I really don’t understand why you’re railing against me in this way, why you keep claiming I am putting words in the mouth of Acsenray and why you aren’t bothering to read his posts yourself.
Case in point:
Post #91:
The problem is that if something’s too similar to an existing work, it’s going to be labelled a knock-off. So while in some cases long copyrights can inspire innovation, I also think they can potentially put large swathes of a genre “off-limits” for over a century too.
Let’s say, for example, I wanted to write a series of stories about an Allied World War I flying ace and his chums who fight The Hun and solve mysteries.
Now, since Captain W.E. Johns beat me to this idea in 1932, there is a problem. It’s all well and good to say “Come up with your own characters” but the “Air Detective” genre is pretty well linked to Biggles I’m going to (quite rightly) run into credibility issues if I write my hypothetical stories about a pilot nicknamed Wiggles and his friends Nutmeg, Reginald and Bootstraps.
Seriously though - and I say this as a writer myself - I believe there has to be a point where society says “OK, you’ve had more than enough time to capitalise on your creation; other people can have a go now.”
For works created by individuals (such as books, short stories, etc) I don’t think that point should be during the creator’s lifetime or for maybe 20 years afterwards.
This has nothing to do with copyright law and changing copyright law won’t help you here.
Sure it does - changing the copyright laws would allow hypothetical me (or anyone else) to write more Biggles books (there having been none for over 50 years due to the death of Captain Johns), without having to come up with a bunch of “in name only” subsitutes to avoid breaching the copyright on it.
What is the net benefit to society for having 60+ year old fiction works (for which the creator has passed on) being unavailable in the public domain - especially if the copyright for the work is part of a larger “stable” of IPs acquired by a larger corporation which isn’t doing anything with them, not out of a deliberate desire to bury the work but because in their it’s not economically viable to do anything with it?
(And I’m not referrring to any specific books/charcters there; it’s a generalised observation/question).
You can still write Biggles books. You just need permission to do so.
Right now I have in my hands a copy of *Fuzzy Nation *by John Scalzi. The book has a lot of characters and situations from the original Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper. This book was authorized by the Piper estate.
I also have a number of Nero Wolfe books. Most were written by Rex Stout, but a couple of them were written by someone else, and I assume that the someone else obtained permission from Stout or his estate.
It’s perfectly possible to use someone else’s copyrighted works as a base for your own work…as long as you get permission.
…and the potential cost/complexity of doing this will obviously deter many.
Exactly. Especially if the copyright status is unclear (eg with H.P. Lovecraft and some of the later stuff by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), or you’ve got people who own the copyright to some of the works but not all of them, or multiple entities believe they have the copyright to it…
Like I said, how does this situation help anyone? I suggest that it doesn’t, especially when the works in question are over three-quarters of a century old anyway.
Yes, it might deter a lot of fanfiction. And I will argue that in many cases, this is a POSITIVE. Perhaps even most cases. Do we really need more Harry Potter slash?
Probably not, but there’s at least two things I can see wrong with this line of reasoning:
- Let’s say if we scrap copyright next year we get 9 terrible Harry Potter films, and 1 good one. Well, no-one’s forcing people to go out and see the 9 bad ones. Many people will however probably see and enjoy the good film and they and the filmmakers will be pleased it could be made*.
- In itself, it’s irrelevant to how laws should be set. I can’t say “Surveys how found most people find fake tan unattractive, therefore fake tan is banned”.
If you are going to take away someone’s right to do something, there has to be a stronger basis than just improving average quality.
And of course as well as these issues there’s the obvious point that a person may simply disagree that in many cases this restriction is positive. I don’t think we have clear data to say whether copyright law has the net effect of improving or worsening quality.
- Obviously I’m not saying HP’s copyright should have expired already, just continuing the example
Arguing it’s a positive to suppress content because YOU think it’s not quality enough for other people is exactly NOT how our system works.
That is really a poor position to take and I am stunned when people do it. Why would you think you have some special insight into the likes and dislikes of other people?
…and that quote is out of context. Go back and read exactly what he said: not just the bit that you snipped. He didn’t say “the overall standard of works remains on average the same.” He said, for the purpose of the point that he was making, he was “assuming that the quality of the works, on average, remains the same.” Subtle, but important difference. You aren’t reading his posts correctly. Go back and read the entire exchange between the two of you: it should become clearer.
And can you give an argument as to why this shouldn’t be the case? How hard is it to send a letter or fire off an email?
But people would only make Harry Potter movies out of “love.” There would be no financial incentive to make them as without copyright protection how would a book or a movie make money? Go look at Kickstarter: the biggest budget movie I’ve found raised $60,000. Good luck finding $200 million to make a blockbuster.
http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/film%20&%20video/successful#p4
Creative projects would become charities. Product placement would be worse than this.
And I’m not railing against you. You are just wrong. 
Banquet Bear, the mature thing for you to do at this point would be to apologize for making a false accusation.
You’ve asserted that I’m putting words into the mouth of Acsenray. On your first attempt to find a concrete example of me doing this, you are shown to be in the wrong.
Furthermore, when I quoted Acsenray, I included the part that it was an assumption (indeed, it is underlined), so I don’t see how you can claim it is quoted out of context.
In any case, I parsed his post just fine and responded within the same context. If you don’t believe that I have, then please point out my error. I’m sure we’d all enjoy your attempt to do that.
It’s laughable that you would say that after a moment ago saying “Where on earth did he say the overall standard of works remains on average the same?”.