I’m a filmmaker who works in student/extreme low budget circles. I can’t even begin to count the number of wonderful works that were ruined by copyright issues.
You will never see the best movie that I ever made. Why? Because one of the extras had on a Mickey Mouse tee shirt on that I didn’t catch.
My movie with a birthday scene sucks because the whole scene was spent trying to get around the fact that they wern’t singing the real “happy birthday” instead of just realistically showing a birthday party.
I’ve seen documentrys have to scrap their best footage because it took place in a club or restraunt where copyrighted music was in the background. Whole subjects are considered unapproucable because it is too hard to talk about them without violating copyright.
These are not occasional cases. Copyright is a major and frustrating issue for small-time filmmakers that can’t afford to pay for rights to anything. It severly restricts us.
And when we are talking about making words and musical notes illegal, there better be a damn good reason.
I’ll answer with a round number or, more accurately, with a round number plus an option because my position on this does take the lifespan of the artist into consideration. Let’s see… how about 60 years with the option of one 15 year extension?
AuntPam, thanks for the clarifying thoughts on originality. As you may be able to tell, I also find certain attitudes concerning it frustrating at times.
even sven, I understand what you are saying. There are aspects of copyright enforcement that I consider silly. Being able to reference or allude to our culture, including popular culture, is important.
The incidental appearance of a Mickey Mouse t-shirt in a movie is not a problem in my view. Building a movie around that t-shirt would be.
In terms of creativity, the thing I like about restrictions (of any sort) is that they force me to find a way to make the best thing I can. They counter my inherent laziness.
It is fine to be inspired by something and take it further and build on it to create something new, but look at what sampling has done to the music industry:
Take a piece of someone else’s musical work, throw a couple of rhyming words and references to expensive items in and viola, you’ve got a ‘brand-new’ song. I doubt that you can call that progress.
In that case, if the copyright laws didn’t exist, even if P. Diddy and his friends didn’t have to pay for rights, it still doesn’t further the musical artform. That’s closer to Walmart and retail manufacturing than an artist/writer trying to feed his family. Loosening the copyright laws would only increase copycats, not creativity. Yes, some companies are too powerful/too vigilant with their rights, but the majority of people protected are just little guys who are on their own. (I realize that in the constitution the letter of the law says that it’s to further the arts and sciences, the side effect is that many little guys are prevented from getting ripped off.)
Yes, but if the government didn’t have a law against theft I might reconsider purchasing that coat to begin with. If I made the coat from scratch, I might have reconsidered putting in the effort, knowing anyone could take my property from me at any time.
You are 100% correct when you say copyright is not an inherent human right. You are absolutely accurate when you say it is granted to us by the government. Well so are a lot of things, including the right to have actual ownership of property.
The main question we must ask ourselves is NOT whether the right is granted or inherent, but rather, what would happen if that right were to suddenly disappear. People would stop doing the activity they are no longer protected under. It is that simple.
If I cannot keep my own works after I’ve created them, I will stop created works. You all are so interested in the benefit of society, so tell me, doesn’t society lose out then?
Of course there’s a difference between trademark and copyright, but the key issue for the point of this discussion is the same. You are using someone else’s work to your benefit. Someone created McDonalds. The name McDonalds is trademarked. It is their property, just like a work of art is the artist’s property. If you use the name of McDonalds without permission and without compensation that should be illegal. Likewise, if I publish a sequel to the Lord of the Rings without permission and without compensation to the owner of the copyright, that too should be illegal. I’m using someone else’s popularity to boost the amount of money I make.
If Shakespeare were alive today and Tom Stoppard went up to him and pitched the idea of R&GAD, and Shakespeare said “no way,” I would support his decision to do so. I love R&GAD. We’d lose a great piece of writing. I don’t care. It’s Shakespeare’s decision to make because it is his work to do with as he pleases.
There isn’t, in the sense that all artists are influenced (either consciously or unconsciously) by their culture, and that influence seeps into their works; no one creates in a vacuum. That’s all those responders mean by their statements; and remember, those posters are themselves responding to others who are showing disdain for more obviously derivative pieces of art as “unoriginal and uncreative”. Setting “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” IS creative; so is adapting Le Morte d’Arthur to create The Once and Future King, or retelling Hamlet from the viewpoint of two minor characters. Those examples show every bit as much creativity as picking up a camera and going out to photograph some trees because you’ve been inspired by viewing the works of Ansel Adams - but many of the posters in these threads have argued that only the latter activity is “true creativity”.
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That’s true for all writers, including those who take older works and refashion them into something new.
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I would debate that. Do you really believe that Shakespeare’s plays are “lesser” works because he didn’t create the plots and characters, but borrowed them from the works of his contemporaries? Should Sophocles be regarded as a mere hack because his works don’t feature original characters, and were merely retelling old stories his audience already knew by heart?
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Yes, there is. And in the end, that spirit alone is what makes a piece of art “great” - NOT the details of its genesis, or the motives of the artist who produced it, or how directly we can link it to other works. But the latter is all that copyright law is concerned with - how directly a work is linked to a previous work, not whether the result is good art.
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But how do copyrights that extend past the lifetime of the creator achieve this? Robert Frost died in 1963; extending the copyright on his work in no way benefits him. The people it does benefit are NOT the creators of his work (nor are they minor children still in need of support). Why should people who played no role in creating “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” be able to arbitrarily block another artist’s use of that poem to bring a new creative work into being?
And before you say that Robert Frost would have wanted things to be this way, remember that you’ve already ceeded that the wishes of a dead person are NOT absolutely binding. If we don’t let a dead person’s wishes absolutely control what happens to physical property, then why are we bound to respect them in the much more nebulous case of “intellectual property”?
Most of the posters arguing for shorter copyright periods don’t want to see artists starving, but they DO feel that the current balance tips too far in favor of copyright holders, at the expense of the larger society.
Would they? Every human society ever studied has art in some form. Certainly Western society produced many great works of art in the centuries before copyright law was invented. Millions of people draw, paint, sculpt, take photographs, sing, write fiction, etc., purely for personal enjoyment; they would presumably continue to do so regardless of the length of the copyright period. There’s simply no reason to believe that copyright in any form is necessary for art to exist.
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Society would lose your works - but gain other works which can’t be produced under the current system. Perhaps society is better off if more people are freely able to produce their art, even if it means fewer of them can make a full-time living by doing so.
And would you REALLY stop producing created works because you’ll no longer be able to keep control of them after 20 years, or 50 years, or after your death? Only a few extremists have argued the case for NO copyright period; most of us “on the opposing side” merely want to see the current extended copyright period rolled back to something more comparable to what society had prior to about 1970. (Personally, I’m fine with “lifetime of the artist”, with possibly a short extension period if the artist dies before the work is 20 years old.) Artists still had a long period to profit from their work under pre-1970’s copyright laws, but their works entered public domain before the artist’s children themselves retired to a nursing home.
If you’d like to nail me down to a time, I’d have to say that Life+20 sounds like an entirely reasonable amount of time. I wouldn’t have an objection if we cut it down from its current Life + 70. Heck, patents only get, what? 40 years at most? Sometimes it’s down to 14 years or less in extreme cases.
But if I had to choose between lobbying for Life+20 or lobbying for a larger opening on Fair Use, I’d choose the latter. Bit by bit, the rights of anyone other than the artist to use a copyrighted work for anything is slowly being eroded away. Life + 20 won’t affect the child wanting a picture to put into his school report. It won’t help a professor who wants to copy off an excerpt to use in his classroom. These are the things we really need to protect and those “loopholes” are being plugged in by legislation, much to the detriment of us all.
Why should we have to choose at all? I completely agree with your comments about Fair Use, but I note that the same forces which are eroding the concept of Fair Use are also the ones lobbying for ever-longer (and retroactive!) copyright extensions - and for the same reasons in both cases. One reason I think it’s important to decrease copyright lengths is because once a work enters the public domain, ANY use is fair use.
The public domain is coming under increasing pressure because, as you said, the fair use rights of anyone other than the copyright holder to use a copyrighted work are being eroded away, AND because fewer and fewer works are entering the public domain as a direct result of steadily increasing copyright lengths. It’s really a twofold problem, and BOTH aspects need to be corrected.
I have lagged behind on this thread thanks to some overtime at work, but I wanted to touch upon this:
:rolleyes: OOh. You have slayed me with your logic. I never thought of that before you brought it up. All those years in art school never touched upon this concept!
So are you going to start the “if you made it for money then it really isn’t art” line again? Because we’ve already covered this. A lot of great art and music was commissioned. Some of the work I’m quite proud of was comissioned. The people who saw it didn’t think it less “artistic” because I was paid ahead of time to do it, and wouldn’t have done it had I not been paid. The same can be said for quite a bit of works, as you already know.
As I mentioned on the first page of this thread, there are two areas to copyright: the idea, and the original work. If no copyright existed (like some of you would prefer, obviously) because “art belongs to everyone”, then how would anything get funded? Why would the book publisher give the author an advance on a book? Once the manuscript was shown to one outside party, that person could distribute copies of it and there would be no point in a publisher busting their hump and spending the money to publish it. Why bother? So many other sources will have it by noontime anyway. So, how would an author get paid for their work? Oh wait. I remember. They shouldn’t be doing it for the money, right? So, if things go the way you’d like, these authors would be busy working “day jobs”. Less (or no) time for writing. Why bother? It’s a lot of work, a lot of heartache, and there isn’t much time to do it because they’ve gotta put food on the table. And there’s NEVER going to be ANY chance that their writing will put food on their table. NEVER. Why will people pay for something that “belongs” to them once one copy is distributed?
And what about movies? Extremely expensive to make. Who will fund them? Once just ONE print was out there (and especially with the way things are distributed electronically these days) everyone can have a crack at the movie. Any theatre can show it, for any price. It can be on TV, cable, anywhere. No advertising dollars would go to the originating studio, no exclusive rights, nothing. It “belongs” to “the people”—even though only a few people really sunk a lot of money into its creation. How long do you think that big-budget films (especially ones with lots of special effects) would be made if the filmmakers and studios could not guarantee any profits from their work? And while we’re at it, why would Adobe continue to seek many talented software designers to design exciting new upgrades to Photoshop? Once one copy is out there, people will do what they want. No reason to buy a copy from Adobe, right? All this striving to “beat the competition” would cease. There’d be no need for it—no incentive because there’s no money. No one will bother.
But hey—we shouldn’t be doing it for the money now, should we? We should just go to school for umpteen years to develop a skill, invest many hours of our lives to create something that apparently people want to have access to, but they don’t think is unique. Because nothing is unique, right? Because according to some of you, it’s not really unique, so the artist doesn’t really have a “right” to it. But in some way it is unique, (I guess) because only that one artist created that particular version of whatever you want to have without paying for it. And you’re bitching because some artists want to limit others use of this “not unique” thing that apparently only this particular artist created in this particular way. But it’s not unique, see?
And besides, the artist should be doing it for the enjoyment of it, instead of the money, so how dare they expect to get paid back for all the time it spent them to learn how to make this totally ununique thing that you want to have access to, even though nothing is unique. I guess that’s what you’re saying?
Sure, but for all the crap, there are also people like Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and DJ Qbert, who do amazing things and create something entirely new out of somebody else’s original work.
Would all the tyranny of copyright be worth it to stop P-diddy, if the price were losing Jam Master Jay’s contributions?
And besides, you damage your own argument - P-Diddy does have to get permission, but he does get it. If the original artists were such purists, they would deny permission, but they opt for the big payday rather than protecting the purity of their art.
Nobody is stopping you from keeping your work. If I take a picture of your car, does it deprive you of your car? Of course not. And if I start with your music and rearrange it into something entirely new, but based on your original work, have I deprived you of your music?
Again, the answer is no. I’ve deprived you of nothing. so you’re free to go on creating, selling prints or cds or whatever, but you don’t get to tell me what I can do with it once I buy it. If I choose to paint over an original print that I purchased from you, it’s my business. And likewise, if I then resell the work as my own “variation on a theme by EnderW”.
Blah blah blah blah. No, I’m saying that if it’s done solely for money, then it’s not art. It’s simply production. If you have art in you wanting to get out, and somebody pays you to realize a particular vision, that’s a different story. But you know as well as I do that an artist creates because he must, because he’s an artist - not just for money.
Alarmist, much? It’s funny that you bring all this up. Because if it interested me, I could go to the internet, and within an hour, have the latest version of photoshop and every plugin known to man at my fingertips. Yet people still pay for it. Isn’t that an interesting conundrum? People can get it for free, yet they still buy it! People can see the mona lisa for free almost anywhere, yet they still travel to france to see the original print! Again, isn’t that odd?
And Linux is available for free to anyone who wants to spend the time to download it. I have done so, and yet I have still purchased packaged copies of over a dozen distributions.
Explain to me how this can be. Or else admit that your “Just one copy!!!” lament is B.S.
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See above. Movies and music are freely available on the internet as well, yet both industries are having banner years and setting sales records left and right. Add this to your explanation.
How about if, instead of making up what you want to think I’m saying, you actually READ what I actually AM SAYING? That sound ok to you?
No, you’re not understanding. Some (probably many) artists and authors are commissioned to do work that they in NO WAY would do had they not been paid. Their client seeks them out because they have a “style” that they think will fit a particular project. (i.e. someone who does detailed ink drawings will be commissioned to do a detailed ink drawing of the client’s wife.) Does that mean that the ink drawing of the client’s wife is automatically “not art”?
No, just taking your suggestions to their natural conclusion.
:rolleyes: And being completely unaware of software pirating, I had NO idea that people did this! :smack: Yes, Sherlock. I know that people pirate software. But it is illegal–so there is some attempt to limit or control the free-and-easy distribution of pirated software. (You won’t find a full version of Photoshop on Download.com.) Also, from what I understand, businesses sometimes have a “software audit” (? I could be wrong on some of the details) where they are required to prove that they have licenses to all the software they are using in their business. So bottom line is, many people still pay for software because they don’t like breaking the law, and also because it’s the price of doing business.
How many people do you know who have travelled to Paris exclusively to see the Mona Lisa?
And that works fine for those distributors. They undoubtedly found an “angle” where they could still make money. (I am not familiar with Linux and how software is distibuted or how they make a profit. They obviously have a unique angle—one that would not, and should not be expected to apply to everyone.)
An aside: Could you burn a copy of the sofware you bought from these Linux distributors and sell multiple copies (on CD-R) on eBay? Would this be allowed or embraced by the particular Linux distributors? Would they mind if you were to xerox off all their documentation, do CD-Rs of the disks, put it all in a box and then advertise on eBay that you are selling “Brand XXX Linux” (using the original software name)? Would no one have a problem with it? If you sold umpteen copies of the software they developed and distribute, thus competeing directly with them by selling the exact same thing that they are attempting to sell—would they be OK with that? Just curious.
It’s not BS. When full versions of Adobe Photoshop are freely available on Download.com and there are no software audits, and Adobe is still making a profit—then my “one copy” story will be B.S.—not before.
Movies are still illegal when distributed over the internet. They are not advertised for download on MSNBC’s site. And, the new “Lord of the Rings” movie is not being shown on NBC right now. I’d much rather see it at home on my TV than go out to a theatre and buy a ticket. (I mean, pay money! How outrageous is that?) Why isn’t NBC allowed to show it on TV? Because “Lord of the Rings” belongs to the people, man!
How about you BACK UP your statements a little more articulately, or take 'em back? Remember what you wrote previously?
The only way that the creators of “Lord of the Rings” should be able to prevent NBC from showing it on TV tonight (therefore allowing me to not have to go out and pay for a ticket to see it) is for them to never release it at all. According to you, anyway.
I’m out of this debate. It’s fruitless and bootless. I just do not see copyright as stifling creativity, probably because from where I work, I’ve never, never, never encountered being stifled by not being able to use ideas or themes. Stifling creativity because one cannot lift from other’s works is not an issue in my or my partner’s daily life. ::shrug::
Ender’s made some good points though. If copyright disappeared, then you’d lose a hell of a lot of new work because people could not afford to write.
I’d be happy if copyright ran for life of the originator and then 50 years. Or fee for hire. If a publisher paid me a flat fee on publication which reflected what they expected the book to earn. See, one of the issues with ending copyright on the death of the author would be that when you sell a book to a publisher, you know that the money will trickle in over years.
But, yeah I really wandered in here to say I’m out of the debate and I don’t concede that the right of people to lift stuff over the right of the originator of the new work is more important.
If you read the license, you’ll see that repackaging and resale of anything released under the GPL is perfectly legal, provided you obey the terms of the license. Read it. I linked to it above.
Not so. “One copy” is available for download, whether legally or not, and people still buy it. “One copy” of each of the different distributions of Linux is available for download LEGALLY, and yet they continue to make sales. Your “one copy” argument is akin to the “Just one death” argument used in the attempts to ban everything from guns to cigarettes. It’s fallacious and disingenuous.
No, not on NBC. But I was in chinatown, NYC the other day, and saw well over a hundred DVD and VHS copies of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (and every other current movie) for sale for under $10. In plain view. Legal? No. But widely and easily available. And yet people (including me) are still paying to see it. There are benefits to purchasing in the “recommended” channel that have nothing to do with the law. I can’t watch a bootleg DVD in 18 channel sound. I can’t be immersed in the experience with 300 other fans of LOTR in my living room. I can sell all the copies of Red Hat Linux that I want on e-bay, but unless I purchased it or a support contract from Red Hat, I don’t get the full benefits as one of their customers. And not the least of the benefits is supporting the companies that make the products that I like and use, so that those products will continue to exist.
All without having my arm twisted by copyright law. And one more thing: I’m not keeping Red Hat or Peter Jackson afloat all by myself. They are making plenty of money, because there are plenty of people who are buying their products despite the option not to.
I alread backed up this point. If I want to watch Two Towers in the comfort of my own living room, I could do it. The only way to prevent that from happening would have been NOT TO RELEASE IT.
Also, yosemite, you can dump the ad absurdum argument now. I am not one of the people who favor abolition of all copyrights. I do, however, think that it should be severely limited compared to what it is now. Personally, I like the original 14+14, and I’d probably support an additional 14 option. But this business of copyrights lasting multiple generations and being held by corporations, bought, sold, and traded like pork is ridiculous.
Copyright is the monopoly. Simply investing time and material doesn’t mean you automatically deserve to exploit your creation for profit. For example, you could spend 3 months toiling day and night to make an obscene film, but if your jurisdiction has banned obscene films, the judge won’t be impressed by how much work you’ve put into it.
In a world with no copyright, you would still be free to make all the poems and songs you want. However, the government would not prevent others from duplicating your poems and songs, which decreases the likelihood that you’ll make money from them. If money was what drove you to create, you probably wouldn’t create in a world with no copyright. Since money has fueled the creation of some pretty good art, copyright is a good thing.
The sculpture, a physical object, certainly belongs to you. But the idea of that sculpture, the words of a poem, and the tune of a song belong to everyone–ideas belong to all mankind, just as surely as we all “own” the idea that two plus two is four.
Nobody can take the poem or song away from you; indeed, nobody can take them away from anyone who has heard them. But they can take away your monopoly on the distribution of the poem and song, and if the benefit to society by being able to copy your works outweighs the loss of works that you won’t produce because of the lack of incentive, taking away your monopoly is exactly what they should do.
You mean you could xerox their documentation, copy everything exactly as they have done it, therefore directly competing with them? Pretty interesting. And pretty unique.
Tell me?how many shareware developers are making big profits? BIG profits? Without limiting the demos of their “free” software in some way?
These “copies” are not easy to find, and sometimes have viruses. I have a friend who loves to pirate software. He does not always have an easy time finding all that he wants. And that still does not explain the “license audit”–businesses are required to prove they own legal licenses to all the software they use. Do you seriously believe that reputable businesses are downloading bootleg software for their employees to use? Do you think this is a commonplace practice? Business sales are a large part of Adobe’s and most other software company’s sales. If it were no longer legally required for businesses to buy bulk licenses, do you think they would anyway? Why? At several hundred dollars a pop, why would they?
Not where I live. I live in Hooterville. No Chinatown here. I have NO IDEA where to get a bootleg copy of The Two Towers. You assume that everyone has access to these bootleg outlets. We don’t. We don’t know where to go to find them; we don’t want “illegal” copies anyway. IIRC, news stories have been done on these bootleg outfits. The quality can sometimes be nonexistant. (Years ago, a friend of mine bought a bootleg of a popular movie. It was unwatchable.) The reputation of bootleg movies, whether deserved or not, is preventing the sales of these bootlegged movies from being more mainstream.
What would prove your contention that Lord of the Rings: TTT would survive without exclusive control over distribution would be if NBC could show a high-quality copy of it right now on TV, or that legal, high quality DVDs would be available right now (made by any manufacturer) at the local Blockbuster. Back alley bootlegs (that many people have no idea how to access, and often don’t want to) isn’t going to hack it.
Yes, because the bootlegs are not as nice as the “real” thing. Oh yeah, why can’t any theatre show “Lord of the Rings: TTT” anytime, without getting some sort of permission or license? (I’m not sure how that works.) Only selected theatres are showing it right now, and obviously they have the pay for the privelige. What if they didn’t have to? Why should they have to get “permission” to show it and sell tickets? “Lord of the Rings” belongs to the people, man!
Why not? 18 channel sound belongs to the people man! That’s not FAIR!
But you could if any theatre, anywhere, could show LOTR without having to pay a license or fee or whatever. Why can’t they? LOTR belongs to the people, man!
That may work with Red Hat, but do you believe that Adobe would sell as many $600 software licenses to businesses (just for the “support”) if the businesses could download the software for free? You’re kidding, right?
What? What’s this? Why support them? Photoshop belongs to the people, man! Let someone else support them! Start up a charity! But hell if I will support them. I’ve got better ways to spend my money. Why should I pay for something that is free, and belongs to me anyway?
And I could too, then, I guess. But wait–I’d have to find one of bootleg places and get a copy of it. I don’t know where to go to do that. I might as well go to the theatre and see it, then. And wait a minute! The local theatre 2 miles away isn’t showing it! Why NOT? I have to drive to another theatre farther away to see it. That’s not right! LOTR belongs to the people, man! The local theatre is too poor to afford to show it right now. That’s not right! LOTR belongs to the people! If it were legal to do so (if the big mean creators of LOTR couldn’t legally stop it) you know damned well that there would be inexpensive labs which could dupe high-quality prints of ALL movies as soon as the first copy is released. So then NBC, my local (poor) theatre could show it, any and all theatres could show it, RIGHT AWAY! The local Best Buy could set up an area with seats and show the DVD right there in the store. RIGHT AWAY! And none of them would have to pay the original studio a dime! It’s only the mean copyright laws that prevent that from happening. It’s so unfair. LOTR belongs to the people!
You mean the local Best Buy is right now showing a high-quality copy of LOTR: TTT right in its store? You mean my local little inexpensive theatre is showing LOTR: TTT right now? You mean nothing is hindering that from happening? It’s happening right now? And they aren’t paying a dime to the original studio? Wow, I’d better rush off and see it right away, then!
You can’t have it both ways. You expect me not to remember statements like the ones you made earlier in this thread (which I assume you were sincere about).
I see copyright as a protection. Oh well. We obviously won’t agree on that.
I’ll leave you with a few thoughts on this:
No. Sorry. Wrong. You see, once something is made, it’s no longer just an idea. That sculpture would not have the form it has if it had been done by anyone other than me. The images and words of that poem? Their order and their rhythms, their particular mix of vernacular and formality? Sorry, they all scream I wrote it. The song, its words and images etc., and its music, its placement of a minor chord just there, and that riff and its variations, and the way the notes on that solo can be like thrown knives pinning a listener in place? Mine. And more than an idea. Things I realised: brought into existence.
I do understand your point of view. But, as is obvious from what I just wrote, I cannot share it.
You’re missing something very, very important here, Enderw24, regarding the difference between trademarks and copyrights. The key issue is similar, but it is not the same.
Yes, if Shakespeare were alive today, I could agree with you that he would have the right to say, “No way.” Yes, Stoppard’s great work would be lost, but I can see that creators should have discretion over their works over the course of their lifetime.
But J.R.R.Tolkien is dead. Dead, dead, dead. His work, however, has become a part of our culture. After a certain amount of time, it should not be illegal to borrow extensively from Tolkien’s work.
Here is the issue - the difference between a trademark and a copyright: McDonald’s is still producing and has a very real need to distinguish its product from the products of others. Not so with The Lord of the Rings. The copyright served its purpose. It gave Tolkien the incentive to write a work, because he knew that he would be compensated if the work became successful.
Now, if I had my way, copyrights would be pretty short. I gave my arguments for that in the last thread, so in this thread I’m just going to argue about how long I think a copyright should be at maximum.
I asked Fatwater Fewl how long he thought they should last (a nice round figure), and he said 75 years (60 years plus a 15 year extension). And that length I can approve of, which means that Fatwater Fewl and I have reached a sort of agreement.
Let’s say that LotR was published in 1950 (the three volumes were published around that time). With the 75 year rule, the copyright would end in 2025. This would mean that someone who was born in 1951 (someone younger than the work) would be 74 when the copyright came up. Pretty old, yes, but that person still has a small chance to adapt the work that is older than she is.
You agree that Stoppard’s work is great, right? Well, there’s a very real possibility that someone else can make a great work that’s heavily dependent on LotR. Works must eventually become part of the public domain, to give the great writers of the future the opportunity to adapt the great works of the past.
And so that’s why I draw the line at a human lifetime. When you make a copyright last any longer than that, you are denying children of the next generation of the possibility of adapting that work.
Right about now someone normally says, “But they can ask they the heirs!” Yes, the can. And the heirs can deny permission If our heir of Shakepeare denied permission, then Stoppard’s play would have been lost, and that is a terrible, terrible thing.
Whew. I think that just about sums up what I have to say. Maybe. We’ll see.