I think another aspect, which you didn’t mention, is the likely lifespan of an idea (I’m going to keep using this term here). A hundred year old story may still have value. A hundred year old technology probably doesn’t. If patents ran for a hundred years, there would probably be nobody seeking to use the idea by the time the patent expired. A shorter period of patent protection serves to get ideas out in society while they are still worth using.
Yes, exactly.
Sure, but in my opinion it did that plenty well when copyrights lasted a max of 56 years.
The idea that if you write a good book in your 20s you should be able to reap profits on it for your entire lifetime and then your heirs for another 70 years seems ridiculous to me. Not because it stops someone from writing a different book, but because.
I mean, yes, but in practice it’s a minefield. People who try to put their own spin on public domain stories get sued by Disney because the version Disney made is worth a lot of money. People who write songs that sound a bit too much like some other song get sued. etc.
And then the next 70 years after that?
I think this is not a good argument for long copyright terms. Plenty of old stories have value when they fall out of copyright and that is a good thing! Shakespeare’s works still have value. Should we all have to pay the 18th Great Grandkids of Will when we want to see Hamlet?
The point of limited copyright is not that the value of a creative work is gone at the end of copyright, its that the value is now free for all, not retained by the creator. The point of copyright is to create a financial incentive to create so that all people will benefit from the creation. Copyright shouldn’t last until the value of the work is gone.
People made a good living as novelists when they could only reap profits for 5 decades. I find it hard to believe that someone was out there thinking about writing a book but deciding against it because 50 years later someone might print a copy without them getting a royalty.
It happens occasionally. It’s not a “minefield.”
I’m in favor of some “life-plus” formula. I don’t think there’s a significant difference as a policy matter between life-plus-50 and life-plus-70, so I would have preferred to stick to the former. I would prefer a shorter term for corporate entities than we have now. But these are all just details to me. We can quibble about the exact length, but it’s not of great interest to me.
I think an optimal length is something like 20-30 years from creation, which is a pretty vast difference from current lengths.
I think as a moral matter, a creator of a creative work of expression should have exclusive control at minimum for life. I would strenuously oppose anything shorter than that.
A lifetime copyright just feels like an arbitrary standard to me. Why should a book written by a seventy year old be worth less than a book written by a twenty year old? Why should an author who died young get less than an author who lived to an old age? I feel we should have a fixed period like fifty years that applies in all cases, without being affected by individual lifespans.
What is Disney’s expected lifespan?
I agree. I don’t feel the original creator should be able to hold on to their exclusive rights until all of the value has been sucked out of it. As I said in the OP, there’s a strong argument for releasing good ideas for free use by everyone. And I feel this applies to artistic ideas as well as technological ones.
It’s the opposite of arbitrary. It lasts while the creator exists. That’s a solid, rational, objective standard. Choosing any fixed number of years is what is arbitrary.
Isn’t that usually under Trademark law, not Copyright law?
It is usually both, when it happens, which isn’t actually all that common.
Much more common is Disney stopping people from using images of their characters without permission.
It’s not arbitrary, but it is a little weird.
Someone who publishes a work, then dies the next day has an asset in copyright that’s worth less than someone who publishes a work then lives another 50 years.
Or, put another way, if the purpose of copyrights is to encourage creative work, do we not want to encourage old people to be creative? If so, why give more incentive to younger people. etc.
I get the reasoning behind it, but it’s still odd. Very few other assets or rights act like an annuity mashup.
Sometimes. And sometimes copyright. Depends highly on the specifics.
I look at a lot of non-popular stuff. But it isn’t coming out of Hollywood/whatever the modern Tin Pan Alley is.
You were the one who brought “better” into this. Of course my opinion matters to me. Which means it matters to my perception of the ethics of it all.
I disagree that this is necessarily so.
An argument can be made that the current system does not “free” creatives, it forces them to respond to market forces, and thus any work they produce in such a system is flawed, limited, lesser. So fewer “great” works being produced is inherent in the current system. Which is why most recent great art is outsider or indie art.
TL:DR: quality or quantity, you can’t have both.
Maybe from an individual if you don’t increase the amount of time that that individual has to devote to creation. But give that individual more time, and you would expect an increase in both quality and quantity (up to a limit, perhaps, maybe a bell curve). I live with artists and writers. The more they work, the more they produce, the better they get at it.
And from society as a whole, this is utter nonsense. We’re talking about adding creators to the pool and increasing the skill and experience of each of those creators. In such a case you would also expect an increase in both quality and quantity.
Market forces act whether or not we create intellectual property protection. Without protection, individuals must spend more time making a living, and thus spend less time developing their skill and experience and producing works. And when they do produce works, they are still subject to the marketplace. Intellectual property protection doesn’t change that.
So what? No one said it had to. And at least some of what comes out of the commercial industry will be of high quality too. Just in my lifetime, the quality of television writing has skyrocketed in both quality and quantity. There are a lot more shows out there than there were 50 years ago, on average the writing is significant leaps better in quality, and that’s just on the commercial industry side. And that’s from professional creators whose livelihoods are made possible by intellectual property protection.
So that’s why we have a “life-plus” system, to make up for some of the loss of value. Perfect.
I feel that a system which gives everyone a different length of copyright protection is more arbitrary than a system that gives everyone the exact same length. That said, it’s not a principle I’m too attached to. I feel a fixed period is better but I could accept a period based on lifetime.
I mean, it doesn’t actually make up for lost value, it just pushes it into the future. It does reduce the variance by establishing a floor for the duration, but the person who dies early still loses out on the same number of years of copyright.
This is exactly the situation in writing. You can self-publish on Amazon with pretty much no support staff. But chances are it’s going to be crap. I know someone who self-published a memoir - well, going through a support company. She had an editor, she had a cover designer, and she has a PR person. Is she going to sell enough books to pay the upfront costs? Iffy. Even though she gets more of the sales price. Most people who go this route lose money.
My wife is traditionally published, and is guaranteed to make some money, since she got an advance and royalties, and all the publication stuff is paid by the publisher. She thinks all that infrastructure is worth it. Instead of selling her last book she can work on her next one.
I assume music is similar. You can put anything out there you want, but no one is going to pay it any attention unless you get real lucky and have a hit, or if you are already established with an audience.