Comment by thdr
4 hours ago
> copyright should just die with the author
That would have a few undesirable consequences... for example, you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are.
The complexity of our legal system is in many cases justified. The problems are often the numbers (duration of copyright protection etc.)
> copyright should just die with the author
This makes sense when you’re thinking of a painting or a book.
Who owns the copyright to Windows or MacOS? A corporation. How do you deal with that?
> you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are
Commercial projects are works-for-hire and the copyright is not owned by the person who does the work.
The proposal for the limit of copyright needs to be refined.
In the US, the current rule is:
> For … a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation
If you hire them, then you own the work you paid them to do, no?
Not in every country, and secondly if you're basing it on life of the author then that does't solve corporate copyright unless you tie it to the live of a particular employee.
You could do "life of author or X years, whichever is longer". Or include a period after death.
But you see how the complexities come in.
The complexities are the problem. I've always thought a fixed term is best. Then, you can purchase a work - it says Copyright <dddd> on it. Then, you know that after dddd+term the copyright is lapsed. You don't need to hunt down the author to see if they died. No guessing, just written on the work that you purchased. No, don't have optional extensions - that just means you have to look it up. It should say it right there on the work you purchased when the copyright expires.
It is said that the vast vast majority of works don't earn anything significant after a few years in any case, meaning the only possible reason to have long copyrights is so that a very few people can get stinking rich. But those people already got rich, in the first few years.. society does not benefit from them getting richer.
20 years fixed term is my proposal.
Either that or if it didn't work, insurance industry would've created a product that makes it work for commissioned works. Nothing happens in isolation here.
Then just make it the rule that the copyright expires after 30 years or when the author dies, whichever comes last.
I am fine that estate gets to keep rights for whatever period is left. If estate is dissolved ofc rights would also end. So they can't be orphaned. Either someone has them or they are public domain.
Why not just 30 years? Patents get a flat 20.
Not that I'm arguing for 30 per se, just that I don't see what goals of copyright would be advanced more by adding an "or until death" complication.
For inventions if you don't make money off it in the first 20 years you are unlikely to ever make any money off it - as the invention space moves on.
That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-)
Also most books etc don't make much, if any money - an publisher/author might rely on a the cummulative effect of a number of revenue streams built over time.
Also the effect of exclusivity is different - for patents you are potentially blocking the area of innovation you have patented by your exclusivity.
That's not the same societal effect as somebody not being able to copy mickey mouse.
So they aren't exactly the same - however I'm not proposing a 3000 year copyright :-)
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Well imagine you write a book in your 20s or 30s and it only becomes popular after a couple of decades. The publisher gets to pocket all the money.
Somebody decides to make a movie based on your book? You get nothing at all from it... The movie bit would be problematic even for books that were reasonably popular at the time. e.g the Witcher adaption came out almost exactly 20 years after the last book, for GOT it wasn't that far from being the case as well (at least for the initial volumes). Studios would be incentivized just to wait a couple of years to avoid paying anything.
I think it could be reasonably to have a fixed limit if the rights are held by corporations, though.