Quote:
Originally Posted by sirbruce
I don't like the scheme. Let's say I'm a moderate successful author and I've got an old backlist title that's selling a few hundred to 1,000 copies a year. The 20 year renewel is a no brainer, even though it's cutting into my earnings. A 30 year renewal may be difficult if my yearly income can't handle that sort of hit all at once. A 40 year renewal is going to be cost-prohibitive; I won't earn back what it cost me to renew the copyright.
But Hollywood can then turn right around and make a movie of my 40 year old book and not pay me a cent. And Hollywood can afford to wait that long. Why pay me a percentage when they can wait a few years and get the movie rights for free? Of course, then they're in a race to see who can make the movie first. Sure, the hot new books will get locked up quick, but with all the new titles entering into the public domain every year most authors won't stand a chance at a big payday.
I think copyrights need a set period of time... maybe 50 years, or maybe life of the author plus 10. But I don't like an every-increasing scale of renewals; it punishes the less successful while giving the others another decade or two of profits.
|
That's why I recommend it be treated like a tax rather than a fee. If it sells little, the tax is (relatively speaking) low. If you sell a lot, it is high. The most important purpose of setting it up as a tax, is to prevent the concept of "free hoarding", i.e. the maintenance of copyrights of out-of-print works, just in case there is a future demand. You may think that that sort of "lottery ticket"
is important, but so it the public domain. Still, if you want to play the "copyright lottery", you still can, it's just that it would not longer be free...