Comment by LocalH
3 days ago
Do you not believe that the eventual purpose of limited copyright terms is to incentivize creation of works and enrich the public domain?
I am absolutely not trolling. Historically, pirated works become more accessible than non-pirated works. Especially in the realm of computer software and video games.
Rightsholders are more often than not horrible stewards of their own legacy. The best way to preserve works is to spread them far and wide. Universal was doing a great job managing their masters, until it all went up in flame.
Thanks for responding thoughtfully. I think we agree that the point of limited copyright is to encourage creation of works. I would say that creating and selling the works is already a substantial benefit to the public who opt to buy or license them (and in the case of physical copies at least, resell or swap them). I see only a moderate social value in forcing them to eventually become public domain (I have never waited with bated breath for a particular text to be added to Project Gutenberg), but I'm certainly not opposed to such limits.
> The best way to preserve works is to spread them far and wide.
I disagree. We are in an age of cheap and abundant digital storage; preserving works for the public good could be adequately covered by introducing a requirement that copyright holders archive their digital works in a government archive, to be unlocked when copyright expires. (Due to the extreme time limit, there would not even be any incentive to abuse such a service for regular file storage.) I would be happy for a few of my tax dollars to go towards keeping the lights on in a government data centre holding all this. Unlike piracy, this approach has the advantage of not violating the rights of the copyright holder.
In practice, it's undeniable that essentially all piracy is done thoughtlessly, for the immediate gain of the pirate, and because they technically can, so the idea that it is being done to better society seems extremely convenient to say the least. Even in cases where piracy winds up financially benefiting the creator due to the increased public awareness of their creation, it should be the creator's decision how much of this to allow, in the same way that I should have the right to throw a perfectly good apple I just bought in the bin if I want to.