Limit Copyright to 12 years, followed by max 34 years of *paid* extensions

Great Debates
1

I’ve come across a document entitled “Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it” by one J. Jordan. It proposes the following: A. Free 12-year copyright term for all new works – subject to registration, and all existing works are renewed as of the passage of the reform legislation. If passed today this would mean that new works have a copyright until 2024.
B. Elective-12 year renewal (cost 1% of all United States revenue from first 12 years – which equals all sales).
C. Elective-6 year renewal (cost 3% of revenue from the previous 12 years).
D. Elective-6 year renewal (cost 5% of revenue in previous 6 years).
E. Elective-10 year renewal (10% of ALL overall revenue – fees paid so far).
This proposal would terminate all copyright protection after 46 years. This is obviously a steep cliff, particularly from the extension of copyright from 36 to 46 years. But the point is to discourage indefinite copyright. I’m sympathetic. Original copyright law was for 14 years, plus a single 14 year renewal if the author was alive. Now it’s the life of the author plus 70 years, and corporate authors get up to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication: Disney saw to that. To extend copyright every time a big media corporation skwaws is borderline unconstitutional, as the revered document makes allowance for copyright, “Of limited time”, which is to be distinguished from “Virtually unlimited time.”

This proposal deserves the attention of our elected leaders.

GOTCHA! [spoiler] This proposal was set forth by The Republican Study Group: Jim Jordan (R-OH) is the chair of that body. PDF available at the linked blog post. All arguments above are taken from that document.
SEE??? BOTH SIDES DO “IT” !!!

Few would guess that such an argument would come from the Republican Party. HA! I FOOLED YOU ALL!!! You thought this would be wholly impractical, right? BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HA. HA. HA. heh. Ok, I’ll calm down now. Still, this is the first constructive Tea Party influenced proposal ever, to my knowledge. Other than the one about the pennies, which went nowhere.

If nothing else, this looks like a good way to drum up campaign contributions in the back bench. [/spoiler] From the point of view of a corporation, I would say that any protection beyond 30 years wouldn’t affect their investment one iota, assuming reasonable rates of return.

2

I think his idea is awful. For starters, it hurts the little people the most, who are faced with keeping 36 years of financial records and dealing with a foreign government just to avoid their art being ripped off in the world’s largest economy.

If I was in charge of copyright reform, I’d suggest as a starting point something like death + 50 years for individuals or a flat 50 years for corporations, but only 15 years for software or other “functional” art.

3

20 years.

Done.

4

The current copyright scheme is too repressive, but what the OP proposes is too much in the other direction.

I, personally, would say that something like life + 25 years if the rights to the work remain the property of the creator and/or his immediate heirs, and life only if the rights are transferred. For works where the creator is a corporation, I’m comfortable with 100 years or until the dissolution of the corporation (whichever is less) if the rights are not transferred, 75 if they are.

I would further propose that a work become public domain automatically if the rights-holder, having made it available to the public at some point, withdraws it from publication for five years or more.

5

7 years, with maybe 2 paid extensions. I don’t understand the gotcha, though. What is “it”?

6

Which means that one would have to register every single thing one writes or draws, every single picture one takes, etc..?

7

Given the D-CT who left the senate to head the RIAA, plus the current administration’s policies, I’m puzzled as to why anyone would say the dems are the good guys here. Both sides get their pockets filled.

8

Thanks for the comments.

So, to be clear, you’re worried about nonresidents of the US being ripped off, at least those who don’t have lawyers. I think that’s a good point: at the very least, a multilingual and user friendly website should be set up.

Unlike the document referenced in the OP, I’m sympathetic to protecting the little guy. But corporations are businesses: I can’t see a justification for protecting their investment for longer than 30 years. Do you really think that Dr. No (James Bond) wouldn’t have been filmed in 1962, if they were afraid that the franchise would be compromised in 1992? Applying standard financial tools such as present discounted value is appropriate for them. That said, there are complications for actors subsisting on royalties.

Disney has lobbied Congress successively to keep extending copyright. It’s unusual that the Republicans were the ones to explicitly take such an anti-business stance, even if it’s also pro-free market.

I agree: the first tranche shouldn’t require registration IMHO. (And I’d extend it to 16 years, renewable once for corporations, and give individuals their lifetime + 22 years or 32 years, whichever is bigger. But that’s just me. I add 2 years to give the marketers 20 and 30 year anniversaries to harvest.)

9

Personally, I would set copyright to life of the author, with a minimum of 20 years.

Life of the author: For patents, I get that you could invent a better mousetrap and then within your own lifetime your patent expires and other people could start manufacturing your new and improved mousetraps. But it just seems wrong to me that an author could write, say, a novel, and within his own lifetime other people could start printing copies of his book (or downloading them to people’s e-readers, as the case may be) without him having any say in the matter.

Minimum of 20 years: You write the Great American Novel when you’re 25, then live to be 97. Your novel is in copyright until you die; when you die, your heirs get the assorted stocks, bonds, and swank mansions you bought with the royalty money, but the work itself goes into public domain immediately. However, if Grandpa writes the Great American Novel then drops dead the day after sending if off to his publisher, his heirs get 20 years to profit off of his work before it goes into public domain. If you write the Great American Novel, then spend your large advance on hookers and blow and are found dead in a sleazy motel room three years later, your heirs get 17 years to profit off your work before it goes into public domain.

I’m not particulary wedded to the “20 years” limit–it’s just a round number I made up off the top of my head. I would object to something like “Minimum of 120 years”, though.

I dunno what I would do about corporate copyrights. (Maybe just 20 years, because screw corporations, that’s why. Since when do corporations produce creative works? But I’m open to argument on that one.)

For works with multiple human authors, the term would run for the lives of all the authors, minimum 20 years. As long as one of the authors is alive, the work is in copyright; if both (or all of) the authors are hit by a bus on the way back from celebrating the publication of their new book, their various heirs get 20 years of copyright on the work. (Though that could lead to people trying to game the system–i.e., Grandpa claims his 3 year old grandson is a co-author on his new Great American Novel in order to extend the copyright that much longer.)

10

I’d be okay with life of the author or 25 years, whichever is more. Although if that were the case, I expect Jim Davis would have been killed by now so that some Chinese company could make Garfield sex dolls.

11

The basic idea is sound, but the percentage-of-revenue part is a pointless bookkeeping PITA. Setting a standard fee schedule (perhaps based on the type and size of a work), starting very cheap for the first few extensions and getting progressively more expensive, would serve the purpose without requiring much in the way of record-keeping.

12

I would observe none of the positions in this thread are unreasonable, including that of the Republican Study Group. This might be a model of how policy discussions should occur. Some things are a matter of trade-offs, not death match principles and drama.

Corporate copyright is the key issue. Hollywood is not only a big lobbyist, it is a huge exporter. The US has legitimate national interests here. That said, it is difficult to imagine a movie that would be green-lit with copyright at 30 years, but passed over with copyright at 20 years. I suspect their main concern is similar to Microsoft, whose main competitor is MS’s old products such as Win 2000, XP, etc. If Terminator II (1990) was free, it would presumably cut into the time spent buying newer entertainment merchandise.

Also, is a work from 1992 “Old”? Sort of. I’d say a work from 1982 sure is. To me ~30 years close to the point of cultural shelf life expiry.

It’s a direct attack on Disney. The idea is that standard copyright is X years. If you want more protection than that, then pay for it dammit. And for authors, they could subcontract the accounting to their publishers.

That said, IMHO it makes a lot of sense to separate out individual copyright from corporate copyright, with all due allowance for gaming.

13

Thinking about it some more, we probably would need to have separate legal categories for individual works (which would include things like novels with two co-authors, or even works with maybe several authors), for which I would say use the life of the author(s) or minimum of 20 years, as described above; and things which are inherently collective works, like movies and TV shows, for which I’d say maybe a single 30-year term.

14

Software is neither inherently one or the other. Same for movies actually: consider certain documentaries for example. I’m inclined to draw the line at ownership. For partnerships of 4 or more people, we could use the lifetime of the median partner rule.

ETA: My take reflects a certain generosity to both corporate and individual creators, in my view. Yet it is miles less expansive than the status quo.

15

…the PDF won’t open for me: but based on your synopsis the whole plan sounds like a bad idea. As a non-resident of the United States and as a photographer I already have to register my images and pay a fee to the US government if I want to get the full set of protections under US law for my work. Considering the subjects I shoot it really isn’t worth it so I choose not to upload, register and pay the fee. My work is, however, still copyrighted in the States and if someone infringes on that I can at least seek compensation based on what I normally would have invoiced.

So now after twelve years I need to pay a fee to get a basic level of copyright protection in the United States? How many people outside of the United States would pay to do that? The simpler solution would be to “black out” the United States: no longer share or produce work for the US market.

And of course, every other nation would follow suit. There are 166 contracting parties to the Berne Convention that won’t take too kindly to one of the signatories moving even further outside its confines. Lets say that half of the contracting parties (following the US example) decide to implement their own registration schemes: now a small indie film-maker has to not only register copyright in several different countries at probably different timeframes: they also have to pay different fees.

I couldn’t think of a worse idea. A stupid solution to a non-existant problem. And can anyone tell me where the money is going to go?

16

A big problem with software in particular is the obsolescence of technology that can run it; will you still be able to run Windows 98 on a computer 100 years from now, or even 10 years? Probably not (I mention Windows 98 because there was a recent thread on reinstalling it on a computer to run old software; I got berated for suggesting that they download a copy of it - does Microsoft really care if they don’t make money from it anymore? As far as I am concerned, copyright for such material is BS once they stop selling it, thus lose any financial interest in it). I’ll say right now that I have downloaded a program for personal use that isn’t sold anymore (to be fair, I had a demo version of it which came with a book, just not the full paid-for version, and Microsoft now offers free versions of the successor to it, and from the number of web sites offering it for download, they aren’t that busy cracking down on them).

17

Can you first explain what the problem is with current copyright law?

All the arguments I’ve seen boil down to “I’d really like to be able to do whatever I want with someone else’s copyrighted work, but they won’t let me! The law is so unjust!”

18

Please elaborate. I’ve never heard of that and your comment is interesting.

Sure. There’s no reason why Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willy should be outside of the public domain. Copyright doesn’t exist because we’re being nice to authors. It exists to encourage the production and dissemination of art and knowledge. There’s a tradeoff. Make protections too expansive and these goals are thwarted. Extensive copyright protection can actually inhibit creativity.

There is no natural right to your inventions, which is why patents last for only 14 years. This is the case not only ethically, but also constitutionally. From the PDF: “Strictly speaking, because of the constitutional basis of copyright and patent, legislative discussions on copyright/patent reform should be based upon what promotes the maximum “progress of sciences and useful arts” instead of “deserving” financial compensation.” Banquet Bear: I’ve dodged the Berne Convention issues. IMHO any change to US copyright law should be taken in light of international considerations. I have no idea how many Americans would agree with me. That said, there’s a strong case that existing copyright protections are far too extensive, inefficiently so.

The Republican Study Group document made no mention of US treaties which is hilariously typical IMHO.

Given the ease of piracy, I seriously doubt whether the US would ever get “Blacked out”. Far better to make what money you can off of them.

The US federal budget. The Federal government is basically a large pension plan that happens to have an army… and now the Affordable Care Act! So that’s where the money would go.

19

I don’t agree with the fee schedule, but a maximum of 46 years is if anything too long.

20

http://blog.photoshelter.com/2009/05/electronic-copyright-registrat/

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl107.html

And its a pretty big dodge. How can you have a discussion on changing copyright and not discuss Berne?

The US government would be making money hand over fist. Seriously: the plan is simply a licence to make money of the back off content creators. Its a money grab: pure and simple. There would only be two results: widespread boycotts by content providers worldwide or every country would implement their own revenue making scheme. A musician in Florida would have to register their copyright and pay fees to the governments of Azerbaijan and Central African Republic and Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Tajikistan and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as hundreds of others. This is the sort of nonsense that the Berne Convention seeks to stamp out. Why does the US want to go in a completely different direction?

I don’t want to contribute to your Federal government, any US pension plans, your army or your Affordable Care Act. In twelve years time any international work can be pirated in the United States with no consequence unless people pay your fee. I know that you think that this is a good idea: but I happen to think the Republican Plan is remarkably stupid with no redeeming features at all. Do you think any content creators at all would actually support it?