Quote:
Originally Posted by sirbruce
Generally speaking, because of the pace of technology, patents are relevant for a shorter period of time. True, if they extended patents they would be more valuable... but 20 years is an awful lot of time to come up with alternative ways of doing the same thing. Creative works, on the other hand, have individual unique value.
I agree that if you're a Rowling or a Grisham or a Brown, you've made so much money your incentive to keep creating for monetary reasons is reduced. But shortening copyright won't make them write more; they've already made it big. Look at a lot of the big name genre writers like Anthony, Bujold, Butcher, Card, Cherryh, Flint, Pratchett, Resnick, Turtledove, Vinge, Weber... they write books every year (sometimes more than one) because they need to in order to make a living. They're already writing as fast as they can; shortening copyright would only make things harder for them.
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The problem is that the vast majority of books earn most of their money in the first year that they were released. Actually, the correct way to say that is that the vast majority of books earn _all_ their money in the first year. Quick, who were the big named genre authors twenty years ago? Thirty years ago? You might at the most 100 authors who get income from a book after 28 years, however most are mostly forgotten. For every LOTR, or Dune, there are countless books that are now forgotten since it's not cost effective to republish it. IMPO, you should have a two tier copyright. Most works go into a pot where the author no longer controls the copyright, but does get a straight royalty from any books that are published after 20 years and if an author wants to pay a substantial yearly fee, they can hold on to the copyright for life plus 28 (or until they stop paying the fee).
Keep in mind that the original purpose of copyright was to encourage artists to product more art, not to provide a perpetual trust fund for their descendents.