As I understand it originally copyright lasted 28 years, which to me seems like a reasonable length of time. Now copyright lengths seem to be increasing every few yew years due to heavy lobbying of corporations trying to protect their long dead creators works, such as Mickey Mouse and others.
It seems like copyright should be treated much like patents where they last a limited amount of time and then goes into the public domain to be worked with by new innovators. I find it ironic how many of Disney’s movies are based on stories which have long since passed into the public domain.
I take it you don’t own any works under copyright. Thanks for wanting to take money out of my pocket.
More seriously, here’s a chart of copyright length over history. It hasn’t been 28 years (actually 14 years plus a possible 14 year renewal) since 1831. Even then people recognized that copyright was not like patents. Innovation required constant change. A creative work was timeless. It made no sense to take ownership away from the creator while it could still produce income. In fact, the 19th century was a constant battle over the pirating of authors’ works that finally came under control with the 1909 Act.
As has been pointed out on this Board countless times, corporations have protection over their creations through trademark law, which does not expire as long as it is actively used. Disney gets far more from its trademark on Mickey Mouse than it would lose by letting Steamboat Bill go into the public domain. That’s a favorite argument against copyright but it doesn’t actually make any sense.
Is the length of copyright correct today? That’s a matter of opinion. It may be too long, but determining what the length should be is ridiculously hard. Protecting a work through the creator’s lifetime seems a reasonable compromise, with some time added to project a family if the creator dies.
If you want to be taken seriously on the subject, why not tell us what you think the length of copyright should be? Then we’ve have something to debate. But remember copyright is something that benefits me as an individual writer far more than it does corporations. If you’re yelling at me, tell me when I should lose control over and benefits from the one thing I have to sell.
It might depend on the medium, but “life of the artist” isn’t a very useful criterion. For one thing, what happens when a copyright is sold? If I create a great story, and then sell the rights to Disney, why is it at all relevant when I die? The life of the current owner could be relevant, but when the owner is a corporation, that’s perpetual.
And how do you determine whose life to measure by, for creative works that have many creators? Is the artist of a movie the director, or the screenwriter, or the actors, or all of them combined? When the director dies but the actors and screenwriter are still alive, is the direction then public domain, but the acting and words still owned? How would that work?
Or, say some recluse writes a book, but thereafter thoroughly shuns the spotlight. Decades later, someone rediscovers the work, and wants to republish it. Do they have to track down the original author to discover if they’re still alive?
It would make much more sense to just make copyright a term of some fixed number of years after the work’s creation. What precisely that fixed number of years should be, well, that’s certainly a matter that can be debated. But we should pick some number and stick to it.
Copyrights last longer than patents but give less protection. A patent protects an invention, which is an idea. A copyright protects an expression of an idea. So, for example, if I get a patent on a new type of photovoltaic cell, no one else is allowed to produce such a cell for the duration of the patent without my permission. But if I wrote a copyrighted book on photovoltaic cell technology, no one else would be able to publish anything using the same words for the duration of the copyright, but they would be able to publish works with the same information as long as they didn’t copy my language.
Similarly, a trademark gives less protection than either a copyright or a patent. The use of a similar symbol to represent a product or service is only considered an infringement if it can create confusion in the marketplace. So, for example, if I have a trademark on ACME Brand roadrunner extermination equipment, someone else could sell ACME Brand orange juice, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a trademark violation.
Fixed terms are far, far fairer than the current actuary roulette. And treating works for hire differently is stupid.
One of favorite examples is Casablanca (1942). All the major players involved: lead actors, writers, directors, editors, etc. are dead.* And they were contract people at the time. I see no enhancement to creativity for it to continue to be copyrighted. So Time-Warner buys Warner Bros. and it’s going to magically be more creative thanks to the efforts of long dead people?
How did Ted Turner latching onto MGM’s film library help creativity?
70 years is far too long regardless of when the author died. I can see, at the most, 50 years from creation but 40 years would be better.
The authors of the play it is based on died in the 1990s. The last in 1997. It will be under copyright until 2067. If your amateur theater group stages it in 2050, you’ll have to pony up to Time-Warner or whoever owns the rights then. Of course, the probability of there being another copyright extension law by then is essentially 1.
As I mentioned in my OP I think 28 years is a reasonable time. Are you saying that you have lots of works that you’ve written that you’re getting significant residuals for 28 years later? I think there could be a comprise, Allow a long copyright period for the work itself, like for example the actual text of a Harry Potter book. You can include things that are essentially the same as the original, meaning you can’t just change a few words and call it a new work. However derivative works should be protected against for a much shorter time. Like for example if I want to write a story written in the Harry Potter universe I shouldn’t have to wait 100+ years to do so.
Even if the original works go out of copyright, subsidiary rights generated by a Disney can trump any further use of them. A long while back, I sketched out a novel that would have placed a reincarnation of Zorro in modern California. (Some cool ideas, too, I thought.)
I was young and dumb and this was the pre-internet era, so it took me a while to work down the chain. The original books are long public domain, at least technically - but Disney’s various derivations of the character absolutely block any use of recognizable names, elements, settings etc. And will for the rest of my life, at least.
Can you name an actual example of a copyright being sold to Disney? Or of a copyright being sold to anyone ever?
It must have happened at some time in history but I can’t think of an example. Nobody sells copyrights. You license rights to use of the work. They are never perpetual unless you are very stupid and so is your lawyer. They also aren’t exclusive. You may give Disney the rights to use a character in a movie, but there are thousands of other ways you can continue to exploit your own characters.
How many movies are made in a year? 500? That’s out of probably 500,000,000 copyrighted works created in a year. Corporations are irrelevant to copyright. You destroy the seriousness of your case by mentioning them.
That’s true no matter how long the length of copyright is. The solution is known to everyone: have a decent updateable database. It’s hard to do now but the future is obviously trending toward making people findable.
Who is we? If you’ve read the countless earlier discussions of copyright, you would know that the current length was chosen to match that of the European Union, making the world’s major markets uniform. Copyright is not a U.S. issue. It is a world issue. Changing it will change the entire world’s creative artists. That will be harder than a decent database of works.
Whatever the discussion is, one point is paramount. Ignore corporations. They are irrelevant and only cloud the real issues.
And for drewder, who in the world is stopping you from writing anything you want in the Harry Potter universe? Aren’t there already millions of Potter fanfictions? The only thing you are being stopped from is using those works to make money for yourself in the commercial world. How is that violating any of your rights?
I don’t know how many movies are made, but I do know that it’s not zero, and that they are copyrighted. Nor are movies the only creative works with multiple creators. If I have a recording of the Cleveland Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, who counts as the creator of the work on that recording?
No, if copyright were for (say) 40 years, and the work in question were written in 1972, then I wouldn’t have to do any research at all on the author: I would know that it was public domain. And if I wanted a work that was written in 1977, then I still wouldn’t have to research the author: I could just wait a year.
Did I ever claim otherwise? If, as you note and I already knew, copyright is a world issue, then clearly the “we” there means “the world”. Why would you think I meant anyone else?
In 1985 Michael Jackson bought the company that had the rights to most of the Beatles catalog. When he bought the company, he bought the copyrights along with it.
This kind of thing could happen in the music industry because, for years, recording contracts gave copyright to the record company, not to the artist. These copyrights would be acquired when, say, a bigger company took over a smaller one.
Beethoven. Performance of a work doesn’t attach copyright. The performers may have certain rights to remuneration based on whatever their contract states, but it has nothing to do with copyright.
Yes, a specific performance is copyright. You cannot do anything with the Cleveland Orchestra’s recording without the permission of the rights holder. (Other than play the recording, of course. Let’s please not get into word games.)
That’s the entire issue behind copyright in this thread. Anybody can perform Beethoven or do anything transformative to any work of Beethoven because the work is in the public domain. However, any specific performance of any work by Beethoven is protected by copyright.
Well, ok, but if you were to ask any member of the Cleveland Orchestra “who is the creator of the work on this recording” they would respond “Beethoven”.
To be clear, the company Jackson bought had the publishing rights to the songs (ie authorisation from the copyright holders to publish the sheet music). The copyrights to the various songs themselves remained with the writers.
This is the same as Bloomsbury having the publishing rights to the Harry Potter books in the UK, or Scholastic in the US: it doesn’t affect JK Rowlings ownership of the copyright.
I don’t know anyone from the Cleveland Orchestra but, as it is made up of many people, I suspect you would get many different responses- most of which would be along the lines of “Could you clarify the question? It sound like you’ve crafted a wording that you think narrowly proves you to be ‘right’ about something. Just what kind of bar bet are you asking me to help you win and do I get a cut if I provide you with a profitable answer?”
Beethoven (assuming you’re not talking about the St. Bernard) is the composer. His work is in public domain which is why you and The Fachverwirrt Symphony Orchestra are free to perform it and/or make a recording of it. Once you’ve made a recording of it, that recording is your creation.
If I want to include Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in a film and I listen to many different recordings and determine that the recording by The Fachverwirrt Symphony Orchestra is the absolute best recording then I would have to pay you to use your recording in my film and I would be absolutely thrilled to find out that you don’t believe you’ve actually created anything nor done any work of value as you happily offer me use of your recording free of charge.
Can someone explain this distinction to me? My assumption is that I could write all the Little Mermaid stories I want, but I could not write stories using Disney’s version of the Little Mermaid, which was 98% invented from scratch. Unless my stories were clearly satirical works that no one could reasonable confuse with an actual Disney product?
Is that close? If so, it seems fair. Create your own Zorro. People create their own Draculas.
In SD discussions on creative protections I support protection for the creators. Making a living in the arts is incredibly high risk, and yet art is incredibly important to society. Even if you resent Overpriced Paintings, the chances are that some music, movies, shows, books are central to your enjoyment of life.
The vast majority of people writing books, plays, screen plays, songs won’t find financial success. Not compared to say, a teacher or a policeman. Without the Lottery Factor, the chance for fortune, the smartest people won’t be inclined to take the risk of trying to make it as creators. And the smartest people will be even less apt to create if they aren’t protected from their having their works appropriated by sharpie contract writers… or by adoring fans.
If I’m a bottom line publisher, and I can get out of giving an artist money by waiting 8 years to put out the next edition, or a retrospective, that’s what I’ll do. So, I like protection for (roughly) a normal lifespan, plus a couple decades (people want to care for their kids and surviving spouse.)
My first book was published 14 years ago. I’m still receiving some royalties from its sales. (Yay for print on demand!)
Suppose the copyright were to expire in another 14 years but people are still interested in the content. So a publishing house decides to print up new copies and sells them. Everyone makes money from this, except me, the person who came up with the content the buyers of the book find useful enough to pay for.
Why didn’t you print up new copies and sell them, making money for you? If someone else can do a better job than you after 28 years, then they deserve it.
I’m aware of all this. What I’m saying (unclearly) is that while copyright attaches to the recording, the “creator of the work” is Beethoven. I don’t know any members of the Cleveland orchestra either, but I know a lot of musicians, and no one I know would dispute that (although they would, as you say, find the question strange and probably avoid it). I’ve made commercial recordings (choral, not orchestral) and if you were to ask me who the “creator of the work” on any of those recordings is, my thought would go to the composer. I (among many others) was the performer of those works. The recording is my product. The work is not.
I’m probably just quibbling about the word “work” in relation to classical music. At any rate, I think the discussion is played out.
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