I prefer something related to the lifetime of the author because to me, it's more clear. Any biographical entry will have date of birth and death, while publication date can be more tricky to find out -- especially now when it's not that unusual to publish a work for free online first, and then it gets picked up by a publisher and republished commercially.
For that matter, you've got artists like Edward Munch, who made several versions over a period of years of some of his most famous motives, like
Madonna.
But yes, I see the arguments for using publication date as a starting point. And I suspect that an important reason why I prefer using birth or death of the author is that I'm used to it
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Anyway, date of birth runs into the same problem as existing copyright being based on when a person died: it requires extra information. Whereas date of publication is generally known, and if publishers would take even the most meagre amounts of care (and most do these days at least), then date of first publication is also generally known.
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Like I said, if date of birth is unknown, we can default to using publication date as the starting point, as the author must necessarily have been born before publication.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
"Sorry Grandma Moses, you started painting too late, no equal protection under the law for you!"
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One of my grandmothers starting painting late in life, I've got one of her paintings on my wall. I'll amend my suggestion to birth + 110, for her sake