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Originally Posted by pwalker8
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).
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That irrelevants when you consider ancillary rights. Many of Phillip K. Dick's work was essentially out of print before they became movie fodder. His Dark Materials might have gone the way of the dodo except the Harry Potter movies did so well that every studio was trying to find something in a similar vein. If you allow copyrights to expire after the first year on the theory all the money is made, then no television or movie or other deals will be done; they'll just wait until it's public domain.
That also fails to take into the consideration the value of ongoing series and characters. If anyone can put out a new Anita Blake book a year after the first one, the value of Hamilton's subsequent Anita Blake books are reduced.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
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.
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And now you're switching horses mid-stream by returning to the "perpetual trust fund" argument. We're not talking about that right now; we're SPECIFICALLY talking about length of copyright as an asset, like any other asset. It's no more a perpetual trust fund than any other asset; unless you support a 100% estate tax, you really shouldn't be bringing this up again and again. And even if you do believe that copyrights should not be based on a person's lifespan, then you're still talking about a fixed period, say 20 years, which would STILL provide money to descendents if the author dies before then.