Quote:
Originally Posted by SleepyBob
But, would it be right for us to prematurely remove their revenue stream from a profitable book in order to (in effect) coerce them to be more prolific, even if it did create more value for the rest of us? I would argue no, even if it did create more value for society as a whole.
All copyright terms are arbitrary in nature. You can argue that one term is "better" than another, but there isn't any that is uniformly better, and there will be winners and losers from any change. And the "best" length is entirely dependent on how you measure it. That's practically the definition of arbitrary.
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Saying it would be wrong to remove an author's income stream is: (i) a straw man; and (ii) ridiculous on its face. It's a straw man because very few people are arguing that copyright should be reduced to less than the author's life time, so there would be no impact on his or her personal income stream. It is also ridiculous on its face because it suggests that authors have some right to income from their works that is outside of those rights created by copyright, and that's not the case - copyright is providing rights (a time limited monopoly) where they wouldn't exist otherwise.
Also, you're right that their will be winners and losers, but generally you want to have more winners than losers. War is never bad for everybody, but you still want to see less of it. And again, a reduction in copyright doesn't have to be "arbitrary" if your goal is to determine what creates the most economic benefit generally, not just for a few very prolific authors.
Your post also makes the incorrect assumption that authors get no benefit from the works of others. Infinite copyright would harm consumers and writers equally as it would prevent consumers from accessing many works and would prevent writers from reusing expressions or remixing ideas of decades past (or I guess centuries past if we go with infinite copyright).
The idea of infinite copyright is so bizarre that I feel like I'm arguing an Onion article.