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Originally Posted by MarjaE
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Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
How did you lose me? You said early works and later works of the same author should have different terms for copyright, because the early works, decades earlier, are sooner no longer making money. And I said both needs to be treated the same. No matter if the one is decades older than the other.
For example GRRM. He writes his first book when he is young, and it takes him literally decades until he finishes the series. You cannot have the first book expiring before the last is even written.
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Why not? |
I'd say for two reasons:
1) It feels more fair. (Yes, this is highly subjective.)
Take someone like George R.R. Martin, who wrote some very popular books in his old age. I assume his earlier books also get some increased sale because of this. It feels fair that he gets to earn money from that.
2) Artistic control. A couple of examples:
Harper Lee Collins, who wrote another version of To Kill a Mockingbird, and didn't like it. She got to decide that it wouldn't be published as long as she lived.
Astrid Lindgren, who wrote Pippi Longstocking in the 1940s, and used a racist term. A publisher later asked her to replace that term before re-publishing, and she agreed. (This also means that she could have insisted on keeping the racist term, and the publisher would then have had to decide whether to republish or not.)
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It should receive the same life+whatever copyright. The whatever will depend on where in the world you are looking if you want different terms in different countries.
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life + negative number creates all kinds of implementation problems.
life + 0 or + positive number can be far too long.
Life + x in general creates all kinds of implementation problems. If the author dies young, for whatever reason, their works would enter the public domain sooner than if they don't. If the idea is to compensate the authors and their families for their work, that seems backwards. If the author is unidentified, or obscure enough, or uses a pen name while remaining anonymous, or a collective of outhors use a pen name, it can be hard to figure out when the works would enter the public domain.
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So, let's say (life + 30) or (publication + 80), whatever comes first. That should take care of authors who die early when they have small children, and works with unidentified authors.