You’re entitled to your opinion, but I don’t buy it. It’s silly to give someone control of their ideas beyond the grave for 70 years, much less forever.
Shakespeare is in the public domain. Would you rather that his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (add about ten more, you get the point) grandchild still live high off the hog for his distant ancestors achievement?
Another reason computer programs may get less protection is that even if the copyright period was twenty years, many, many programs would be completely unusable on today’s hardware, and are far more likely than books to be lost forever.
I still wish for a system that requires the sourcecode to be released along with the programs. But other than having yet a new government office to hold the source to every software publically released, I’m not quite sure how to enforce this.
Yeah! And look at the poor Isrealis, shouldn’t they be getting some royalties for the Old Testament? I mean, practically everyone has a copy!
Here is A good list of briefs filed by both petitioners and amici.
One of the best and most convincing discussions I have read is the amicus brief filed by 53 Intellectual Property Law Professors. Anyone who says the intention of the recent U.S. laws was to bring the U.S. in line with the rest of the world should read this document; it claims the opposite is what happened.
From a purely logic standpoint, I think a good case could be made to REDUCING the legal copyright/patent length. Surely commerce and publishing move significantly faster now than 1776. If 14 or 28 years was considered reasonable then, shouldn’t the faster pace of today’s business render those times much too long?
Think of how long (years, maybe) it must have taken a century ago for a book to be created, typeset, printed, delivered to worl-wide bookstores, and sold. Surely enough time should be allowed for the author to reap rewards. But now – timeframes for all these activities have shortened to, in the case of the Internet, effectively an instant.
Or let’s think of this another way, like “zero-based budgeting” – Ignoring entirely past & present laws, if you were given the task of coming up with the ideal time, what would it be and what is your justification for that amount?
Some people here have suggested 5 years, but is that a gut guess or a reasoned analysis?
I’m not sure why you insist on the "70 years beyond grave " part in your response, since we don’t disagree about that. My take is that copyrights should be be protected at least until the death of the artist. After it, obviously, he isn’t anymore in a position to control anything.
Shouls his inheritors (or someone else, or a fundation the artist created…such things happen) still retain some form of “moral right” or not, should they still receive the profits derived from the copyrights, and for how long, etc… are entirely different issues.
Keep in mind that most motion pictures, television programs, songs, and sound recordings are copyrighted to corporate entities (including music publishing companies). The copyright term in that case is 95 years from first publication.
Then clearly you weren’t motiviated by write this novel by money. Since copyright is basically a bribe to get authors to create/publish, and you will create/publish without the bribe, the common good is best served by giving you nothing.
Rember copyright law has nothing to do with your rights, it’s about promoting progress and creativity.
(Incidently, originally the time limit for copyright began when the copy was registered, so you could have withheld your novel from public view for decades and still have gotten 14 years from the time you registered the copyright. Since 1972, copyrights no longer need to be registered, but the time limit begins counting from the moment of creation.)
If my partner died tomorrow, and I lost the copyrights to the books he wrote but that we worked on together and his publisher was still profiting from those books which is what effectively would happen at least in the short term, how is that fair?
I predict if there were a movement to end copyright at the death of the moral holder of the copyright, suddenly the number of names on a book would become huge.
70 years is a long time and most books will not still be in print at the end of the 70 years. However as a writer I do see the books which come out of our household as a family asset. I’d be pretty annoyed to have my income destroyed at the death of my partner and be unable to sell it. If my partner held a business and he died I would have the business to sell. Why should a copyright be any different?
I’m not familiar with this issue, since here the copyright laws tend to be much more protective of the author’s (movie director, song’s writer or singer, etc…) rights than of the corporation’s rights. So, with this cultural bia, I naturally tend to analyze the issue of copyrights from the author’s point of view.
I agree. The death of the author should have no effect on the term of copyright. One ought to be able to work with the assurance that either you will get the full term of profits (which you can invest to care for your dependants) or you can hand down the remainder to the term to your dependants.
The real problem with copyright is that it’s just too damn long.
IMO, the original statutory term was the correct one: 14 years with the option renewal for an additional 14 years.
28 years was sufficient in the late 1700s, because that could easily cover the remainder of the life of the author. Now if you were to take the terms and double tehm to 28 years with a renewal option for another 28 years, then I could potentially accept that, since I’m probably not going to live another 56 years, if family history is any indication.
All I care is that during my lifetime no one else goes in and screws up my characters. They are mine, to harm them is to harm me. Now, once I’ve died, I would be fine with them slipping into the public domain, available for anyone who so wishes to play around with them. But that should not happen so long as the original creator is alive.
Kirk
I can’t believe some of you people. I wonder—how many of you have created something “copyrightable” yourself? I’m not doubting that a few of you have, but my guess is that many of you haven’t.
I definitely think that the copyright owner should retain rights throughout their life. I think that the copyright owner’s heirs should retain rights for at least 35 years. 50 years would be even better.
I have created a lot of artwork, photographs, and even a little writing (essays and the like). A lot of this is published on the web, and I believe some of it has some value, and potential for even more value in the future. (It’s just starting to take off, I think.) If I were to die tomorrow, I’d want my family (who helped support me and encourage me to do all this work) to benefit from my hard work. Frankly, I don’t think that any of the rest of you should be able to swipe my hard work from me so soon after I croak. You didn’t help pay for art school, you didn’t help pay my bills when I was short, I owe you squat. I have a right to expect that the people who helped contribute to my work should profit from it after I am gone. Just because someone is not an official copyright holder does not mean that they didn’t significantly contribute to the work that was done.
Also, if I published some artwork that I now consider to be an embarrassment or for some reason don’t ever want to be published again, I don’t want anyone else publishing it against my wishes. It’s MY hard work, MY time spent, not yours, so keep your greasy mitts off of it.
My gosh—some of you think that us creative types owe you our hard work. We don’t. We create work, we may want to make money off of it, but you don’t owe us anything—you don’t owe us money for our hard work. (That’s why there are so many starving artists.) And by the same token, we don’t owe you anything back either. Not if we don’t want to give it to you.
Yosemite you seem to completely misunderstand copyright. It is not a property right, NOTHING can take from you your right to use your work and give it to your children.
What copyright law does is to take away everyone elses right to make use of the ideas that your ideas create in them.
This right of censorship that you hold must be limited or it harms everyone. Think of it this way. For every work of creativity that you would own in an unlimited copyright duration. You would be prohibited from excerpting, borrowing, or even approximating the content of millions of works that you don’t own.
Then there’s the little matter of the constitution. It states quite clearly that your sense of ownership doesn’t mean squat. Copyright is a monopoly, granted to you for limited times in exchange for your creativity. It is not a property right, and it isn’t permitted to be one.
Any term longer than the minimum time necessary to incent you to create would be a violation of the constitution.
So the real question is: If copyright only lasted for 14 years, would you quit?
Oh, and before you get all high and mighty about your hard work. I also make my living creating copyrighted material, and I gurantee you that you don’t work any harder than I do.
So what does “public domain” mean, then? I am not talking strictly about ideas here, (where I concede, things get more complicated). I am talking about a photograph, or a painting, or an essay, and who owns the publishing rights to these entities. Someone else mentioned Neil Young’s work. Should Young’s recording of a specific work be put into the public domain even though he is still alive? Because that’s what someone else on this thread seems to be suggesting.
OK, I understand that, and I concede, that when you get into the fuzzy area of ideas, things get more complicated and worthy of further discussion. But I was thinking more along the lines of original works, primarily. My original photographs, drawings and paintings, to be specific. Should I have exclusive rights to these original works or not?
Shakespeare’s work is original. It is my understanding that because his work is now in “public domain”, that anyone can publish it. Am I correct? Surely no heirs are profiting from his work (nor should they, after so many years). So not only are we talking about derivitive works (works “inspired” by Shakespeare’s stories) we are talking about the works themselves, right?
My photograph of Half Dome at Sunset in Yosemite National Park is unique to me. Of course there are a jillion other photographers who have photographed Half Dome at Sunset. I wouldn’t want anyone “copyrighting” the idea of Half Dome at Sunset, because that would be incredibly restrictive, especially for such a basic and general subject. But I do want to retain rights to my original and unique photograph of Half Dome at Sunset.
So, if original works went into “public domain” after a certain amount of years, would that mean that my original photograph of Half Dome at Sunset would become public domain, and that anyone could publish it and do with it what they wish? If not, then I apologize because I have sorely misunderstood the whole premise. But if not, (and someone could publish and profit from my picture of Half Dome at Sunset) then my position still stands, at least on original works. I don’t want someone publishing my original work without me or my heirs profiting from it. Is that unreasonable? And if so, why?
You’re right. At this point I have not. I do not believe this impairs my ability to hold an opinion about this subject, have my opinion heard, or makes my opinion any more or less legitimate.
I believe this is far too long. I am a strict adherent to the idea that things should enter the public domain at a set amount of time, and also do not believe the heirs of the author should continue to control a work that is not their own.
I agree with that sentiment, and thus support more of a flat term. BUT, I also think that the works of earlier authors and artists contribute to literary and artistic works a significant amount. At some point, people should be able to have access to the works of those whom came before to assist them in aiding their own. In turn, they’d eventually put their work in the public domain. It is important to strike a balance between allowing the creator the full economic potential of their work, but also allowing the public to eventually be able to use the work in their own creating.
The primary defense against such things is simply not publish things you do not want published. As long as you trust those that you’ve left it to, people will nevr have access to it, and you shall rest knowing that it will never be seen.
I believe no such thing. You’re implying that I’m somehow arguing that there should be no copyright terms, period, which is certainly not my stance. Rather, I believe that what currently exists today is too long a period of time, and that the economic viability of a work has long since passed, and since the author must be dead for their copyright to expire at this point, as has their argument for creative control. It is a firm opinion of mine that the public domain is one of our societies greatest resources, something that people eventually draw from and should pay back to.
Of course I should add to my last statement that I understand that all original works eventually go into public domain (like Shakespeare’s work) and I have no problem with that. But I certainly don’t think that it’s unreasonable for me and my heirs to profit from, say, my photo of Half Dome at Sunset for a limited amount of years. Having it pushed into public domain so soon (during my lifetime, especially) is not what I had in mind when I created the work.
I apologize for my response, I did not see your second post. I will, however, mention that though your premise of wishing to retain control of the original works is certainly not unreasonable. That said, it’s not how copyright law works at this point. I would like to ask you what the threshold would be, in your opinion, for how close to the original work something must be for it to be protected by your narrowed copyright.
35-50 years may seem like a lot, but in many cases I don’t believe it is. If I were to die tomorrow, my sisters could live at least another 35 years. Since they have contributed (in many ways) to my work, I would like to see them “paid back” through the profits of my work, just like I’d want to leave them my worldly possessions. I don’t think this is unreasonable.
Also, if I were to die young, I would like them to follow through and do the things with my work that I would have done had I lived to a reasonable old age. I could not guarantee that after my death that they’d follow my wishes, but I’d trust them to do a better job of it than if my works were imediately pushed into the “public domain”.
That’s certainly a topic that requires further discussion. I would think that it would depend on the kind of work. Some artists have discussed the idea of “35% difference” and I think that’s a good starting point. But it is a really fuzzy area, I agree.
I’m sorry for being unclear. I am not one of the people pushing for strict life-of-the-author copyright. And truth to tell, while I would prefer twenty years, fifty years, straight, would truly be just fine with me. I think it’d help to know that no matter what, the copyright would expire at X date, especially if you’re undertaking the effort of making a movie or something of that nature.
I’m curious about something though: What would you think of people releasing heavily photoshopped versions of your photographs?