Copyright has a chilling effect on book sales...

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

And I'm in favour of common sense and ideas that aren't nonsense. I don't even understand what additional incentive you think creators would get out of this that is above what they receive under the current system, or why you don't think creators would be harmed by cutting off the public domain.

There is no incentive. It's a matter of property rights. Books belong to the copyright holders and it should be up them to determine disposition.

I see no difference between land and books. If land can be passed on generation after generation, then so should books.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I think copyright should be life. Period. Or maybe life plus spouse's life (I can see a case for that) but I don't see any reason that lazy kids should live of a parent's creativity. In certain extreneaous circumstances a special dispensation can be made in case of untimely death or children still too young to support themselves. Otherwise i see no reason to extend copyright beyond the life of the creator.

One of the reasons for life+whatever (whether that's a variable like it is now or "X years, whether or not the author died") is to *encourage publication* of works near the end of the author's life.

If someone wants to write their memoirs, and cares about their family... why publish? Why publish something that dredges up old conflicts and might be shameful or hurtful to their friends & family members, if the family doesn't get any benefit from it?

Why bother working on the notes for the next novel, that you know you won't finish before you die, if you can't hand it off to your kids or your best friend who knows the world best, but instead it becomes open for anyone to reprint and exploit?

Or: you finished the novel. It's there in your hard drive. Your family gets hit by a bus; your spouse is killed, you are hospitalized, and aren't going to live more than a couple of weeks. Why should you send it off to the publisher if the proceeds aren't going to your kids?

Keep in mind that the vast majority of books make modest profits, if any, and aren't going to put anyone's grandkids through college. There's a difference between "Rowling's children shouldn't be able to coast on her earnings for the next several decades after her death" and "Random Q Author's kids shouldn't get $80 quarterly royalty payments for the first ten years after their father died."

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

There is no incentive. It's a matter of property rights. Books belong to the copyright holders and it should be up them to determine disposition.

I see no difference between land and books. If land can be passed on generation after generation, then so should books.

Books do NOT belong to the copyright holder. You might wish them to, but they do not. What the copyright holder owns is a limted time governmentally granted monopoly on copying the book. The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation. Copyright does let authors gain financially from their works, but that is not the purpose of copyright, it is a means to an end.

Books are not analogous to land. Physical property exists even if government does not. Without government, you can lock your gates to protect property. Copyright, on the other hand is meaningless without government. If copyright should be eternal, then so should patents. But if patents were eternal, we would be lucky to even have the steam engine.
If you have a house, I can't take that house from you. Even if there is no government to enforce property laws, you can lock your doors. But if I look at your house and say "I'd like to make one like that," there's nothing that prevents me from building one just like yours. I haven't taken anything away from you by building a house just like yours. But the government might decide that it is beneficial to grant you the exclusive right to build houses like that, to encourage more house designing. But it is an exchange. In exchange for this governmentally granted monopoly, after a certain amount of time, that monopoly expires.

Feel free to forgo copyright protection. Some inventors forgo patenting their work, thinking that they can benefit more my keeping it a trade secret. In principle, trade secrets can keep the technology secret forever. Until it gets leaked of course, the risk of using trade secrets is that you aren't protected in case it gets out. If it weren't for the fact that books have to be read with human eyes, someone could possibly create a workable DRM that would be the equivalent of trade secrets.

If you really believe that the expiration of copyright and patents is "theft", then you recieve stolen goods every time you read public domain books, and you recieve stolen goods every time you use technology which has borrowed from expired patents. The differences between physical and intellectual property is clear, even if you do not wish to see them.

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

works for land

Only because you have to pay property tax on it. If you don't pay the tax, the state takes it away in about 3 years.

Greg Weeks

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

There is no incentive. It's a matter of property rights. Books belong to the copyright holders and it should be up them to determine disposition.

I see no difference between land and books. If land can be passed on generation after generation, then so should books.

Just because you can't see a difference doesn't mean there isn't one. I think you would be hard pressed to find any expression of an idea that wasn't a combination of other ideas or an elaboration of other ideas; that's just how it works. Ideas don't just pop fully-formed out of the brain of their creator.

Now, there are a number of academic arguments on whether or not a copyrightable work is property or not, but it's irrelevant; the law treats them as different things. Your entire argument for changing the law seems to rest on the idea that "property" is a sacrosanct thing, that is imbued with magical rights and obligations that somehow transcend property laws. I'm guessing you're also not a big fan of eminent domain.

Edit

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Words

Dammit, I missed your post and then tried to make the same point (but not as well).

[MrsJoseph]

Well, I think that those in favor of life + forever on copyright should also be in favor of a yearly charge to maintain that copyright. It works for land.

And I think this amount should fluctuate based on the financial needs of the city/state/federal government in which the copyright holder lives. It works for land.

In addition, if the copyright holder cannot or will not pay the absurdly large amounts of required taxes...the government should be able to take away that right and sell it to the highest bidder. It works for land.

Of course, there are a lot of people who won't ever be able to afford copyright...some will save up for it for their entire lives. And still not make it. It works for land.

Plus, there should be a hard limit on how much copyright is available to be sold at any time. Hey! They aren't just making more copyright, you know. Cause that's the way land works.


Oooh! I should be able to put a lien on your copyright if you owe me money. That works for land, too! Plus insurance. Gotta have insurance.

[QuantumIguana]

Or maybe you should only have the land if you created it. ;-)

Even with physical property, there are differences. I have total control over my socks. Sure, no one else wants them, but that's not the point. With a parcel of land, my control is not absolute. I can't charge a toll for airplanes flying overhead. If a river runs through my land, I can dictate who can fish there, but I can't take all of the fish in the river. We have roads because of thousands of years of the right-of-way.

[speakingtohe]

Do people in general value public domain books as highly as those in copyright? Seems not to me although I am sure many do.


My copyright reforms would be somewhat different.

1. A book must be made available to maintain a copyright. If it is not for sale for a period of (for example) 10 years te copyright expires.

2. A book must within a certain time be (again perhaps 10 years) made avaliable to libraries or the copyright expires.

I think authors heirs have a right to benefit as do people who have invested money in the work. But if they show no effort to do so then the copyright is benefitting no-one.


Helen

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Do people in general value public domain books as highly as those in copyright? Seems not to me although I am sure many do.

Many of the most beloved classics are in the public domain. If copyright is eternal, books die, they will simply disappear into limbo. An obscure public domain book might be rediscovered, but a book that sits in an eternal limbo will not.

One major reason that so many groups do Shakespeare's plays is that they are in the public domain. Shakespeare may very well have been utterly forgotten were it not for the public domain.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Many of the most beloved classics are in the public domain. If copyright is eternal, books die, they will simply disappear into limbo. An obscure public domain book might be rediscovered, but a book that sits in an eternal limbo will not.

One major reason that so many groups do Shakespeare's plays is that they are in the public domain. Shakespeare may very well have been utterly forgotten were it not for the public domain.

That, of course, is the thing that most copyright forever people don't consider. The vast majority of works earn their money within the first year or two of being published. After that, they get shoved off the bookstore shelves by something else. For most authors, the issue isn't that they aren't getting paid for pirated works, it's that most people have forgotten their works even existed.

Sure Mickey and company will continue to be pushed by Disney Inc for a very long time, mostly for theme park purposes (when was the last movie with Micky Mouse?) But what other works actually make money after 20 years? Should the exception set the rules?

We would be a lot better off with a Mickey Mouse exception, i.e. if you think your copyright is worth it, then you can pay some fee each year to have it extended, otherwise it's 20 years and that's it.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Many of the most beloved classics are in the public domain. If copyright is eternal, books die, they will simply disappear into limbo. An obscure public domain book might be rediscovered, but a book that sits in an eternal limbo will not.

One major reason that so many groups do Shakespeare's plays is that they are in the public domain. Shakespeare may very well have been utterly forgotten were it not for the public domain.

Do not disagree at all but Shakespeare is Shakespeare and has been a major part of scholastic material and dramatizations for quite a while. I have read Shakespeare because I wanted to and then later because I had to. Same with Dickens.

I am pretty sure that the public domaine had little to do with it as these (and other) authors have been published/analized/rewritten relentlessly by various people and when producing a movie the cost of the script is pretty negligible overall.

And people buy print editions of books by Shakespeare and Dickens,Walt Whitman, Robert Service, Jack London etc. at $30+ a copy (I worked in a bookstore for a while 20 years ago) but public domain was not the cause.


Publishers spent the big bucks in typesetting, illustrating, distribution, promotion etc. Authors royalties are as we all aware a pretty small factor in publishing and a smaller one in paper book publishing.

I was speaking as well of the vast majority of non-famous (in our times) authors but I am still shaking my head in amazement at Shakespeare owing his sucess to the public domain.

Helen

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I think copyright should be life. Period. Or maybe life plus spouse's life (I can see a case for that) but I don't see any reason that lazy kids should live of a parent's creativity.

The distant cousin of Sid Vicious (who had no talent and died age 18) would probably disagree with you there.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

If someone wants to write their memoirs, and cares about their family... why publish? Why publish something that dredges up old conflicts and might be shameful or hurtful to their friends & family members, if the family doesn't get any benefit from it?

Why bother working on the notes for the next novel, that you know you won't finish before you die, if you can't hand it off to your kids or your best friend who knows the world best, but instead it becomes open for anyone to reprint and exploit?

Or: you finished the novel. It's there in your hard drive. Your family gets hit by a bus; your spouse is killed, you are hospitalized, and aren't going to live more than a couple of weeks. Why should you send it off to the publisher if the proceeds aren't going to your kids?

Because you like to publish books. And you write because you like to do it and so on. For the cases you mention I have never heard about anybody doing it for the money. I have heard about people doing it for a lot of other reasons.

The thought that somebodu wrote memoirs just before they dies to make money for the people surviving them have never occurred to me.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

The thought that somebodu wrote memoirs just before they dies to make money for the people surviving them have never occurred to me.

They don't write them to make money for the survivors--but if their family can't reasonably profit from it, many people may decide not to bother. Or may write it, and not publish. (If they're not going to be around to see it succeed or fail, why bother?)

Or, more likely, to tell their (probably adult) child to publish in *his* name, because that lets the family control the rights. I don't think I want a system that encourages obscuring the actual author in order to keep the rights active.

How would you verify who *really* wrote a thing if copyright expired with death of the author? What measures would be taken to assure that the actual author was the author-of-record? (Simple solution: Incorporate the family! Register all works to the corporation, which has a longer copyright!)

Is a mess. I want copyright to go back to a fixed term, with any optional extensions to cost money. Maybe not even more than a token amount; a $20 re-reg fee every 20 years would allow *works that the authors don't care about* to fall into the public domain. I don't care if Disney keeps The Mouse forever; I want the B-movies from the 30s and 40s to be thrown into the public domain, along with the thousands of books languishing in libraries that nobody's reprinting because some publisher re-registered it in 1956 but hasn't reprinted it since 1958.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Books are not analogous to land. Physical property exists even if government does not. Without government, you can lock your gates to protect property. [snip]
The differences between physical and intellectual property is clear, even if you do not wish to see them.

The differences between land and intellectual property are not as profound as you may think. Without government, you can't own land. Sure, you can lock "your" gates. You can also lock someone's else's gates. Or occupy whatever land you please. And the same can happen to "your" land. Without a government of some sort to enforce the property rights (whether in land or otherwise), there are no such rights.

There are reasons to treat intellectual property differently from real property. But they are policy reasons, not "natural" reasons. There is no "natural" property.