Comment by monknomo
4 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.
4 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.
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!
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.
Yes, and they should pay taxes whether they use it or not if they want to keep it out of the public domain.
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
I agree 20 or 25 years should be plenty of time to protect artistic work. No other industry or line of work has anything like that protection. A work published today by 10 year old could stay in protection for nearly 200 years. If that person was to live to 140, theoretically possible with medicine in future.
We do not continue to pay for most things once they are created. Unless they are continuous services. Artistic works should not be any different.
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?
I don't think they are very different in concept, other than one covers physical goods (and also procedures to make physical goods), and the other covers writings.
The purposes of both are: "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."
Like, this is a made up regime with a specific intent. The fact that we treat copyrights and patents differently is an accident of history. I think we could quite reasonably choose a different period of time (and in fact, have done so several times over the past few hundred years) and still promote progress.
I think it's very reasonable to say that one good idea should not be enough to let you coast your whole life, you should be prodded to cough up 3 good ideas. Further, it reduces corporate power at the other end by allowing individuals to play in coroporate properties after a relatively short time. You could be futzing around with, idk, a copyright free Cars under my proposed regime.
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?