fundamental difference between patents and copyright that I think justifies copyright being longer: a copyrighted work could not exist without its creator. IE, the Beatles catalog would not exist without the 4 Beatles, specifically. However patents are discoveries and can be discovered by other people.
I don't disagree, though I would argue that bullshit like "design patents" blur that line somewhat.
Even within patents, you're not supposed to be able to patent a "fact", which is why most math is non-patentable, and it gets into kind of weird territory when you get into stuff like algorithms: is an algorithm part of mathematics and therefore a fact and therefore non-patentable? or is it closer to an invention and engineering, and therefore should be patented? Or is coding "creative" enough to where we should actually be copyrighting algorithms?
I have no idea the answer to that question, or where the line should be drawn (though I gravitate towards the "math" side).
I don't know where I'm going with this; intellectual property law is weird.
No, copyrights make sense to be longer. But not “century” long. But something like 15 years for a copyright, renewable each year after for a growing cost, up to 30 years total, seems reasonable to me.
The main point being, if you’re still making money hand over fist from your book you wrote, or film you made, you can keep the copyright. But at some point, you have to prove it has value by paying for it, with a fast growing price each year after, and still a finite time where the copyright goes away entirely. This prevents dead copyrights where you can’t even find the copyright holder, because they died 50 years ago, and the work is obscure, but you want to license it. But if you create some original song or story or whatever, it’s totally fair that only you get to make money from that for a very long while.
An R&D cycle itself can be 5 years, a 1-2 year patent approval time is typical. Industrializing research for production is at least a year, not to mention finding a market fit. And you are supposed to recoup all that in 3-5 years? Just tooling amortization can take that much.
At least it’s not as terrible as the US copyright system, which is more than 90 years.
Copyright should be shorter, but IMHO it's a lot less bad than patents.
If copyright worked like patents, Disney wouldn't have a monopoly on the Star Wars franchise
Patents tend to be super-broad, so instead they'd have a monopoly on all space-related fictional media.
There's a pretty fundamental difference between patents and copyright that I think justifies copyright being longer: a copyrighted work could not exist without its creator. IE, the Beatles catalog would not exist without the 4 Beatles, specifically. However patents are discoveries and can be discovered by other people.
I don't disagree, though I would argue that bullshit like "design patents" blur that line somewhat.
Even within patents, you're not supposed to be able to patent a "fact", which is why most math is non-patentable, and it gets into kind of weird territory when you get into stuff like algorithms: is an algorithm part of mathematics and therefore a fact and therefore non-patentable? or is it closer to an invention and engineering, and therefore should be patented? Or is coding "creative" enough to where we should actually be copyrighting algorithms?
I have no idea the answer to that question, or where the line should be drawn (though I gravitate towards the "math" side).
I don't know where I'm going with this; intellectual property law is weird.
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That should also be three to five years.
No, copyrights make sense to be longer. But not “century” long. But something like 15 years for a copyright, renewable each year after for a growing cost, up to 30 years total, seems reasonable to me.
The main point being, if you’re still making money hand over fist from your book you wrote, or film you made, you can keep the copyright. But at some point, you have to prove it has value by paying for it, with a fast growing price each year after, and still a finite time where the copyright goes away entirely. This prevents dead copyrights where you can’t even find the copyright holder, because they died 50 years ago, and the work is obscure, but you want to license it. But if you create some original song or story or whatever, it’s totally fair that only you get to make money from that for a very long while.
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An R&D cycle itself can be 5 years, a 1-2 year patent approval time is typical. Industrializing research for production is at least a year, not to mention finding a market fit. And you are supposed to recoup all that in 3-5 years? Just tooling amortization can take that much.