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View Poll Results: What's your ideal form of copyright?
None. Copyright should just be abolished. 5 3.97%
Perpetual. Copyright should never expire. 0 0%
Some fixed length from first publication. 22 17.46%
Some fixed length, renewable a limited number of times. 20 15.87%
Some fixed length, renewable indefinitely. 5 3.97%
The lifetime of the author only. 21 16.67%
The lifetime of the author, plus a number of years. 28 22.22%
The lifetime of the author, plus a number of years renewable a limited number of times. 4 3.17%
The lifetime of the author, plus a number of years renewable indefinitely. 1 0.79%
Some fixed length, or the lifetime of the author, whichever is longer. 10 7.94%
Some fixed length, or the lifetime of the author plus a number of years, whichever is longer. 7 5.56%
The Blue One next to the Fish. 3 2.38%
Voters: 126. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 04-08-2020, 10:25 AM   #61
Uncle Robin
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I wouldn't want the public seizing control of my intellectual property rights sooner than I'd have been entitled to if I got hit by a bus tomorrow anymore than I'd want them seizing the rest of my estate from my heirs (same logic, I'd 'have no need' of any of it anymore, right?) !
Points I feel were addressed adequately and eloquently in this post
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Old 04-08-2020, 10:34 AM   #62
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Points I feel were addressed adequately and eloquently in this post
I disagree. The point is the same. The street cleaner may have a pension, street cleaning equipment or even a business with a customer base with value to be left for his heirs. Why should the author's heirs be treated less fairly just because the author's different abilities led him to provide for his family in a different way? Intellectual property is certainly not a direct analog of physical property or business ownership, but owners of both have the same want and need to provide for their families. And the purpose of copyright is to give creators what they want and need to encourage them to create.

Last edited by ApK; 04-08-2020 at 12:13 PM.
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Old 04-08-2020, 10:34 AM   #63
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I think life +50 should be a standard worldwide myself. People are used to it and it works well.
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Old 04-08-2020, 03:53 PM   #64
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I see one 4-page-long multi-quoted manifesto in our future.
(Like Hawkeye in that episode of MASH after he bet he wouldn't crack any jokes for a week.)
That's one of the few episodes of MASH I've seen!
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Old 04-08-2020, 04:50 PM   #65
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I personally do not see why the copyright on books should be much longer than patent protection, for which usually a lot more needs to be invested, so 25 years after publishing should be reasonable.

The much longer existing periods are mainly a lobby success of publishing industry. Rarely helps the author, who sells it off when he signs the contract.
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Old 04-09-2020, 08:23 AM   #66
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A yearly registration fee to prove the work hasn't been lost and forgotten. $10 should be enough to cover the paperwork involved.

Last edited by crossi; 04-09-2020 at 08:27 AM.
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Old 04-09-2020, 09:13 AM   #67
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I personally do not see why the copyright on books should be much longer than patent protection, for which usually a lot more needs to be invested, so 25 years after publishing should be reasonable.

The much longer existing periods are mainly a lobby success of publishing industry. Rarely helps the author, who sells it off when he signs the contract.
One big reason I see is the way media interacts with books. If copyrights expired after 20-25 years, the only incentive for moviemakers to compensate authors would be to get a jump on other moviemakers. Why pay money for Ready Player One, Starship Troopers, or Harry Potter if you can just wait a few years and do it anyways? The movie industry will make 100s of millions of dollars off of the books, and the authors would see essentially nothing.
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Old 04-09-2020, 09:33 AM   #68
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A yearly registration fee to prove the work hasn't been lost and forgotten. $10 should be enough to cover the paperwork involved.
I waffle on the idea of charging any fee to exercise any right. While it does seem reasonable and perhaps neccisary, politicians being what they are, they will be tempted to raise it to turn it into a profit center and/or to make it prohibitive for those without means. I might make the argument that if this law really is for the good of society, as I say it was meant to be, then society's taxes should cover the small cost involved. Besides, if filing one form of a reformed copyright system eliminated the hundreds of forms of even a single infringement suit, it would be a net savings.

ETA: Ham radio has a system that requires affirmative renewal of your license periodically but no fee (unless you want a vanity call sign) and seems to work adequately.

Last edited by ApK; 04-09-2020 at 11:51 AM.
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Old 04-09-2020, 09:46 AM   #69
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One big reason I see is the way media interacts with books. If copyrights expired after 20-25 years, the only incentive for moviemakers to compensate authors would be to get a jump on other moviemakers. Why pay money for Ready Player One, Starship Troopers, or Harry Potter if you can just wait a few years and do it anyways? The movie industry will make 100s of millions of dollars off of the books, and the authors would see essentially nothing.
This is just silly. 25 years is forever, in popular culture terms. It’s compounded by saying that they stand to make hundreds of millions; if that’s so, they’d want to get a start on that now and not push it out 25 years! Any would-be media exploiter who thought he could wait would be run over in the stampede to secure the rights to the most popular works of the day.
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Old 04-09-2020, 10:01 AM   #70
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This is just silly. 25 years is forever, in popular culture terms. It’s compounded by saying that they stand to make hundreds of millions; if that’s so, they’d want to get a start on that now and not push it out 25 years! Any would-be media exploiter who thought he could wait would be run over in the stampede to secure the rights to the most popular works of the day.
Since we often see companies wait until patents expire to make their millions off of them rather than licensing them early, I'm not sure this is so. I'm not sure it's a sufficient reason to extend the term, but I don't think it's silly. Not all works are pop-culture-timing sensitive, and many, as I mentioned earlier, are well ahead of their time. I'm waffling again. Good thread!

Last edited by ApK; 04-09-2020 at 10:07 AM.
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Old 04-09-2020, 10:45 AM   #71
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A yearly registration fee to prove the work hasn't been lost and forgotten. $10 should be enough to cover the paperwork involved.
Brilliant!

The process should also be non-automatable on the applicants end
sort of like CAPTCHA No patent trolls need apply
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Old 04-09-2020, 10:54 AM   #72
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How about instead of life + 50, make it the actuarial lifespan of the author + 50.

Actuarial lifespan = the average life span of people at the age of the author at the time of publication. Life insurance use this number all the time for policy calculations.

Example. Author X publishes a book at age 40. The actuarial life span of 40 year olds at that time is (say) 80 years. Copyright is then 80-40 = 40 years + 50 years, even if the author dies the next year.
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Old 04-09-2020, 04:32 PM   #73
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For fiction I think that 20 years w/o renewal is the way to go unless an item is kept continuously in print or available in electronic form. If popular enough to still be in print after 20 years then allow a single 20 year renewal. What percentage of fiction books or short stories remain in print for any where near that long? 1% or so maybe? The original version of "Lord Of The Rings" lost USA copyright due to not being published here and having too many British copies imported per copyright law at the time.

I remember as ACE Books printed an unauthorized version here circa 1967 or so. The first version I bought and read. The author revised things enough to get a new USA copyright and a contract with Ballantine as I recall for the "authorized edition".
I think a copyright needs to been a length of time. So we can know if something is public domain or not. 20 years only if it's not in print or eBook is not going to work. We won't know if it's PD or not. Something like life+50 or just 50 years are time spans we can use look up to see if the work is PD or not.
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Old 04-09-2020, 04:38 PM   #74
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How about instead of life + 50, make it the actuarial lifespan of the author + 50.

Actuarial lifespan = the average life span of people at the age of the author at the time of publication. Life insurance use this number all the time for policy calculations.

Example. Author X publishes a book at age 40. The actuarial life span of 40 year olds at that time is (say) 80 years. Copyright is then 80-40 = 40 years + 50 years, even if the author dies the next year.
Too complicated and too inaccurate. My father is 95 and will be 96 in December. My mother lived to be 89. So saying 80 is inaccurate. Also, in your example, the copyright will last 90 years instead of 50.

life+50 is a known quantity.
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Old 04-09-2020, 07:11 PM   #75
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Aren't many copyrights signed over to some publisher, and no longer owned by the author? I would say if a publisher holds the copyright, or any third party not the author, then it should expire very quickly. It the author retains the copyright, it could go for longer. But not TOO long.
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