Quote:
Originally Posted by Daithi
I like it Xenophon.
Along the lines of your thought process, I'd add that the only individuals allowed to extend a copyright should be the artist, or in the event of the artist's death, the spouse and/or dependants of the artist at the time of the creation of the copyrighted work. (If the copyright died with the artist I'd be fine with that too.) [edit]Once dependents are over 21 they lose the write to extend copyrights.[:edit]
It would be nice to see something like your proposal get made into law. I know most nations follow the Berne convention (treaty?) on copyright law, which sets death+50 as a minimum. I wonder if renewable copyrights with an initial term less than 50 years are allowed by this agreement. (I think 50 years is way too long for an initial term. I much prefer 10 or 20 years with the option to prepay.)
I'd also probably vote to revise the formula for fees. Fifty years for $1110 seems really cheap and $100,000,000 for 100 years seems really expensive. I'd suggest the following formula:
First 10 years are free
10-20 years costs $100
20-30 years costs $1,000
30-40 years costs $10,000
40-50 years costs $100,000
50-60 years costs $200,000
60-70 years costs $400,000
70-80 years costs $800,000
80-90 years costs $1,600,000
90-100 years costs $3,200,000
i.e. increase by a factor of 10 until year 50 then double thereafter until max 100 years is reached.
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There are lots of possible formulas. The basic idea I was shooting for was that absolutely anything is automatically in copyright for 20 years; and anything with even trivial economic value can be renewed for an additional decade. This would mean that most works would enter the public domain after 20 years, and most of the rest after 30.
I also intended that a book that sells very consistently and very well might stay under copyright for as long as 50 years or so. But only the most outrageously valuable works would remain under copyright thereafter.
How many movies pre-1959 are still big sellers? Some Bogart. The Wizard of Oz. Some Disney films. Casablanca. Not a whole lot else.
The only reason I even bothered putting a price on years beyond 50 is that I expect that Disney would pay for Mickey & Donald etc. and the public fisc might as well benefit from that.
Xenophon