Why can’t all those “innovators” make their own creations?
Sure, there’s a valued place for derivative works, but fact is most works aren’t going to be “re-worked” by “new innovators”. I fail to see an urgent need for this.
If someone really wants to make a worked based on something copyrighted they can approach the copyright holder for permission. There are numerous examples of works by others in an originator’s “universe” that are legally authorized by the copyright holder. True, the copyright holder is not obligated to grant permission but many do if asked politely. Copyright law does not bar works using copyrighted items, it puts control of works using those things under the control of the originator.
Why not make a distinction between individuals (or single proprietorships, which a creator may set up but which will not endure past the person’s lifetime) and big corporations? Lifetime for an individual (maybe plus a few years for the estate) and, say, 50 or 75 years for a corporation?
This is actually a good question. Well, maybe for the overall work you could say 50 or 75 years, but these days various actors/directors/writers might get residuals and percentages from every performance/screening/showing/whatever. Maybe, for the sake of simplicity and sanity we say that for a collective work like a movie it’s just a flat number of years.
We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Copyright enables many creative people to keep creating, we need to preserve that even if we’re trimming around the edges.
Yep, that is currently the situation. Unless you can convince a judge there’s reason to believe said recluse is dead (maybe they were 40 when they wrote the book but that was 80 years ago… it is highly unlikely any given person is still alive at 120, at least at present) you’re going to have to look for the person and ask permission.
What’s wrong with “lifetime of the individual?” and leave X number of years for the corporation? After all, you can always ask for permission to make a work based on something copyrighted.
**Ftg, **you fail to understand the difference between being an author and being a publisher - if you force authors to do all the work of printing, marketing, and distributing their works they will have less time for actual writing, which is what they want to do and what their fans what them to do.
Printing and publishing is an entirely different skill set and type of work than writing.
There are questions being posed here as if no one has ever thought of them. The question of what happens when there are multiple authors of a work, for example, has been settled aeons ago. All the authors have full rights.
Why do you want to write a story set in the Harry Potter universe? Why can’t you create your own universe to set your story in?
One reason might be that Rowling has already done a lot of the hard background work of creating the universe, and you want to take advantage of that. In that case, you should compensate her for what she’s provided for you.
Or it’s because you think it’ll sell better if it’s set in the Harry Potter universe, because people want to read more about Hogwarts and not so much about some alternatively-named off-brand equivalent. Then again, you’re looking to profit from Rowling’s reputation, and she deserves compensation.
But if a fixed number of years is reasonable for a collaborative work, then why wouldn’t it also be reasonable for an individual work? A term of, say, 50 years would usually still cover the lifespan of the creator, and if it doesn’t, why should a person be rewarded just for living a long time? The health of the author has no relationship to the quality of the creative work.
EDIT:
So if I want to re-distribute an old movie, I have to check whether and when the Third Assistant Grip (C Team) died?
I think this illustrates well the issue with copyrights. For the sake of argument, let’s say that’s unfair, what about another 14 years? What about another 50 or 100? Should you and your posterity receive some amount of money off of it forever? Clearly, the point is there’s some maximum amount beyond which it’s ridiculous, and I’d also bet that the overwhelming majority of the profit from your book, and most books in general, is made within the first few years, if not the first few months of publication.
In my opinion, the purpose of copyright law is that it’s supposed to be aiming to maximize the creativity of society as a whole, not to let someone have a great idea and make tons of money off of it for the rest of their life. If anything, someone that has a great idea that’s so good they can live off of it the rest of their life, we DON’T want to encourage that, we want to encourage them to keep creating because they might have more good ideas. The problem is, we need to make sure individual creators have enough time to develop and and monetize their ideas such that they see sufficient benefit from sharing their ideas, but we need to balance that with the fact that creativity begets creativity and people are influenced by other people’s works, so they need to be able to borrow after some period of time. What is the optimum level of protection to achieve the optimum balance? Frankly, I think it’s a lot shorter than it is now.
Consider, in times past, before the internet and TV, when most creative works were things like books. It would take potentially take years for a book to be printed and word to spread about how great the work is and more people to learn about it and buy it and read it and on and on. Plus, there was a high overhead cost in printing and distribution, so there was a lot of incentive for people to steal well known works because it was a guaranteed return on that investment. I could see allowing potentially decades in such an environment.
But we don’t live in that world anymore, today ideas and creative works spread like wildfire. Let’s take Hollywood films as an example, they can take years and tens or hundreds of millions to make, especially blockbusters, and yet the overwhelming majority of the money comes from the theatrical run and the majority of that comes from the first few weeks. Look at the typical film run. A typical blockbuster will be in theaters for about 6-8 weeks, then about 4-6 months later it’s released for rental and purchase, then a few months later it’s on HBO, Showtime, etc. and then within a year it’s showing on Cable and all. All of these times are my estimates, but they’re worked out by the industry to find the optimum balance for maximizing profit. If the next stage happens too soon, some people might just wait to rent it rather than seeing it in theater or watch it on HBO rather than renting or seeing it on Cable rather than paying for the premium movie channels. If there’s a film I’m really excited to see, I’ll even make a point of paying full price and seeing it opening night when I could just wait a day or two and pay less than half that for a matinee.
And there’s two reasons why this is relevant. The first is that, clearly the overwhelming majority of profit is clustered in the first few stages. Films make less and less from rental and sales these days and focus more and more on the theatrical run so it’s getting more and more front loaded. Second, these timelines are getting shorter and shorter. Even a decade ago, it could take a year or more for a DVD to come out, these days I’ve even seen the Blu-Ray on sale while the film is still in theaters.
So let me pose a question to those of you out there that still see some films. When the last film you were super excited to see came out, if you KNEW you could see it for free two years later, would you wait or would you pay to see it in theaters? What if you had to wait just one year or six months? Hell, I’ve even heard from some super fans for some films that saw a given film half a dozen times or more in theaters, and since the digital version came out a week or two before the Blu-Ray, they bought BOTH because they had to see it right away but they still wanted the physical copy too.
So, my point is, I think if the copyright on a film, if it were cut from ~70 years to just 5 or 10 years, Hollywood would see negligible impact on the profitability of their films, but now creators would have access to films that are still at least somewhat within the public consciousness. I’d be loathe to go TOO much shorter, even though dropping to as little as 2 or 3 years would probably also make minimal difference, just because I’d want to leave enough time for development of sequels so we don’t get a massively popular film and then the “official” sequel and a bunch of rip-offs coming out around the same time.
And I see the obvious objections is what about the films that are MASSIVELY popular for a long time, like how Shawshank Redemption still get’s lots of money because it’s ALWAYS on some Cable channel somewhere, or how Star Wars still makes a ton of money from merchandising. And I have two responses to that as well. First, the more popular a film is, the more influential it is and, thus, the more and more the weight of other creators comes against the original creator continuing. As long as the original creator keeps at it, they’ll be the ones continuing the storyline that’s actively going where even people influenced would be years behind and, unless the original creator loses his touch, most people will prefer to get the story from him rather than from some random person. And second, even IF parts of the earlier works fall into public domain, that just encourages the creator to keep coming up with new and interesting ideas, whether it’s new characters or interesting story twists. If someone else can eventually do better, isn’t society better off in the long run when we get it sooner rather than a lifetime later?
So it seems to me that it sort of balances out, and I just can’t see a good reason for decades of protection on films. I think we’ve let Hollywood lobby too hard trying to squeeze every last penny out of every creative idea, and now look at what we have. Any time there’s a franchise with money making potential, it gets run into the ground with sequels and spin-offs and expanded universes. Some of these end up being pretty good, some of them are utter garbage sometimes made just to keep the rights active (e.g., the most recent Fantastic Four film) or to try to cash in on nostalgia rather than because they had a good idea (eg, Terminator: Genisys, Independence: Day Resurgence). What if other creators had access to some of these classic characters? Maybe some of these franchises would have strong entries in them from other creators. What if Hollywood was less dependent on milking endless franchises and had to have more original creations? It seems to me that the short-term gain of squeezing every last penny out of a franchise is ultimately hurting the entire film industry as a whole in the long-term.
And while I focused a lot on film, mostly because it’s so transparent, I think it’s even simpler with other creative works. Look at music. With popular songs, most people who will buy the album buy it quick, most of the rest get cheap or free access very soon after, either by buying the track or getting it through a streaming service or YouTube or whatever. And all but the most influential popular songs are often out of the mainstream consciousness within months, much less years. And in the area of less popular music, as a metal fan myself, I buy tons of albums, even though I could get them all free, and go to concerts and buy merchandise because I WANT to support the artists, as many of the fans of the more out there bands in metal or in other genres will tend to do. People thought the internet making it easy to get free digital copies of songs would destroy the music industry and copyright needed to get stronger and the industry pushing really hard for DRM actually started pushing fans away. And yes, there’s some classics out there that continue to sell, like The Beatles, or how Metallica’s Black Album still routinely sells a few thousand a week, these are also incredibly influential works.
TLDR: My point is that in today’s world, ideas are created and spread far faster and cheaper and become more influential faster and make the overwhelming majority of their money faster, so continuing to extend copyright seems to be going in the wrong direction and it’s hurting our culture’s creativity, especially popular culture. Independent films and music still seem to be largely innovating, but popular film and music largely isn’t. I think something in the neighborhood of 10 years is plenty (and I’ve seen some interesting arguments for even less or even none) and a pretty safe place to start, and if you can’t effectively capitalize on it in that amount of time someone else will, even if it’s just repackaging it, because good ideas NEED to be shared and built off of.
Right there it sounds like you’re confusing copyrights with patents. Ideas aren’t copyrighted; creative work is.
And the main purpose of copyright law is basic fairness. The people who put in the work—the time and effort and everything else that goes into making a creative work—deserve the compensation, not any random person who comes along and copies it.
I had my first story published at 16 - I hard think “66” is a outrageous lifespan, and I fully expect to be needing an income at that point. With the average lifespan being into the mid-80’s these days your system means that before death an author will lose control of all output up through his/her mid-30’s - which is often a peak earning time in anyone’s life. Kind of sucks for a nice retirement.
You’re not “rewarding” the author for a long lifespan. And yes, the health of an author can affect the quality of a work (healthier people do tend to work better than sickly ones) and while living an exceptionally long time might not affect the overall quality is may very well affect the quantity. It is the long-running highly popular series that fans want more and more of that arguably most need the protection of a long copyright.
Note that merchandising and such is mostly not restricted by copyrights, but by trademarks, which work completely differently. As an example, when Steamboat Willie eventually lapses into the public domain, anyone who wants will be able to make copies of it and do whatever they want with those copies (including selling them), but it will not enable anyone other than Disney to make new Mickey Mouse movies (or toys or T-shirts or whatever), because Disney has a trademark on Mickey’s distinctive appearance.
On the other hand, while trademarks can last indefinitely, if the owner wishes (and Disney does and for the foreseeable future will), it can also lapse at any time if the owner stops defending it (which Disney is exceedingly unlikely to do, but it does happen to other companies). In the exceedingly unlikely event that tomorrow, Disney just stopped making any effort to defend their trademarks, then as soon as that fact became apparent, anyone who wanted to could start making and selling Mickey Mouse toys, clothes, new movies, etc., but they still couldn’t distribute Steamboat Willie without Disney’s permission, until such time as the copyright runs out.
No, you don’t. Because that guy is not an author or copyright holder of any of the rights in the film.
I find it hard to accept questions like this in this thread as being sincere.
It’s one thing if someone started a thread to ask “There are things about copyright law I don’t understand and I was hoping someone would be able to explain how it works. For example, how is copyright ownership of a film determined when many people are needed in order make one?”
Instead, this thread starts off with “Copyright law is all wrong because I am ignorant of everything about it and here’s my plan to fix all the problems that I don’t understand.”
Which is an argument for not tying copyright to the life of the author. If you’re living a long time and writing many works over your lifetime, then it won’t matter when you’re 75 that you’re no longer getting royalties from the works you created when you’re 25, as you’ll instead be living on the royalties from the works you wrote when you were 35 and 45. Alternately, if that first story you got published at age 16 is the only thing you ever wrote, then you probably ought to get some other job, instead of expecting to retire off of one singular work from your teenage years.
Sounds a little like the notion that if you starve the poor a bit more they’re more likely to get paying work - creativity can take years to develop an idea. There’s no set time limit.
You still have explained why all these other allegedly creative people somehow NEED to borrow other peoples’ ideas. If they’re creative, where are their OWN ideas?
And, again, if you think you have the Most Wonderful Idea to add to creative universe you can ask the copyright holder if you can “borrow” their universe, and many of them do in fact allow this if you ask them first.
So I don’t see where we need to destroy copyright to save creativity.
Indeed, we don’t. Fifty Shades of Gray, for example, exists precisely because the creator couldn’t just swipe the settings and characters from Twilight.
That’s my understanding, too. If you go back to the original you can use any element of it regardless of whether someone else has done so. Look at all the Sherlock Holmes stories. Not only *can *people use all the Homes tropes, their audiences expect that they do.
Which brings us back to drewder. What would he or anybody else here do with a story that Disney has adapted that he can’t do now? What difference does length of copyright make to his personal creativity? Bambi: A Life in the Woods was written in 1923, so it goes into the public domain in 2018. Better start planning today to beat the rush. Are you going to write a new Bambi novel? Make a new Bambi movie? Publish a new edition? Or are you interested in Mickey Mouse? Well, you’re out of luck. Not only did Disney create the character but it’s under trademark so you can’t touch it.
What do you want a shorter copyright to give you that you can’t get now? Let’s hear some answers to that before we talk numbers.
You apparently are getting the item published now, right? And you are worried that at some time in the future someone else might make more money than you? That’s life. Get used to it.
The ways it could published now and the ways in the future doesn’t change one bit! You can self-publish now. Someone can self-publish it in the future. Ditto going with a big publishing house. And on and on. Why is the method of publication an issue at all to you?
One of the balances worked out when patents and copyright were put into the US Constitution was that a limited time of protection was need to encourage new ideas. They didn’t want an essentially unlimited time which the copyright system is turning into now. Once the limited time is up, then others profiting off it is is a good thing. That’s part of the whole idea.
people who don’t know anything about how creative industries work or how copyright law adjudicates these apparently unfathomable questions have a lot of opinions about what creators should be satisfied with.
Personally speaking, if I can’t control my creations for at least my lifetime, I’m not going to give them to the public at all. That’s the absolute minimum level of respect I would demand for being a creator.
Frankly, if people need to use previous works to make their own, they have no rights to call themselves “creators.” They’re copiers. They aren’t interesting in creating their own characters and plots because that’s evidently too hard, so they piggyback on the work of others instead. If you really were creative, you’d create something completely on your own instead of using shortcuts.
I note that it’s usually people who can’t write original work who complain about how unfair copyrights are. Tough. Life is unfair. Talent is unequally distributed and if you want to profit from the work of others, the very least you can do is to pay the people who did the lion’s share of the work.
To me the issue isn’t who does the printing, marketing and distribution. The big question is exclusivity, regardless of who does these things. Copyright gives authors the exclusive right to make and sell copies of their works, whether or not they farm out any of the steps involved. Once a work is out of copyright, the author is forced to compete against anyone else who decides to make copies of the work.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage people to create by increasing their ability to profit from it for some period of time. The question is what the optimal period is. Currently, for works of individual authors it’s the life of the author plus 70 years. For works made for hire it’s 95 years from first publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever is shorter.
That’s a long time, and it raises some questions. In the case of individual authors, how does extending the term of copyright so far past the author’s death encourage creativity? I suppose you could say that authors want to increase the value of the estates they leave to their heirs. Still, 70 years is a long time, especially for works created when the author is young. If someone writes a book when he’s 20 and lives until he’s 80, the copyright lasts for 130 years. It seems to me that this goes beyond what’s needed to encourage authors to create.