Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
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.
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I guess that I'm one of the few who believes it should be shorter then the life of the author. The original intent of copyright was not to ensure that the author was compensated for their lifetime or that they gain all potential value out of the works. If the author is still alive there would be nothing stopping them from releasing a new edition of the book with additional content and selling it again.
I believe that there is a very small percentage of books that are earning money 20 years after they were first published and that the few that are the authors have been very well compensated. I don't understand why our legal system needs to be burdened with attempting to enforce or arbitrate disputes over those privileged few. I believe that laws should be targeted for the benefit of society as a whole and not made to cover the most extreme exceptions. I've heard people throw out examples of authors struggling for 40 years and then become famous but they don't get revenue for their old books. Well the original intent was that they would continue to write new books.
I believe the problem is that we have one copyright term that covers music, movies, books, software etc... I think there needs to be different time limits for each because they each have their own needs.