How Long Should Copyright Last?

[Mycropht]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Copyright = Forever

I make no distinction between physical property and intellectual property. If a land owner can pass his land on to his heirs after his death, then an author should have the right to do the same thing with his writings.

I am curious what is the longest period a piece of land has been continually legally owned by heirs or legal buyers without any “funny” breaks. I do not think it is very long. Surely it would get messy if you dig enough into the past.

Nevertheless, intellectual property is not the same as physical property. On that subject, I wonder how much my car would cost if the price of each and every invention is built in the final price: something for the wheel inventor, a bit for the rubber inventor, steel inventor, glass inventor...

It would be a bit like monopoly game when the winner is known but the game is not over yet. Boooooring.... The world of perpetual copyright would be very boring but only until it ends in a possibly interesting and most probably bloody revolution started by the copyrightless population.

You chop some wood for 3 days, you get paid. You drive a truck for a month, you get paid. You think some time, a day, few years, maybe even longer until you think of something new to build and then you and your descendants should be getting some money forever. Yeah, right.

So, it took an author a year to write a book. Fine. I have no problem that he gets paid for every copy. His/hers spouse and children should get paid if (s)he dies too soon. But there has to be an end to that. Sooner or later we would reach a point when half new books, new songs, new inventions would be disputed by copyright owners of previous works. It would take forever to clear anything new for publishing. It would be the Dark age of copyrighttrollocracy.

I have voted for 10-20 year in the poll. No extension.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Mycropht

I am curious what is the longest period a piece of land has been continually legally owned by heirs or legal buyers without any “funny” breaks. I do not think it is very long. Surely it would get messy if you dig enough into the past.

In the developed world, land records go back hundreds of years. Records in England will go back to 1066; sometimes before. The abstract of title that came with my house begins in 1818 (when the Miami indians gave by treaty the land in my county to the United States, and contains a record of every transfer since then. There's nothing messy about it at all, although I wouldn't call it gripping reading: in 1821, a 100 acres or so were sold to a man who apparently farmed it; he died in 1865 and it passed to his daughter and then his granddaughter; in 1923, she sold it to a trust company, which platted it and built a subdivision; two vacant plats were sold in 1950 to someone who built a house in 1951...the house changed hands three times until I bought it in 2003.

[/QUOTE]

[Mycropht]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

In the developed world, land records go back hundreds of years. Records in England will go back to 1066; sometimes before. The abstract of title that came with my house begins in 1818 (when the Miami indians gave by treaty the land in my county to the United States, and contains a record of every transfer since then. There's nothing messy about it at all,

The Indians gave the land by treaty. Nothing messy about it.

Anyway, hundreds of years is significantly shorter then forever.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Mycropht

The Indians gave the land by treaty. Nothing messy about it.

Anyway, hundreds of years is significantly shorter then forever.

In the sense of determining with certainty who owns land, there is nothing "messy" about it at all. There is no gap in ownership of the land...and if the Indians had given copyright by treaty, it would work the same way.

There are reasons to be opposed to copyright, but the fact that we can't keep track of it is not a reason.

[Mycropht]

I would limit the copyright (and patent!) duration to 20 years. My concerns are more or less described in the story "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson I have read years ago. I am so glad that the author has published the story on his website for anyone to read. Here is the link:

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html

Thanks Spider!!!

[Anagnostis]

Originally Posted by pietrocrazy

I downloaded some Aristophanes, who should I send the check to?

I believe u should send the check to Greece ..

Now we have problems with our economy it will be well accepted

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Maybe we need another poll about whether or not we should go back to having to file a copyright claim for anything you want copyrighted, a process for registering a claim at no cost would have to be developed, but I think streamlining the current process and making use of the crowd as well as a few tax dollars might work, we are talking about the public good here, and the advancement of the arts.

One of the reasons that was abandoned was the hassle of copyrighting unpublished works in process. When do you register it--when you start the outline for the novel? When it's half-finished? When the rough draft is done? Do you need to register the first chapter & outline before you send it to a publisher to pitch it, and register again before you send off the draft for editing? Do you also register the final, pre-print version after your changes?

Songs have even more hassles; do you register the lyrics and music separately? If you add a few verses and change the chorus a bit, do you need to register each change?

Requiring pre-registration for protection is a bad idea. The current system has some big problems (including the time & hassle to register in order to file useful infringement lawsuits), but there's good reasons not to require registration before the protection kicks in.

But I'd love to see "it's protected for 15 years from creation in fixed form automatically--after that, you have to register it." That's plenty of time to decide your college newspaper articles are worth developing into a book, or your high-school poetry is worth polishing & selling to the New Yorker. It would mean anything more than 15 years old would be public domain, available for everyone, unless it was on a list somewhere. You could find out if the lyrics used by the garage band you were part of as a teenager are restricted (and know who to ask about permissions), or if your new band can safely put them on an album.

Otherwise, you're stuck with "Who wrote that? Tony's girlfriend, wasn't it? What the heck was her name, and how would I find her now?"

[saoir]

20 years should be the absolute maximum allowed.

It is an appalling abuse of logic and reason that someone who writes a 3 minute song when they are 18, still has to be paid for it's performance when they are 60 years of age and their children have to be paid too. What kind of nonsense is that.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by saoir

20 years should be the absolute maximum allowed.

It is an appalling abuse of logic and reason that someone who writes a 3 minute song when they are 18, still has to be paid for it's performance when they are 60 years of age and their children have to be paid too. What kind of nonsense is that.

How is it an abuse of logic and reason?

If I own a house, I can rent it out until I die, and then I can pass it on to my children and they can do the same, then pass it on to their kids. For hundreds of years, in theory.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

How is it an abuse of logic and reason?

If I own a house, I can rent it out until I die, and then I can pass it on to my children and they can do the same, then pass it on to their kids. For hundreds of years, in theory.

If you own a book, you can do the same to it.

If, however, you build a house, and sell it to someone else, you don't have the right to give it to your kids after you die. You could rent it--with a detailed contract, which the renter agrees to, and has the option of negotiating terms, or leaving when the terms or fees become too much.

Books are generally sold, not rented. There's no contract describing the terms of use, no ongoing payments, and no option to stop paying and returning use to the original owner. Authors (and publishers) generally prefer not to have to negotiate usage rights with each book buyer. There's no signed contract between the two establishing what rights the buyer's bought--there's a receipt, like a deed, that says "it's yours now."

Copyright is an attempt to apply rental terms to purchases. And for the most part, it's a good thing; otherwise, many authors would be prone to only releasing their works to a tiny, high-paying audience, perhaps that had signed nondisclosure agreements.

I'm in favor of copyright monopolies... for a limited time. But they don't parallel directly to physical property concerns.

If you make a house, anyone else is free to make a house that looks just like it.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'm in favor of copyright monopolies... for a limited time. But they don't parallel directly to physical property concerns.

Maybe not. But (keeping in mind I was responding to a post above) why is a person who buys a house logically and morally entitled to all income that property will produce - in perpetuity, if necessary - but a person who writes a song at age 18 is *not* logically or morally entitled to whatever income that song might produce at the time the writer is 60.

I don't see a logical or moral claim for society to determine that Paul McCartney should have lost all rights to "Paperback Writer" in 1986, for example. (And, again, I know that this wasn't your argument).

[Giggleton]

Seeing as how the current copyright term of life of the creator plus seventy years routinely inhibits those born along with each works creation to freely share and derive works created during our own lifetimes in whole, we submit that a reversion to a more adequate time period for copyright restrictions is NECESSARY in order to fully promote the progress of science and the arts, as was copyrights original purpose.

I feel that 15 years is more than adequate.

[gmw]

It could be curious to have this poll run twice, once for people that do not derive their living from works protected by copyright and again for those that do. As someone that has for years attempted to run my own small business I am very conscious of the assets I've built (and copyright is an asset). I try to imagine what it would be like for an author to have spent a life-time writing to turn around and discover that some individuals would like to arbitrarily take away what they've worked so hard to achieve. (It's not too hard, I've actually experienced someone wanting to arbitrarily try to assume ownership of years worth of my work.)

Yes, the times they are a changin' (thanks Bob), but have some thought for those what started their careers when books were all printed. Put yourself in the author's position: imagine you own a work still in print after 15 years and discover that someone wants to arbitrarily take away your entitlement to that income, all for some strange idea that they are automatically entitled to copy that work for free.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by gmw

It could be curious to have this poll run twice, once for people that do not derive their living from works protected by copyright and again for those that do. As someone that has for years attempted to run my own small business I am very conscious of the assets I've built (and copyright is an asset). I try to imagine what it would be like for an author to have spent a life-time writing to turn around and discover that some individuals would like to arbitrarily take away what they've worked so hard to achieve. (It's not too hard, I've actually experienced someone wanting to arbitrarily try to assume ownership of years worth of my work.)

Yes, the times they are a changin' (thanks Bob), but have some thought for those what started their careers when books were all printed. Put yourself in the author's position: imagine you own a work still in print after 15 years and discover that someone wants to arbitrarily take away your entitlement to that income, all for some strange idea that they are automatically entitled to copy that work for free.

While I would like to see copyright laws change, I firmly believe that terms for existing copyrighted material should not change, whether terms are shortened or extended. Anyone who already has copyrighted material has agreed to a given set of rules - I don't think it's fair to change the rules after the agreement has been made.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by gmw

It could be curious to have this poll run twice, once for people that do not derive their living from works protected by copyright and again for those that do. As someone that has for years attempted to run my own small business I am very conscious of the assets I've built (and copyright is an asset). I try to imagine what it would be like for an author to have spent a life-time writing to turn around and discover that some individuals would like to arbitrarily take away what they've worked so hard to achieve. (It's not too hard, I've actually experienced someone wanting to arbitrarily try to assume ownership of years worth of my work.)

Yes, the times they are a changin' (thanks Bob), but have some thought for those what started their careers when books were all printed. Put yourself in the author's position: imagine you own a work still in print after 15 years and discover that someone wants to arbitrarily take away your entitlement to that income, all for some strange idea that they are automatically entitled to copy that work for free.

It is not arbitrary if the laws work that way.

If you spend your time making a physical product and then you sell it. According to you it is arbitrary and strange that you cannot sell it again.

Most authors i know seem to look at writing as a methof to earn money withing the current laws and rules. They accept the rules whatever they are and do not seem to have the kind of opinion you describe here.