Quote:
Originally Posted by MovieBird
At fifty he had about thirty years of a working career. That's not young. If he couldn't make money in thirty years, he has no sympathy from me.
Maybe it's because I tend to value science more highly than art, but this whole copyright thing strikes me as offensive, in the words of an earlier poster.
If someone creates a useful invention, it only gets protection for 20 years. Why should life saving drugs, or machines that enable you to grow more food, or even spaceflight (SpaceX, not NASA) be valued less than entertainment?
And yet, if we increased the length of a patent, it would cripple our scientific, and economic, progress. Witness the state of the software industry. I can't in good conscience support a longer patent. And in doing so, I can't support this insanely longer copyright term. Even if an author dies the day after publishing, the item is still controlled for 3.5 times as long as an invention.
That's just wrong.
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In many Jurisdictions patents apply for a short term - usually four years - and have to be regularly renewed. There is little chance of a valuable patent being allowed lapse while within its renewal window.
Maybe that would be a better system, copyright that lapses unless renewed every four or five years.
You also ignore the fact that interest in a writer's works and its genre go through phases of renewed popularity. A person with a copyright doesn't necessarily have to make all income from it in a short span of time, they have an income stream that varies depending on interest. Look at the new Reacher movie. That will stimulate interest in Lee Child's books, many of which are more than ten years old. Do you think that he will not have an increase in income from his copyrighted works once the movie is released? They are also in the preliminary stages of making a movie about another writer's work, one whom Jim Grant/Lee Child credits with being inspirational to him; John D. MacDonald and his Jack Reacher inspiration, Travis McGee. MacDonald's early works date to the fifties, his Travis McGee series to the early sixties. (The Travis McGee series has never been entirely out of print.)
BTW, what am I supposed to "witness" about the software industry? It seems fine to me. As increasingly bloated and as inept as it ever was.