And with the days of the Internet, tracking down a person shouldn’t be that hard.
Two decades, of some on this thread got their way.
But as I hear constantly, it’s really, really hard for a first-time unknown author to become published. They send out their manuscript to publishers. Get rejection slips. Send out to more publishers. More rejection slips. This is very common. Surely you’ve heard of this phenomenon?
Go to some of the writers’ websites or pick up a book about how to get published and read all about how difficult it is to get published (especially fiction—non-fiction writers have an easier time of it).
That is just the nature of the business. Only so many books are going to be published out there, and there are a lot more writers than publishers willing to publish them. This is why self-publishing and “print on demand” is so popular these days. Writers are simply fed up with facing a brick wall when it comes to getting published.
But you think it’s all the writer’s fault that they aren’t published? Sometimes, but usually, not. It’s just the miserable, difficult nature of the business, and you want to add insult to injury by taking away the last scrap of hope this author has by taking away their exclusive rights to their rejected and neglected work? (But not by their choice, and not by their lack of trying.) Nope. That seems terribly unfair.
Tracking somebody down could be VERY hard. Imagine you’re putting together a coffee table book of National Park Pictures, and find a wonderful old postcard with a fantastic picture on it. Copyright 1935 by Joe Schlub. Mr. Schlub could be 50 years dead, could have sold the rights to XYZ corp, or could have moved to Sweden, had a sex change operation and now be Jane Schlub. Is it worth your time and money to find out, or will you just stick with stuff printed in Nat’l Geographic and Life Magazine because you can find the copyright holder?
I know how difficult it is to get published, I’ve had friends try, and it’s very tough. It’s not easy to make a living as an artist, but does society owe artists anything more than a reasonable opportunity to earn that living? Society gives artists the copyright as an opportunity to profit, not a guarantee that every single penny made from those works will go to the artist. It’s not fair to the artist, but the law is there to benefit society, not the individual artist.
Could be, but perhaps could not be hard at all. The system you want will not even allow people the reason to look. I could perhaps more easily see a system where after so many years of “looking”, or offering some proof that you looked, that you could file a petition asking for rights to publish the image or book, since the author or artist cannot be found. Kind of like they pronounce missing people “dead”. But what you want is that everyone, no matter if they are around the corner or living in the Congo, will not need to be contacted, because they have no rights to their own work.
Yeah, yeah yeah. I can imagine it quite well. There’s a fabulous artist that we all would like to see published (he did a book on drawing) and yet his book’s been out of print for years. Do I like the idea? No. But do I think that all creative folks should lose rights to our own work after a relatively short amount of time, just because, once in a while, we might miss out using someone else’s work? No.
And you want to make it tougher. You want to have these struggling writers see their hard work slip into public domain in a relatively short amount of time.
Depends on what you consider “reasonable”. Do you want artists to actually make a living with their art, and work full time? Well, the current copyright laws help that happen. Sure, if the copyright were dramatically shortened, some artists would still make a living. But less would, and many would become irritated and disollusioned with the whole system.
Well, actually, the way the copyright law is written now, it looks as if society is trying to give the artist the maximum amount of rights (life + 70) that they can. People like you are the ones that want to change that.
This whole thing reminds me of something else that I think would be very common if the law were changed in the way you wanted. Artists (especially artists) would know that their work had a limited shelf life (as far as exclusive rights go). To extend the life of the “exclusive” element, a lot of artists might withhold the original negative or artwork, and would only release relatively low-quality copies. (Not so low quality as to be crappy, but not super-duper high res copies.) In the instance of a photographer, some of them might scan all their own negatives (never send the negs out to be professionally scanned). Once they let the original out of their hands, multiple copies can be made, in very high quality, which later can be used when the work is in public domain. A lot of visual artists would try to minimize this risk by never letting anyone have access to the originals.
So, when their 20 years was up, only lower-quality copies would be out there for the “public domain” to consume. (Sure, they could be copied, but have you ever seen a xerox of a xerox? Not very good quality.) And I’ll bet that some of you would bitch and moan about how the photographer was “being stingy” by not letting someone else get their hands on the negs, and not letting the negs be scanned at a higher resolution (where they can be made into larger prints, manipulated with more detail). Because, after all, the photographer or artist would owe it to society to let everyone get their mitts on their originals! I can really see how some people would really feel entitled to access to the artists’ originals, and would feel that the artist had a “duty” to turn them over so that society could benefit from higher quality copies. And, in the end, society would lose out, because some visual artists would NEVER turn over their originals, and society would NEVER see the super-high res versions of their work.
Another thing—no one here has really addressed how you would resolve my dad’s slides, if the law were changed to this 20 year plan some of you are so fond of. How would this work out? I’m an “heir”, and many of you don’t see why heirs should inherit rights. Extending rights to an heir for a while isn’t going to encourage the artist or photographer to produce more work, because the artist or photographer is already dead. So, how would you work it? If the law changed to 20 years for copyright, would my dad’s slides already be in public domain (if I chose to publish them) or would I get any rights over them?
This is the type of thing I’m talking about, you do realize that it is very possible that we will NEVER get to see that book in print, or even a piece of it published again due to these laws.
This is where you and I will have to agree to disagree. I think 3 decades is more than reasonable, you do not. It may be because we think of it differently, I consider copyright something society gives to the artist, you consider the end of copyright something society takes from the artist.
There is a reason this latest law is called the ‘Disney’ law, Congress didn’t do it for the artist’s benefit, they did it for the benefit of Disney shareholders. As much as I think todays laws are insane, I don’t have any delusion that they will ever change. I just wish we hadn’t screwed with them for corporate interests.
Jeevmom, I’m sorry you were seemingly ignored. Your comment got lost amoung all the kvetching.
For what kind of copyrighted work is the fair price $0? Seems to me that most public domain books sell for about $6 retail, most small prints $15-20, and most large prints/ painting prints are $50-100 or so. Hardly free. An easy way to cash in on said money would be to do a deal with a large publishing company. Write a forward and call it a new edition (the forward, by the way, would itself be copyrighted for 20 years). Hell, come up with an “authors preferred edition” stamp ™. The publishing company will sell more because of your involvement, you get essentially free money, and more people recognize your name than would otherwise. What’s to lose?
Unless of course, you’re talking about music, movies or software, the three types of media that actually are downloaded. Bitching about music is patently false, as quite a few of the above arguements state. Movie pirating is not a large problem right now, and how much money can you expect to be lost from 20 year old movies being downloaded? And if you honestly are complaining about lost revenue from 20+ year old software programs, quit whining, or go to an abortion thread or something.
You did read the part in one of my early posts where I thought there was merit in reducing the 70 years in Life + 70 years to something less? Certainly I don’t think it needs to be extended past Life + 70. Which means that the book I am talking about (by Andrew Loomis) should be in public domain in a few decades, at the most. That’s quite a bit less than the NEVER that you predict. So, no, I don’t think it should be FOREVER. Life + 70 is plenty. Life + 30 might be OK too. Also, as I have repeated several times, I like Dogface’s proposal of giving corporations more copyright restrictions than individuals. Which would protect the “small fry” while not allowing companies like Disney to hold onto something forever.
20 years is what most are talking here. And, while 30 is better than 20, I prefer Life + (a few decades).
I consider art and creative works something that the artist shares with society. And I think that the artist owns the thing they create. They own it. Of course, all art is “inspired” by the art that preceded it, but each individual expression (as long as it has a reasonable amount of unique elements and is not a blatant knock-off) belongs to the artist. Because they worked on it. They made it, no one else did. They are entitled to decide where it is distributed; they decide if they would give permission for it to be shown in Playboy, or the Christian Science Monitor, LA Times. Or not. They can (or can not) allow their novel to be “adapted” into a right-wing (or left-wing) movie. They can forbid that their artwork be shown on a porn site. Or not. And because of copyright, they are allowed this level of ownership, financial profit, and control. Just like you own your car, and the laws of the land protect your ownership of your car, the copyright law protects the artists’ ownership of their work.
Even though I sometimes am disappointed or annoyed when someone who I admire pulls something they did from public, (i.e. lets it go out of print, whatever) I never think that they owe me or anyone else anything. But I am getting the impression that many of you think that artists owe the public their work. And that if the artist doesn’t cough up their work in a way that people like, then it’s OK to try to grab it away. But artists don’t owe the public anything, just like the public doesn’t owe the artists anything (as in, they don’t have to buy the artwork).
Downloaded off the Internet: high res images, books (in text form or eBook form), music, and so on.
And who prints these books? Who distributes these prints? Well-established publishers, who have the high-end printing presses and are well-established publishers who can get their books distributed everywhere.
How can an individual compete with that? How can, for instance, an author of a public domain book compete with the large printer? Sell their book through iUniverse.com? The books are going to be more expensive (at least $13, I think) and are very difficult to place in bookstores. If the book has any photos or illustrations, color is out of the question, and B&W art is not very good. No way, no how can an individual sell their own book (not without spending a huge bundle) and compete with the big-name publishers, who have higher-quality publishing equipment, better distribution, bigger publicity budget. Same goes for music, art, photography, what have you.
Bottom line, these “special editions” are more expensive, and people won’t buy them with the same frequency as they will buy the cheaper (or free) versions. Some people (hell, many people) won’t give a rat’s ass if the more expensive book has “author involvement”. They will want the cheaper edition. And there will be plenty of cheaper editions out there, competing for this high-priced, high-falutin’ “special edition” book. Cheaper is good. Cheaper is tough competition. Didn’t your economics class teach you that?
Also, another thought about the “but it’s for promotion!” myth: A while ago, I saw someone else’s Yosemite National Park page, and noticed that the webmaster had stolen one of my photos to use in a photo montage. Of course they did not give me credit. Most “stolen” graphics are not credited to the original creator. Certainly they won’t link back to the original author’s site (where the web logs would detect the referrer and find out about the theft). So, how does this theft of my Yosemite photo “promote” me? No one knows I am the photographer. If anything, the viewer will assume that the thief is the photographer.
When something goes into public domain (especially graphics) people rarely credit the original artist or photographer. I have a big box of “royalty free” and public domain graphics and photos. Nowhere do I see that the artist or photographer is credited. How is this “promoting” these individual artists?
Incidentally, I am a copyright lawyer. The idea of a new paradigm is something I have thought a lot about. I have to confess I’m a bit torn on the issue. I have some sympathy towards the ideas of Richard Stallman and his “copyleft”, but who wants disincentives to creativity? There is a happy medium somewhere: I’m convinced that the Sonny Bono Act is not in line with a reasonable compromise.
Another theorist - I forget his name - advocates expandng fair use limits to exclude all activities which are not profit generating. I kind of like this idea.
I’ve thought about copyright terms quite a bit, and might have a reasonable compromise.
Natural persons (individuals or collaborations) get a 20-year term, renewable for the life of the author or the last survivor of a collaboration. Heirs get one or two renewals. Corporate authors get a 20-year term with one renewal.
If a work is published and then is unavailable for a continuous period of five years, it goes to public domain and anyone can pay for a copy of the original submitted to the Copyright Office, which they can publish.
The first point recognizes that most corporations will only produce a work for more or less immediate profit, while individuals may produce works for their own non-financial worth but would like their heirs to get something.
The second point depends on the fact that, with current technology, most media can be reproduced fairly cheaply. (While I prefer hard-bound books or CDs with a nice cover and liner notes, I’m really after the text or the music.) Even individuals can keep many kinds of works in print, or could find a service bureau to run copies when an order comes in.
There are probably difficulties I haven’t thought of, but it looks good to me.
Our publisher drives a Porsche. He makes a good living being a publisher.
This would be about the first year that we made over the poverty line.
We’ve got one book which has been continuously in print for 17 years. If copyright were limited to 20 years , we would not get the pathetic dribble of royalties that book generates. Instead the publisher would get to keep it all.
The publisher’s part of a multinational corporation BTW. Of course it would warm the cockles of my heart to increase their profits no matter how marginally. How could it not?
Ah, but didn’t you know, Primaflora? You’re rakin’ in the big bucks. You’re resting on your laurels and charging some outrageously high price for your books. And you’re just “selfish” because you want to keep copyright to your own book. That’s it. That’s what the OP seems to think, apparently.
Oh, I’m sure that in no time, if you continue to “refuse to see the merits” of the OP’s position, he’ll start ignoring you as well, and start doing the “La la la, I can’t hear you” routine on you (like he’s already doing with me). Which, as we all here in GD know, is such a compelling debating tool.
Who says you need to compete? Who says they need to be more expensive? If you had two books side by side, same price. One had “author’s preferred edition” on it. Which one do you buy?
It sounds to me like you should be more mad at the publisher’s ability to reduce your income to a “pathetic dribble,” rather than at the possibility of copyright ending that dribble sooner than you want it to.
Okay, back on track:
Alcibiades, can you answer a quick question of mine? When does the copyright countdown begin, when the work is initially created, or when it is first published?
I like that idea too. It would be another way of approaching the issue fairly. Unfortunately, it probably still would not satisfy the RIAA wannabes elsewhere on this thread.
Rjk:
Another good idea. Potentially fraught with loopholes, but it shows promise. It prevents some amount of corporate gouging, while letting the almost starving artists continue to almost starve in peace, instead of annoying the rest of us. My only qualms are about the defintion of being “unavailable” for 5 years. Does being on the back shelf in an obscure bookstore in Anchorage, Alaska count as available? If not, where do you draw the line? No copies within a hundred mile radius?
That’s the spirit! Putting the “great” (“only a little”) back into Great Debates!
Well that’s what will happen, if an author is trying to sell a book when anyone else can sell the same book at the same price. Get the connection there? Same thing, different sources. Competing with each other.
Good grief. Did you not read my posts? A well-established publisher will always be able to have a lower-priced book. Because they have the lower overhead, the proper equipment, the advertising budget, etc. etc. A small-time author, who is trying to self-publish (or publish through print-on-demand) simply cannot compete with that.
And as far as seeing two books, side-by-side, one with the “author’s preferred edition” on it, and one not—how will this happen? Invariably, the one that is not the “author’s preferred” will be cheaper. Invariably. Because the non-author preferred will not have to pay the author for their involvement, and they will want to compete with the book with the author involvement. Therefore, every time, the non-author-involved book will be cheaper.
And, in Primaflora’s case, her profits from the exclusive book sales (only her publisher is selling her book) are already not that impressive. Add several other publishers into the mix, all allowed to publish her book, all without having to pay her, and what do you get? Even less profits for Primaflora. Back down below the poverty line for Primaflora. Hope you’re happy now. Of course you know that she’s quite happy to sacrifice these profits, because even more publishers will be profitting off of her work, and buying all those Porsches. So why should she complain?
But I thought all these artists were sitting pretty, not creating anything new, resting on their laurels while living off the profits of their sole masterpiece! So how come there are any “starving” artists in the first place? :rolleyes:
Any book with an ISBN number can easily be listed on Amazon.com. Self-published books, Print-on-Demand books, as long as they have an ISBN, can be (and often are) listed.
Very well. Add in a quotation mark before and after each use of the phrase “almost starving artist.” Happy?
Sooo… what you’re saying is that artists are naturally beholden to publishing companies who reduce their income to virtually nothing and who cannot possibly be competed with, but there are sufficient outlets for the artist’s work, even if self published, to be considered available regardless of what publishers may think about it. Wait. That almost sounds like some way for an artist to make a living off their own books without having a publisher bend them over backwards.
I have no sympathy for long copyrights.
Especially because the rights never seem to rest with the authors, but were sold when he was unknown for a pittance. Now some publisher, or the third company to buy out that publisher, gets a windfall of profits, resale and movie rights, etc.
I think only actual authors are entitled to any protection at all.
Self-publishing and print-on-demand are far from perfect. They are somewhat like a “last resort” to authors who are tired of getting rejection slips. They have their uses, and in some cases they can be great. But don’t think that they are equal to a big name publisher. They’re not.
Print-on-demand usually is only available online. It is very hard to place a self-published (or POD) book in Barnes & Noble, for instance. It can be done (POD publisher iUniverse.com is owned by B&N, for instance) but it “isn’t the same” as being published by a “real” publisher. There is a stigma against POD and self-published books. (More against POD than self-published, though.) Also, the books are priced higher. The POD books (and most self-publishers) cannot handle color images (or color is extraordinarily expensive). Greyscale photographs are low quality in POD books. POD companies cannot promote the book the same way a “mainstream” publisher can.
There are a long list of drawbacks to using POD and self-publishing, but they are still better than not being published at all. And when there is no option of being published by a mainstream publisher, POD of self-publishing are fine. Because there’s no other choice. But POD is not the best choice. And certainly, if a POD book had to compete with a professionally printed, promoted and published book, the POD would fall short; it would be more expensive, probably not available in bookstores, and graphics quality would be poor.
InquisitiveIdiot and yosemitebabe raise some good points about my suggestion. Certainly my earlier post didn’t go into much detail.
The unavailable-for-five-years idea is aimed at copyright owners who let a published work go out of print and refuse to reprint or to allow others to publish it. I’d define ‘unavailable’ as ‘unavailable from the publisher’. Perhaps it would be better to make copyrights subject only to licensing by the creator, not sale, and have the license revert to the previous owner if the work is out of print for too long.
I’ll agree that POD books aren’t as appealing as those manufactured in quantity by a large publisher, but under the sort of regime I propose, there might be enough demand to encourage better technology.
rjk, your idea would solve many problems that concern people, but there will be authors and artists who will feel they have the right (and I’d agree they have that right) to withdraw their work from the public eye. For whatever reason, they feel strongly about it. And I don’t think that they owe the public their work. They decided to share it for a while (for a price) but now they’ve decided that the time is over.
I was acquainted with an artist who was great with portraits. But after a few years, she joined some church which forbade artwork or photos that depicted people. So she quit doing portraits, tried to buy back as much of her portraits as she could; and I have no doubt that she wouldn’t allow her portraits to be published. Even though I think such a religious belief is peculiar (personally), I think she’s got a right to hold the belief, and to not allow her previous artwork from being published.
The public can always have work in the form of out of print issues, in used book stores. But there’s no reason to wrest a creative work away from someone, against their will, and publish it, against their will.
The artist lady I knew never could buy back all the portraits that she sold. They’re still out there, owned by strangers, being displayed in homes. She can’t “take it all back”. But she damned sure doesn’t have to allow the artwork to be published. And she didn’t. And I see no reason why her artwork should be published against her will.
This is all just my opinion, of course… If you want to have complete control of your work, keep it to yourself. Once you give copies of it away for money (or not), it’s in the public eye. You can’t pretend that you didn’t publish it, or that it doesn’t exist, or that it’s private and nobody else should see it.
I know that you and I will never see eye to eye on this, but I consider copyright laws to be laws of business and public good, not laws of personal rights. They protect business interests and enhance the public good by allowing creators to profit from their creations.
If you, as a person, want control of things you create, then don’t make them publicly available. If you, as a business, want control, that’s where copyright protects you.