With the granddaddy copyright case finally thrown out after a hundred years of wrangling, and a wide range of opinions expressed in many threads here, let’s take a hack gag “proactive” approach.
In one or two sentences each, define your idea of “reasonable” copyright and patent terms. Include trademarks and lesser intellectual property elements if you wish. Break out copyright by category of work, if you want to get detailed.
And… in a sentence or two, describe how intellectual property protections apply to you and your financial structure. (Have you ever created anything subject to IP laws? Have you profited, directly or indirectly, from IP protections, such as in your employment or field? If all notions of IP protection were tossed out, would it affect your income or wealth?)
Basic concept, numbers are for illustrative purposes only. (Thinking mostly books, music and movies here)
Copyright: 50 year or 10 years after the death of the holder, whichever comes first.
Sale to another person or corporation does not reset the clock.
Copyright can be renewed for a 10 year period if the work is offered for sale 35% of each calendar year ( reasonable market price-no $100,000 mass market paperbacks , no offering for sale in half second increments.)
The very first US copyright law was for 14 years, renewable for another 14 and I see nothing wrong with that. The purpose of copyright was to encourage people to put things out that would eventually put them into the public domain and the current laws prevent that, to all practical purposes. To copyright something, you had to register it, give a couple of copies to the library of congress and it was done. If it is still worth protecting after 14 years (few things are) renew it.
How has it affected me? Financially not at all. But I maintain a web site on which nearly all the papers and books I published in my career are posted. Mostly illegally because the damned publishers hold the copyrights, not that they ever paid me anything for them. They argue that publishing them and sending me reprints was the quid pro quo. But no publisher has ever gone after me, probably because they don’t know.
In 1984, I published a book. After several years, the book went out of print and the publisher declined to reprint. In accordance with the copyright law on books, they returned the copyright to me (and my coauthor). Now, browsing through their web page, I see that they are again flogging it. The will sell you an e-version for a certain amount of money and paperback (certainly print-on-demand) for more. Maybe $30 and $50, although I really paid no attention to the amounts. They don’t own the copyright; we do. But they are selling it anyway. I wrote to them and got no answer. The e-version is available free on my web site, incidentally.
As for patents, I think 10 years may be about right. Although things move so quickly these days that even that might be too long.
Copyright should not include folklore. There is a long, long tradition of people borrowing song tunes (the US national anthem, for instance, as well as My Country ’Tis of Thee) and changing their words and context. When individuals who don’t know each other share a common song that they learned through oral tradition, that song should not be covered by copyright.
Edit: I realize that without qualifiers this would include pop music, so I suppose a time limit is reasonable. 14 years from first publication sounds good to me.
Like Hari Seldon’s idea, above, but doubled like what U.S. did with the 1831 Act. I’d even extend it to 30 years, not 28, and have another 30 years available upon filing for an extension. Oh, and I’d have it so rights automatically reverted to the author upon expiration of the first term, regardless of a previous license, to allow for the author to renegotiate in light of changed market conditions. Make filing the extension onerous and pricey: the bias should be towards placing works in the public domain.
This is incongruous with Berne, and I’m OK with that, as I feel the US Constitutional protection for IP stems from a desire to encourage the production of new works via an artificial monopoly, and not from any inherent natural rights, moral or otherwise, that a creator possesses from creating an artistic work. Berne stems from a droit moral framework, which is why we see the author’s life as a guidepost for determining the duration of the property right. Mine is certainly a minority view, these days.
I have no professional IP interests as a creator/author/patentee, though I am trying to become a US attorney who would specialize in IP litigation.
I’ll be honest, I’ve come around to thinking that our current copyright/patent/trademark system is… okay. I’d prefer the terms to perhaps be a bit shorter, and for the damned patent office to be better at recognizing when something (especially software) is non-novel, but it’s not too bad.
I’ve found that most of the problems I’ve had with it have far more to do with the legal/court system than anything else. Most of the things I think should be allowed already are… technically. And most of the non-novel patents I truly think should be struck down very well could be.
The bigger issue in copyright, and the lower hanging fruit, is that legal battles are wars of attrition, and it’s a war that a large corporation is almost always going to win. The issue is that no matter how “right” you are, you probably don’t have to resources to spend sometimes years in court defending your Youtube review show (or whatever) is reasonably fair use.
Most potential attempts to fix this (provisions to counter sue if the company did not “adequately consider” fair use, forcing courts to award legal fees to the defendant on failed copyright suits) hinge on the defendant winning, which is already the problem. They often wouldn’t be able to hold out long enough to win and get those reparations. So we end up with this system where corporations can, frankly, bully people regardless of whether the copyright law is on their side or not.
I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to fixing this problem, but I think that while copyright may be a tad too long, it’s the imbalanced monetary nature of court battles that’s a far bigger problem. And it’s a problem that goes far beyond just copyright, patent, and civil law – there are noted problems with people who can’t afford defense attorneys and require a public defender as well in criminal trials.
One of the reasons I added the second part of the question is that many discussions seem to be populated with those who are outraged, outraged I tell you, that either they can’t have something free or that someone is making money from it. Neither case belongs in a serious discussion, IMVHO.