Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
Zelda (and others) asked why an author's estate should continue to collect royalties after the author's death.
The answer is two-fold. Historically, the argument was the "widows and orphans" argument. To use a musical example George Gershwin composed Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris (not to mention a ton of hit popular songs!) at quite a young age. He then died tragically young (at 39). Would you claim that his widow and children (if any) should not have been allowed to receive royalties on those compositions after his death?
The more thoughtful version of the argument is this one. Suppose that copyright terminated on the death of the creator. This would mean that a masterwork created at age 21 has greater value to the creator than does a masterwork created at age 75. Given that the sole justification for copyright (in the US) is found in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution (see this post for more on that), we now ask: how do we make sure that we actually "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? Specifically, does it make sense to reduce a creators financial incentive to create as that creator ages?
IMHO a fixed term of copyright (with possible renewal) would be a reasonable choice. Life+X years, by comparison partially fails the second test -- and may be too long a term for great works by very young creators who are subsequently long-lived.
My ideal copyright system would contain at least the following features: - No requirement for initial registration; all works come into existence with copyright attached. This protects naive creators.
- An initial default fixed term of copyright. I'm not particularly wedded to any specific duration, but something in the range of 10-20 years seems about right.
- A small number of additional renewals of copyright, with increasing cost for each. The initial renewal should be cheap (basically a nuisance fee); subsequent renewals should get expensive fairly quickly (perhaps the fee might grow by 10x on each subsequent renewal). It should be possible to renew in advance by paying the sum of all the fees. The requirement for renewal ensures that works with small economic value enter the public domain relatively quickly; the increasing expense ensures that only extremely valuable works have highly extended copyright. Either way, this solves the "orphaned work" problem by forcing works into the public domain as soon as their copyright is not renewed.
- Each copyright renewal should be for a term not longer than the inital default term. Maximum length of copyright including both the initial term and all renewals should not exceed 100 years (I'm really shooting for "one long-but-plausible lifetime" here).
- Trademark protection for valuable icons in the future. This is the 'Buy off the mouse' clause! Let Disney have a trademark on Mickey, and J.K.Rowling have a trademark on Harry Potter. That trademark might, in fact, extend in perpetuity -- but the old works would nevertheless fall into the public domain. This is my try at a compromise between letting Disney ensure that Mickey does not become a porn star on the one hand and letting the public benefit from free access to those old cartoons/books/plays/movies/whatever on the other hand.
- At least the current set of 'fair use' rights enshrined in statute -- without denigrating other fair use rights not yet articulated by the courts.
With a 20 year initial term, 10 additional years for each renewal, a $10 fee for the first renewal, and a 10x fee increase for each subsequent renewal it would cost $1110 to hold copyright on a work for 50 years, and a bit more than $100,000,000 to hold copyright on a work for the maximum period of 100 years.
What do you folks think?
Xenophon |
I like (and have also suggested the same general structure. But I'll make some nip and tucks to it.
SIDEBAR (Everybody talks about Life + X to protect widows and ophans of creators. Ophans should not be protected after age of majority! The author went out and earned a living, so should his grown childen! I might stretch it to 25 for additional education, assuming they were conceived but not born until after the author's death, but that's max. And if the children are already grown, no X for them! As for widows, X would be their lifetime, period.) END SIDEBAR
You won't get in implemented against the heavy lobbying of the Big Copyright players unless you have equal guns on your side. Instead of making payable extension, make it taxable! After 20 years, if you want to keep your copyright, you have to pay a I.P. property tax every year. If it is not paid for 3 years, it reverts to the public domain. This brings in politicians to your side who are alway looking for more money to buy vot...err, help people with. That's how LBJ (cursed be his name) got Food Stamps embedded in the government during the Great Society.