Quote:
Originally Posted by pruss
Once laws are chosen, if the laws are not immoral or clearly unreasonable, we the subjects of these laws need to obey (or leave their jurisdiction).
|
Or lobby against them if we do feel that they are unreasonable... and it would help if a large group of us had some kind of consensus on what would be better. That's why I participate in these discussions.
I personally feel that author's life + 75 years for copyright protection is highly unreasonable. With the ease of publishing digital content these days, I think it's quite unreasonable that publishers should be allowed to let content go out of print for longer than, say, a year but then object to others making it available. And I think it's extremely unreasonable that long-tail content like books be permitted to be sold in proprietary, locked systems when we have no example of technology lasting longer than a couple of years.
After reading comments by many professional authors and doing my humble best to think through the issues, here's what I would suggest instead:
- Copyright lasts for publication + 30 years. "Moral rights" (i.e. rights involving how characters may be used, or derivative works, etc.) last until the author's death.
- Any work that falls "out of print" via commercial distribution for a span of greater than 12 months should lapse to the author, then, after another 12 months, to the public domain if still out of print.
- No proprietary format may restrict access to a work for longer than that format has been in commercial use, plus 1 year (just to give them a head start). So Sony can restrict access to Connect content for 1 year, but after that it has to be able to automatically unlock itself. Once they've been in business supporting their format for a few years, they can lengthen that span.
- Unencrypted copies of every work "published" should be filed with an agency the equivalent of the Library of Congress for use in the case of works falling out of print.
I think this would do plenty to protect the rights of authors, publishers, and everyone else with a reasonable stake in the publishing industry, while also protecting the public interest in maintaining the availability of works and the private interest in ensuring continuing access to content purchased. But I doubt Disney and LucasFilms, among others, would calmly stand by and allow such laws to be implemented.
