How long should a copyright last?

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by gmw

You seem to be confusing copyright with patents and trademarks. Copyright does not protect an idea and imposes no constraint over anyone else's original creation.

I think rkomar is right. To word it another way, literature has long been considered a long conversation that began thousands of years ago. It is a conversation conducted in public and provides a skeleton or structure for our civilizations. Anyone can join the conversation but when you do, it is with the knowledge that your contribution will be put in the public arena.

Recently, important parts of that conversation have been at least partially hidden from public view. To take one example, the publisher of To Kill A Mockingbird refuses to publish it in eBook form despite the efforts of the work’s author to have it published. In this case, Harper Lee had to go to the expense of a lawyer in an attempt to regain control of her work.

You could argue that restricting it from digital form doesn't hide a work but the truth of that will be unknown for another decade or two. Besides, there are many more examples, but the point is that laws that intend to protect an author’s income can result in infringement of the public right to access that important long conversation.

I don’t know if limiting the length of the copyright will achieve the dual goals of protecting authors and protecting the public interest, but there is no doubt something is wrong with the current rules and similar limits have worked in the past.

[gmw]

Do you have a source for the claim that the To Kill A Mockingbird argument was over publishing as ebook? Just curious, the few articles I found suggest the lawsuit was regarding copyright ownership, not the publication form.

But you're right, I would argue that lack of ebook availability has little to do with copyright length or the "long conversation". Recent famous authors have opted to avoid ebooks for at least some period of time (eg: Rowling and King). So, unless you're suggesting copyright should be scrapped altogether, the choice of publishing format is something of a red herring - except that it does seem to emphasise my suggestion that technology is distorting people's perception of copyright property value.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by gmw

Do you have a source for the claim that the To Kill A Mockingbird argument was over publishing as ebook? Just curious, the few articles I found suggest the lawsuit was regarding copyright ownership, not the publication form.

One does not preclude the other. 6charlong did say the lawsuit was over copyright ownership but also claimed that what caused the author to desire to reclaim ownership was the publisher not acting in accordance with her wishes. What her wishes were would only come into play if the wording of the contract allowed her control over the publisher. That seems unlikely from what I've heard of these contracts.

[eschwartz]

Life plus 20 or 70 years from publication, whichever is longer. If no rights-holder can be found, a request can be made to put it in the public domain and the copyright office should try to find the owner but if they can't, it goes to the public domain. If the rights-holder comes along anyway, they regain the rights, but they don't get anything retroactively.

The author is guaranteed income for life from his work, and if he dies in a few days his heirs get the value out of it for a more than reasonable time period.

[speakingtohe]

Perhaps there should be two forms of copyright.

Onre for using the work for a derivative purpose, and one where any one who is making money of the actual work itself, even if value added.

If for example I sold an authors work as the authors work, and just added an intro, the author and/or their estate would get paid. If I merely quoted the author, and the work was mostly my own no payment necessary after the copyright expired.

Helen

[Hrafn]

Originally Posted by gmw

It is interesting, and I find surprising, to see the number of people that don't see abstract creations as a property to be bought and sold and inherited. (Or that's the way I interpret some of the posts here that would, seemingly arbitrarily, strip this property from the current owner, like repossessing a house.)

At first I thought it might be because intellectual property is abstract, and its status as a property is due largely to provisions in law. But then I thought about business. A business may have physical assets, but its actual value is largely abstract, and its status as a property is quite distinct from its physical assets. Few people seem to have trouble with the idea that a business (or shares in a business) is property that can be bought and sold and inherited.

Or is it that people don't like the idea of people earning money for something when they are no longer working for it? (Never mind that the labour may not have been paid for in the first place.) But few people complain about the interest or dividends that they receive on their investments - investments they are happy to buy, sell and leave in their wills. So this can't be it either.

Is it simply that intellectual property can be so easily copied now that people think the value is in the electromagnetic arrangements rather than the abstract concept they represent? Perhaps the logic is that since I can easily have a million copies of something, the value of any one of those copies must be negligible. So here, give me the original and I'll make a million copies, but I'll only read one of them and pay the creator one millionth of the cover price.

None of this is to argue that copyright should be longer or permanent, there are other factors at play, but I do wonder if our view of the value of intellectual property is being unjustly distorted by technology.

Speaking for myself, none of the above. Copyright (and ownership thereof) should be limited because copyright is a monopoly, and it is a basic fact of economics that monopolies impose deadweight costs on the economy. The only rationale for allowing such monopoly-costs is to encourage creation of new content. Thus the extent of the monopoly (length of the copyright) should be limited to the extent that it continues to provide a substantive additional incentive to create. Individuals generally don't decide on whether to create something based upon the chance of royalties decades hence, and companies generally discount future cashflows that far out sufficiently, so that both can be reasonably ignored as incentives.

Also as technology changes decrease the difficulty, cost and ease-of-detection of unauthorised copying, they raise the deadweight cost of enforcing the monopoly, so act as an argument for further reducing the monopoly (possibly by allowing more generous exceptions for non-commercial copying).

Yes, there are business-related protections of 'abstract properties', trademarks and trade secrets, but both the law and the underlying economic patterns of both are sufficiently different from copyright that it is highly questionable whether they are directly comparable.

That is not to say that I believe that the copyright should not be able to be sold or inherited, just that it should be stringently limited, both in its duration, and in the generosity of non-commercial exceptions allowed.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

One does not preclude the other. 6charlong did say the lawsuit was over copyright ownership but also claimed that what caused the author to desire to reclaim ownership was the publisher not acting in accordance with her wishes. What her wishes were would only come into play if the wording of the contract allowed her control over the publisher. That seems unlikely from what I've heard of these contracts.

Yes, I could have worded that better. Put simply: I found nothing to suggest that the argument over To Kill A Mockingbird had anything to do with ebooks. The articles I found suggest that she had been duped out of her rights and went to court to rectify the matter, I saw no mention of what she intended to do with her rights other than take back possession.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by gmw

Yes, I could have worded that better. Put simply: I found nothing to suggest that the argument over To Kill A Mockingbird had anything to do with ebooks. The articles I found suggest that she had been duped out of her rights and went to court to rectify the matter, I saw no mention of what she intended to do with her rights other than take back possession.

Nor have I and I agree with your request for the source of the claim. My own opinion is that something triggered the decision to file a lawsuit now, more than 50 years after the book became a bestseller. I found nothing suggesting what that 'something' was so 6charlong's suggestion sounds as likely as anything else-but having a source might raise that from opinion to possible fact.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Nor have I and I agree with your request for the source of the claim. My own opinion is that something triggered the decision to file a lawsuit now, more than 50 years after the book became a bestseller. I found nothing suggesting what that 'something' was so 6charlong's suggestion sounds as likely as anything else-but having a source might raise that from opinion to possible fact.

Given her age and past health issues, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think she may have other reasons to make sure this was sorted out.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by gmw

It is interesting, and I find surprising, to see the number of people that don't see abstract creations as a property to be bought and sold and inherited. (Or that's the way I interpret some of the posts here that would, seemingly arbitrarily, strip this property from the current owner, like repossessing a house.)

At first I thought it might be because intellectual property is abstract, and its status as a property is due largely to provisions in law. But then I thought about business. A business may have physical assets, but its actual value is largely abstract, and its status as a property is quite distinct from its physical assets. Few people seem to have trouble with the idea that a business (or shares in a business) is property that can be bought and sold and inherited.

Or is it that people don't like the idea of people earning money for something when they are no longer working for it? (Never mind that the labour may not have been paid for in the first place.) But few people complain about the interest or dividends that they receive on their investments - investments they are happy to buy, sell and leave in their wills. So this can't be it either.

Is it simply that intellectual property can be so easily copied now that people think the value is in the electromagnetic arrangements rather than the abstract concept they represent? Perhaps the logic is that since I can easily have a million copies of something, the value of any one of those copies must be negligible. So here, give me the original and I'll make a million copies, but I'll only read one of them and pay the creator one millionth of the cover price.

None of this is to argue that copyright should be longer or permanent, there are other factors at play, but I do wonder if our view of the value of intellectual property is being unjustly distorted by technology.

Of course it's being distorted by technology! It only came into existence by technology. (i.e. the printing press). Technology created it, and technology is killing it...

For more detail, see my mongraph here on Mobileread - And The World Changed.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Hrafn

Speaking for myself, none of the above. Copyright (and ownership thereof) should be limited because copyright is a monopoly, [... snipped for brevity only ...]

A monopoly is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on other factors. Economics is a science of balances, it has few basic facts. One of those balances has been creating copyright monopolies. And remember that the monopoly in this case is only over the particular work, nothing wider (which, as you acknowledge, makes it quite different from patents and trademarks). So there are hundreds of thousands of tiny monopolies spread around many businesses and individuals, and this changes the dynamics considerably.

I take particular issue with this: "Individuals generally don't decide on whether to create something based upon the chance of royalties decades hence". Read around, this is exactly what authors and publishers do. Each new book they create produces new interest in previously published works. Very few authors gain overnight success with their first book, most spend many years building their reputation and a back-list of books. (Many people have trouble with this because it is so foreign to our modern "must have profit this year" way of doing business, but this is the way it works.)

[Greg Anos]

Personally, I think the US had the right answer pre-1978. 28 + 28 or 56 years max.

Why? Look at all the art that was created under that regime in the US. The Golden Age of Hollywood...The Pulp Era....All the music (popular and otherwise)...Books (make your own list)...Television shows....Radio Shows....Plays...

Nobody said - Gee, I'm not going to create a book/movie/song/play/radio show because my great grandchildern aren't going to be collecting money off of them 100 years from now. Or if I do, I'm giong to decamp to a nation with a longer copyright law. Didn't happen.

Only when Hollywood realized that it's sound pictures might start falling into the public domain, has there been a hue and cry about lengthing copyright. And please note - the Life + X portion was a smoke screen for the real copyright extension - stretching those already existing copyrights over and over again. Things that should have fallen into the public domain under either life plus 50 or 70 still aren't in the public domain yet, and if Hollywood has it's say, never will (no perpertual copyright, just perpetual extensions)

Example, Zane Grey. He died in 1939, in life + 50, he went PD in 1990, and in life + 70, he went PD in 2010. However, all post 1923 works are still under copyright in the US, due to the continual extension of existing copyright. Life + X doesn't count under the copyright extension regime in the US. All to save big Hollywood corporations right to milk their back castalog...

Had the copyright extension not been applied retroactively, everthing created before 1957 would be public domain. Nobody would have been cheated, as all that art was made under those copyright rules, voluntarily, to begin with. Make you own list of PD art you could enjoy.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by gmw

Very few authors gain overnight success with their first book, most spend many years building their reputation and a back-list of books. (Many people have trouble with this because it is so foreign to our modern "must have profit this year" way of doing business, but this is the way it works.)

Yeah - this is about the only thing that gives me pause when I too say that copyright should be quite limited. For example, I think 14 years has a good ring to it, but I think 28 years is probably a better fit. Don't ask me why the multiples of 7 - I have no idea.

For my own content (if that ever comes), I will imposing my own copyright period, one that I can feel comfortable with. I really couldn't feel comfortable with Life+70 for my own work. Of course, no-one in the universe is going to give a damn about when my copyrights expire, so it will only be my own conscience that will be satisfied. But that's enough for me.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by Hrafn

Speaking for myself, none of the above. Copyright (and ownership thereof) should be limited because copyright is a monopoly, and it is a basic fact of economics that monopolies impose deadweight costs on the economy. The only rationale for allowing such monopoly-costs is to encourage creation of new content. Thus the extent of the monopoly (length of the copyright) should be limited to the extent that it continues to provide a substantive additional incentive to create. Individuals generally don't decide on whether to create something based upon the chance of royalties decades hence, and companies generally discount future cashflows that far out sufficiently, so that both can be reasonably ignored as incentives.

Also as technology changes decrease the difficulty, cost and ease-of-detection of unauthorised copying, they raise the deadweight cost of enforcing the monopoly, so act as an argument for further reducing the monopoly (possibly by allowing more generous exceptions for non-commercial copying).

Yes, there are business-related protections of 'abstract properties', trademarks and trade secrets, but both the law and the underlying economic patterns of both are sufficiently different from copyright that it is highly questionable whether they are directly comparable.

That is not to say that I believe that the copyright should not be able to be sold or inherited, just that it should be stringently limited, both in its duration, and in the generosity of non-commercial exceptions allowed.

Excellent analysis. Copyright has some property-like attributes, but it is not property. Under natural law, if you have a dining room suite then you have something of value that you can sell once. Under natural law, if you have a story you have something you can copy unlimited times and sell, along with everyone else. Copyright is an artifact created by statute law to temporarily overcome natural law. The purpose of copyright is to enrich the commons by giving creators temporary protection. If they can't capitalize on the monopoly during that window, they shouldn't expect us to subvert the intent of the law by extending their privilege indefinitely.

[Difflugia]

Fixed length only (state length in post)

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Personally, I think the US had the right answer pre-1978. 28 + 28 or 56 years max.

What he said.