Petition to reduce US copyright to 28 years

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by ApK

Anyone else?

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards who want everything without ever paying for anything."

versus

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards who want to get paid for everything in perpetuity."

[crich70]

Originally Posted by HarryT

So no films, no TV programmes, no newspapers, no magazines, no DVDs, etc? All corporate copyrights.

Isn't there also the problem of transfer of ownership? I mean say you own a studio like Universal or Paramount back in the day and due to financial problems (which the real studios had) you have to sell off your old films to another. Does your copyright automatically transfer over to the new owner of the film so that they can claim to be the only one with the right to publish the work in question? Such has been argued in the past in other media besides books. Conde Nast has tried to claim that they own a vast number of Old Time Radio programs and that if someone wants to have them they have to pay through the nose for a handful. They have tried it with pulp magazines as well such as The Shadow and I wouldn't be surprised if they had tried to argue that they own Doc Savage as well. I think there's a problem with that mentality though. It smacks of greed. If you have to pay $40.00-$60.00 for a handful of OTR programs on CD or a similar amount for old fiction who would be able to afford it? Only the rich, that's who.

[DarkScribe]

I fail to grasp how a reduced copyright term is going to create advantage to individuals. Here in Australia we have tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of books that are in the public domain, but copyrighted in the US. How does that translate into an advantage for us? Does the fact that George Orwell's 1984 is not protected here, but is still under copyright in the US really make a difference? A formatted eBook version is still going to cost 99¢, regardless of its status.

I see a degree of resentment of copyright, but no valid argument as to why it should be reduced.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DarkScribe

IA formatted eBook version is still going to cost 99¢, regardless of its status.

I haven't seen 1984 legally available anywhere it's in copyright for 99¢.

It's out-of-copyright status that makes things very cheap or free.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards who want everything without ever paying for anything."

versus

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards who want to get paid for everything in perpetuity."

The human condition, sigh.

[Quexos]

Now we are getting somewhere, money is the poison that runs through the veins of society. Too much greed, too much desire of power, of having more than your neighbor. It's like a nice car or a nice house or caviar does only taste really good if you know that nobody around you can afford it.

Originally Posted by Fluribus

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards who want everything without ever paying for anything."

versus

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards who want to get paid for everything in perpetuity."

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by crich70

Isn't there also the problem of transfer of ownership? I mean say you own a studio like Universal or Paramount back in the day and due to financial problems (which the real studios had) you have to sell off your old films to another. Does your copyright automatically transfer over to the new owner of the film so that they can claim to be the only one with the right to publish the work in question? Such has been argued in the past in other media besides books. Conde Nast has tried to claim that they own a vast number of Old Time Radio programs and that if someone wants to have them they have to pay through the nose for a handful. They have tried it with pulp magazines as well such as The Shadow and I wouldn't be surprised if they had tried to argue that they own Doc Savage as well. I think there's a problem with that mentality though. It smacks of greed. If you have to pay $40.00-$60.00 for a handful of OTR programs on CD or a similar amount for old fiction who would be able to afford it? Only the rich, that's who.

As Doc to Senor Gorro in the movie..."No problem at all." Copyrights, under law, are just like trading cards, they can be bought, sold, swapped, ect. If it doesn't help the creator, that doesn't matter either, despite all the pious crap about protecting the rights of the creator. Ask Sir Paul McCartney about his early Beatles copyrights.

What is protected is the middlemen's right to exploit copyrights. (In the US, preferably forever minus 1 day.) Make no mistake, that's what all the legal wrangling and extensions are all about.

As to Doc. It is still under copyright in the US. The earliest the first Docs could come out of copyright is either 2021 (for the Laurence Donovan Docs d. 1950 - 1950 + 70 + 1 = 2021), or 2029 (treating all Docs as "work for hire" - 1933 was the first year that Doc was published, so for the Docs published in 1933, it would be 1933 + 95 + 1 = 2029.)

In Canada, (under the standard Berne treaty, without extensions), 159 of the Docs are certainly in the Public Domain, due to the authors deaths, and possibly all of them, should they be considered "works for hire" which have a 50 year + 1 term. (I'll look it up on my sticky and report back.) (They actually were works for hire. The authors were paid a flat fee, never received royalties, and with one exception, never had their names appended to their works. Those are the standard definitions for work for hire. but whether or not it would be worth the court fight, who knows...)

And Conde Nast does own the copyright, as they bought Street and Smith, a long time back...

[Greg Anos]

And here's the Canadian law...

6. The term for which copyright shall subsist shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by this Act, be the life of the author, the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year.
R.S., 1985, c. C-42, s. 6; 1993, c. 44, s. 58.

Marginal note:Anonymous and pseudonymous works

6.1 Except as provided in section 6.2, where the identity of the author of a work is unknown, copyright in the work shall subsist for whichever of the following terms ends earlier:
(a) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year, and
(b) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the making of the work and a period of seventy-five years following the end of that calendar year,
but where, during that term, the author’s identity becomes commonly known, the term provided in section 6 applies.
1993, c. 44, s. 58.

Since the names of the work for hire people has become known, Life + 50 applies, so only 159 Docs are P.D. in Canada, with the next block becoming P.D. in 2028, one more in 2029, and the last 3 in 2046... (Even though none of the writers or their heirs and assign ever got a dime of royalties for any of them (with one posthumous exception)).

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by DarkScribe

I fail to grasp how a reduced copyright term is going to create advantage to individuals.

Cheaper and better books for me.

Cheaper is unassailable:

The Kindle edition of Animal Farm is US$7.92. The Kindle edition of 1984 is US$8.55. The Kindle edition of Burmese Days is US$9.39. KoboBooks prices are generally higher. By contrast, scruplously legal web sites such as Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Canada, and MobileRead provide residents of countries like Canada and Australia, which had Orwell public domain days, all of his books for free.

Better is speculative, but:

A 28 year copyright term is short enough that it would pressure great writer's-blocked authors (Salinger? Ellison?) to eventually produce more books. But it's long enough that no one will think they have to churn out potboilers every few months due to that looming 28 years deadline.

Life plus 50 was for a world in which age of death was highly unpredictable, and writers often were men with far younger wives. Now that most author spouses have their own careers, and there are old age pension schemes, the need is gone.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I agree, it's not up for debate. It costs money to run Wikipedia. If they aren't going to charge money or have ads, then they have to ask for donations. That some people don't like it and call it begging or pleading doesn't make it begging or pleading.

However, the fact that one can not with anything like a strait face try to make the entreaties not match the dictionary definitions of begging and pleading ... DOES make it beggging and pleading.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Phogg

However, the fact that one can not with anything like a strait face try to make the entreaties not match the dictionary definitions of begging and pleading ... DOES make it beggging and pleading.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by odiakkoh

I think life+50 is a bit too long but 28 years seem a bit too short to me. The life expectancy during the times of our founding fathers was 35-40 years so 28 years made sense. You wrote something as an adult and the copyright pretty much expired when you did.

Yeah, I'm not seeing the upside to this for me at all, not even as a reader. Good Gads, I'm trying to make a living from my writing. I really don't quite understand all the negativity towards copyright lately. For the most part books are still one of the cheapest entertainment going and there are multiple ways to buy or borrow them too.

Sure, I get that a 25 dollar ebook that can't be lent is steep. But a 25 dollar hardback can be lent, sold or shared--or bought used for half or less than half.

I'm a buyer of art and books. While making a bunch of artwork public domain so that I could use it for a cover might sound nice, it isn't practical to put the artist out of work. They make a pittance as it is for the most part.

Lately I wanted to try a bunch of new authors, but didn't want to spend 8 to 10 bucks a book. I was able to borrow them from the library for 2.50 each. That's a total bargain.

I know authors who have stopped writing because there wasn't enough money in it. One of them was a favorite author from way back. She had to move on to other things. Yeah, there are other books. Yeah, some people don't care. But there's nothing wrong with giving people a chance at their dreams and a chance to make a living. Copyright law even as long as it is today is not keeping anyone from being able to read what they want if they are willing to go find it.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Life plus 50 was for a world in which age of death was highly unpredictable, and writers often were men with far younger wives. Now that most author spouses have their own careers, and there are old age pension schemes, the need is gone.

Life plus 50 was enacted in 1976. I was a kid in 1976. It wasn't that different...

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Life plus 50 was enacted in 1976.

The Berne Convention was effective in 1888. You must be thinking about when some provincial outlier in the middle of North America started obeying it

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Yeah, I'm not seeing the upside to this for me at all, not even as a reader. Good Gads, I'm trying to make a living from my writing. I really don't quite understand all the negativity towards copyright lately. For the most part books are still one of the cheapest entertainment going and there are multiple ways buy or borrow them too.

Sure, I get that a 25 dollar ebook that can't be lent is steep. But a 25 dollar hardback can be lent, sold or shared--or bought used for half or less than half.

I'm a buyer of art and books. While making a bunch of artwork public domain so that I could use it for a cover might sound nice, it isn't practical to put the artist out of work. They make a pittance as it is for the most part.

Lately I wanted to try a bunch of new authors, but didn't want to spend 8 to 10 bucks a book. I was able to borrow them from the library for 2.50 each. That's a total bargain.

I know authors who have stopped writing because there wasn't enough money in it. One of them was a favorite author from way back. She had to move on to other things. Yeah, there are other books. Yeah, some people don't care. But there's nothing wrong with giving people a chance at their dreams and a chance to make a living. Copyright law even as long as it is today is not keeping anyone from being able to read what they want if they are willing to go find it.

Copyright (as it is currently used in the US), is best thought of a price supports for artists. Sorta like the old "soil banking" for farmers (I.e. paying a farmer not to farm so prices will stay higher for those farmer who do farm their land). It keeps the old works off the shelves, competing with the new art.

That may not have been the intention, but that is the use today. An enormous amount of art was made in the US prior to 1976. The golden age of Hollywood, the golden age of Radio shows, painters and illustrators like Maxfield Parrish, et. al., the maturation of the pulps to literature, like the golden age of detective fiction, science fiction, ect., Jazz and Big Band music, and on, and on...

Nobody complained that they couldn't create art because copyright was too short, instead, they created and made (or lost) money. Artforms rose and fell, but not because copyright was too short.

But now, under the old rules, much of that would have fallen into the Public Domain. And the P.D. doesn't cost anything. This leads to a two-fold situation.

#1. If P.D. stuff is free, why should somebody pay for the latest? Why not be cheap and get old (but new to you) art? Of course, not everybody will take that attitude, but for every one that does, that's one less sale of current material.
#2. If enough people actually wants that old stuff, the extended copyright holders can re-issue it (if they bother to choose to) for a profit. actually a bigger profit that new stuff, because, for the most part, the upfront expenses have already been paid. Nobody wants to look at this way but by selling it as near or at new retail price, the old works don't undercut the current art pricing.

BearMountain - how much worse off, as a reader, to have all the US works before Jan 1 1955 in the Public Domain? As a writer, yes, because of the tremendous amount of low cost competition, but as a reader? I don't see the problem.

If you say this will cause a drop in new art creation, the market for people who want new, will always be there. What you will lose is the market of those who are forced to pay for old at the same rate as new, and who therefore may opt for new, instead. And frankly, the world doesn't owe you that market...