Copyright has a chilling effect on book sales...

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by JoeD

I don't think that's fair on those who die early though. They've not had the same opportunity to accumulate wealth to pass on via inheritance to their family. Making it a fixed number of years allows the copyright to be passed on to family should someone die early in their life. Not to mention the idea of potentially valuable assets becoming public when someone dies could have movie plot line consequences

That is why I specifically mentioned small children in my post. If they are grown up, let them feed themselves. They would be able to apply for an extension until the smallest child reaches 21 or similar age.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

The distant cousin of Sid Vicious (who had no talent and died age 18) would probably disagree with you there.

That is kind of the point, I see no valid reason why his cousin should be making money of his (lack of) talent.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

I'm not sure where I stand on this one. If the creator of the work or his estate don't benefit from the sale of the work, then Amazon and B&N etc will. They seem to bring out copies of Jane Eyre for example every couple of years and just change the cover. I think I would rather that someone connected to the creator of the work benefited.

They won't benefit unless they can add value. I paid 95 cents for a collection of all of Baum's Oz books. It was a convenient package, and had an interactive table of contents. I decided this was worth 95 cents. I could have downloaded the books from Project Gutenberg and not paid a thing. Or I could get a free copy from Amazon if I don't want what is offered by the book with extra features.

Jane Eyre is public domain as well, you can get a free copy, or you can pay a bit more to get some added features. I've read Dante's Inferno, and it had extensive footnotes explaining what the text is talking about. I could have gotten a free copy, but I wouldn't have understood nearly as much if I didn't have the notes. If I buy that, I'm paying for the notes.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

How would you verify who *really* wrote a thing if copyright expired with death of the author? What measures would be taken to assure that the actual author was the author-of-record? (Simple solution: Incorporate the family! Register all works to the corporation, which has a longer copyright!)

Only the commercial copyright would expire. Why should the non-commercial copyright expire?

[LuvReadin]

I do think life + 70 is way too long. Life + 25 would be far more reasonable - that covers a good chunk of the next generation even if the author dies when the child is a baby. The only exception I would like to see is if it's been left to a charity - such as in the case of Peter Pan & Great Ormond St Hospital; in that case, I think it should be perpetual.

[pdurrant]

Any "Life+" copyright term is too uncertain. It gives wildly different copyright lengths to works created at the start and end of someone's career.

The UK System before we joined Berne seems best. A fixed term from publication, or the lifetime of the author, if that's longer.

So an author retains copyright during their lifetime. When they die, copyright continues on all works published less than the fixed term ago. Their works gradually come into the public domain, which is (IMO) a benefit to the estate.

Unfortunately, the Berne convention introduced the Life+ system internationally and unless something extraordinary happens, I don't see it ever changing from that.

[DrNefario]

There is a much greater overhead in trying to establish publication dates (and whether copyright was registered/renewed, etc) than the year of death. Life+ has the huge advantage of being straightforward.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

There is a much greater overhead in trying to establish publication dates (and whether copyright was registered/renewed, etc) than the year of death. Life+ has the huge advantage of being straightforward.

Finding the publication date is the easy bit. Finding the date of death of an author is always the hard bit.

But this isn't really about convenience. (An infinite copyright is much easier to determine than any finite one, after all.) It's about what's best for the public in the long run.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Hmm, I think there is certainly land in the UK still owned by the same family/organisation as it was 500 years ago.

I am sure there is, but there is also an awful lot of land that has changed hands in that period of time. In fact, I suspect that more has changed hands by mechanisms other than inheritance or sale than has changed hands by those mechanisms.

And if you go to other countries where the nobility was abolished, or which had major wars fought, I think you will find the percentage of ownership retention is even smaller.

Besides, there is a key difference between copyright and physical property. If I sell a piece of physical property, it is gone from my control. If I sell a book, well with copyright, it is still under my control.

--
Bill

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

Only the commercial copyright would expire. Why should the non-commercial copyright expire?

The "non-commercial copyright?" No such entity.

Currently, copyright law is heavily entangled in commercial value; whether a copy has an impact on the market value of the original is one of the major factors in deciding infringement.

[CyGuy]

Copyright should last no more than 10 years with no renewal possible.
Patent should last 10 years with one 10-year renewal allowed.
Trademark should last 10 years but be renewable indefinitely.

[bill_mchale]

I think limiting copyright to 10 years only is a bit too strict. Sometimes, it can take ten years or more to develop sequels or movie adaptations, etc.

I do think that a relatively short period should be the baseline for copyright, but that there should be a chance to extend it for a work that is popular enough (or in some cases, so you can publish works that failed earlier in your career that find new interest once an author develops a following).

--
Bill

[QuantumIguana]

Copyright isn't going to be shortened, the most we can hope for is that it isn't extended forever. Maybe we could just give Disney a special copyright for Steamboat Willie, that might take away a lot of the pressure to keep extending them forever. Too many books get lost in limbo.

[Elfwreck]

Increasing scale copyright reg:

10 years: Free copyright
11-20 years: Pay $10 to register. A token amount, but it means that most people's blog posts and college newspaper articles will enter the public domain, while anything they have a commercial interest in gets registered.
21-30 years: Pay $100 to register. No problem for anything that actually has a market; not worth registering "all this stuff I might someday come up with a way to monetize."
31-40 years: Pay $500 to register. Again, only going to be the stuff that's *worth* keeping on the market. Movies, yes; songs, maybe not. (I have no idea how photography copes with copyright registration, but if it's "collected works of [photographer] from [year]," that should be okay.)
41-50 years: Pay $1000 to register. Again: Disney registers all their movies, but maybe not all their individual children's books. (But maybe they do. Disney has a lot of money to throw around.)
51-75 years: Pay $10,000 to register each work. The Bridge On The River Kwai stays in copyright; Plan 9 From Outer Space enters the public domain. Lord of the Rings remains copyrighted; the Mike Hammer books enter the public domain. Sixty-five geeky websites pop up with creative marketing ideas for newly PD movies and books; inside 18 months, all but five of them have gone broke.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Unfortunately, the Berne convention introduced the Life+ system internationally and unless something extraordinary happens, I don't see it ever changing from that.

To me, it's fortunately. With my ideas on property rights in the decided minority, I'll take any backdoor approach that keeps extending copyright.