Comment by monknomo
2 hours ago
20 years to make some money, and then we set the work free for the public benefit. If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights.
2 hours ago
20 years to make some money, and then we set the work free for the public benefit. If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights.
Either that or some exponentially increasing tax so that Disney can keep their vault. (I'm perfectly fine with them keeping it if they pay some proper taxes.)
They pay taxes every time that they make money off Mickey Mouse, regardless of copyright status.
the important thing is that copyright serves the public good, I do not think it currently does, at least not as well as it could
It also solves the issue of potentially not knowing when the author died, with a fixed period (the number isn't so important imo so long as it's sane), a work is out of copyright x years after the first known copy was published.
reduces the ownership hunt problem, as well!
For corporations sure. For individual authors that's certainly not fair. Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.
> If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights
Because there are fundamentally differ concepts and serve different purposes?
But this must then follow for all forms of works, why just books? Every company whose original creator dies must be converted into a public company within 20 years of founder's death for the public benefit as well if that's the case.
If I wrote it, I own the copyright on it, why should I or my future family give away something I worked really hard for? Why do only authors must care about public benefits?