How long should a copyright last?

[BookCat]

Death+50
EVERYWHERE the only exceptions being Creative Commons publications.

[Ken Maltby]

I think that the right to produce copies of a work should require that said copies be made and made available for purchase. If a publisher finds it not in their interest to keep a work in print, then the rights should revert to the author. If the author is no more, then the work should fall into the public domain. Making the right to copy itself a marketable commodity is a part of the problem. It is treating the copyright like mineral/oil rights, that can be bought and sold with nothing of value being produced.

Luck;
Ken

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I think that the right to produce copies of a work should require that said copies be made and made available for purchase. If a publisher finds it not in their interest to keep a work in print, then the rights should revert to the author. If the author is no more, then the work should fall into the public domain. Making the right to copy itself a marketable commodity is a part of the problem. It is treating the copyright like mineral/oil rights, that can be bought and sold with nothing of value being produced.

Luck;
Ken

Not correct, Ken. Mineral rights are real property, just like the surface of the land. Yes, they can be sold, swapped, ect, but they can't be duplicated. And they can only be produced once... (Well, sort of. technology can change the production economics, causing reuse/rework, just like any other business).

McCauley covered this in 1842. Publishers would always have some version for sale (at an outrageous price), just to keep the copyright. A book held by copies for sale, at, say, $10,000 USD for a copy. Or the headaches of Print On Demand. Company X has an employee buy 1 copy a year. Voila, continually in print...

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Not correct, Ken. Mineral rights are real property, just like the surface of the land. Yes, they can be sold, swapped, ect, but they can't be duplicated. And they can only be produced once... (Well, sort of. technology can change the production economics, causing reuse/rework, just like any other business).

McCauley covered this in 1842. Publishers would always have some version for sale (at an outrageous price), just to keep the copyright. A book held by copies for sale, at, say, $10,000 USD for a copy. Or the headaches of Print On Demand. Company X has an employee buy 1 copy a year. Voila, continually in print...

Right, but the rights are not the real property they lay claim to, if the right to drill or mine is never exercised, the owners can sell the right, and the new owner can sell it, ect... ect... all without anything of actual value coming out of the ground, (and perhaps no more going to the land owner, from those sales)

Yes, there would have to be some way to prevent that. Perhaps a stiff penalty if caught taking actions to hold on to the copyright through such fraudulent compliance.

Luck;
Ken

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Right, but the rights are not the real property they lay claim to, if the right to drill or mine is never exercised, the owners can sell the right, and the new owner can sell it, ect... ect... all without anything of actual value coming out of the ground, (and perhaps no more going to the land owner, from those sales)

Yes, there would have to be some way to prevent that. Perhaps a stiff penalty if caught taking actions to hold on to the copyright through such fraudulent compliance.

Luck;
Ken

Hmmm, this sounds like you're trying to legislate people (or organizations) into being non-selfish. About as futile an undertaking as I can imagine.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

A book held by copies for sale, at, say, $10,000 USD for a copy.

What happened to eBooks? Isn't it enough that Amazon keeps on selling it in the Kindle format?

Or are you just thinking of older books, say from the 1950's, that are unlikely to be digitized prior to copyright expiration?

Originally Posted by Hrafn

Also as technology changes decrease the difficulty, cost and ease-of-detection of unauthorized 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).

I find this quite a clever argument. However, you may underestimate how much money was and is spent by governments on arresting and prosecuting people for shoplifting of copyrighted materials. I would have thought that the Copyright Alert System is cheaper because of being automated.

I do have a concern about the lack of mention of books in my last link. Might it be that automated copyright enforcement won't work for books because the minimal needed download bandwidth raises fewer flags? If true, then, by your economic logic, copyright length for movies should be longest, music in-between, and books the shortest. And I don't think too many people here would advocate that.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

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, [...]

Under "natural law" all property belongs to the strongest entity that wants it. Oh, for the good ol' days, eh?

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by gmw

Under "natural law" all property belongs to the strongest entity that wants it. Oh, for the good ol' days, eh?

I prefer statute law.-)

[gmw]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

I prefer statute law.-)

See? I knew I could get you to support copyright as a property.

[crossi]

If you can't get the gov to change the length of copyright back to it's original length maybe they could simply say that any copyright for which a yearly fee is not paid will not be enforced by the government whether or not it's still technically in force. If a book is making money for the publisher they will pay it and keep the book available. If they deem the book not worth keeping in print the enforcement will lapse and the author or anyone else can make it available and sell it directly. Why should publishers or anyone else get a service like copyright enforcement for free anyway? Stop giving out corporate handouts. This would help decrease the deficit, keep orphaned or abandoned works available, and allow authors to actually get some money from their work creating a book abandoned by their publisher.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

What happened to eBooks? Isn't it enough that Amazon keeps on selling it in the Kindle format?

Or are you just thinking of older books, say from the 1950's, that are unlikely to be digitized prior to copyright expiration?

The latter. The idea is how to hold the copyright without having to pay anybody anything, just like the current "out of print" methodology.

(You can't touch it, but I don't see any reason to spend a dime on it. Too bad.)

[Hrafn]

Originally Posted by gmw

A monopoly is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on other factors. Economics is a science of balances, it has few basic facts.

Except in the special case of a non-renewable resource (clearly not applicable here), monopolies are always a bad thing. This is why monopolies and market power tend to be subjected to government regulation. Sometimes however they are a necessary evil (e.g. because a market is a ntural monopoly, or as is the case here, because some sort monopoly is necessary to create investment).

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.

NO. The monopoly covers all works not covered by some 'copy left' license. This is why there are so much fewer books from after the lengthening of copyright available today compared to before it was lengthened. This is part of the dead-weight loss, and happens regardless of whether there is one big monopoly or thousands of small ones. In fact it could actually be worse under thousands of little ones, due to the search costs of finding which tiny monopoly to license from.

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.)

I take leave to doubt that, after two or more decades of writing, many authors are making a decisively significant proportion of their royalties from earlier decades. Any author whose earlier works are being re-released or kept-in-print after such a period is in all probability an author whose more recent works are garnering sufficient sales to warrant this, and these sales of recent works are likely to heavily dominate sales of earlier works. Yes, Stephen King's (for example) back catalog probably sells quite well, but in all likelihood the sales are nothing compared to those of his latest book.

To put it another way, to sell your back-catalog, you've got to keep yourself in public view, and the main way to do that is to publish a new book that sells quite well. But if you can do that, the question has to be do you really still need the monopoly on the earliest parts of your back catalog?

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by gmw

See? I knew I could get you to support copyright as a property.

[James_Wilde]

Fixed term of 20 years for humans, 10 years for non-humans.

There are not many authors whose works will still be making money after 20 years. Time to write a new book.

As for companies, they're in it purely for the money. I asked about the books of one of Sweden's greatest writers recently (Marianne Fredriksson). Less than 20 years from first publication, some of them were no longer available from the publisher.

If useful inventions, drugs, etc have a license period of about 20 years, why on earth should things intended purely for entertainment have a license period up to five times longer. I'd use the same system for music, film, etc.

As to the objection that we can't shorten a period (life+50) after the convention is signed, if we can lengthen it as was done recently for music, then I think we can shorten it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

As someone who has been taking pictures for about a decade, I can only say this:

If you create art, you create it for the love of it. You don't create it to make money. If you happen to end up being one of the very few that creates some sort of art that becomes a hit... well done then. You should never create it with the expectation of becoming rich.

Seriously--and I don't mean to be offensive when I ask this--but, sez who? (Yes, I know I'll catch crap for this post, but, what the hell. In for a penny...)

This is one of those "truisms" that has always boggled me. That art should be created for the love of it, and not for filthy lucre. That any art created purely for filthy lucre is somehow inferior to, or besmirched by, any thought of monetary gain or compensation. What complete and utter old bollocks! (Katsunami: this isn't directed at you, but please do give it some thought).

I personally blame the early Christian/Catholic Church for perpetrating this silliness. The Church, always seeking to get the most for nothing, convinced thousands upon thousands of laborers and artisans to "donate" their services for early churches, cathedrals, and the like, for "the glory of God." So that they were buying their way into the Kingdom of Heaven with the sweat from their brow, instead of asking the Church to actually <gasp!> pay for their work. I truly think that this is to whence you can trace back this idea that art for the sake of art, (which originally existed in large part only in churches, and for the glory thereof) is somehow better than art for MONEY.

But let's look at all the artists we have apotheosed to the top steps of our admiration staircase today--Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Turner, Picasso, and, let's not forget, Ansel Adams, just for fun--all of whom worked for commissions, payment, and....da-dum, MONEY. Turner didn't die impoverished. Nor did Adams, right?

And what do we mean when we say, "starving artist?" Don't we really mean...failed artist? Perhaps on a nice day, we mean, "artist whose talent hasn't yet been recognized," when we're in a kind mood...but when I hear people say, starving artist, or would-be author, they don't mean it kindly. They mean, wanna-be. Well, if a wanna-be means, isn't yet, and you have a studio full of watercolors or a computer full of books, and people think that means, wanna-be, then that means that a person who has surpassed "wanna-be" is commercially recognized.

So, in short: WHO SAYS that art created for art's sake is somehow better than that which is created upon commission? Most of the works in Rome were created for money or for Papal favor (which = cash, back then). Much of what's in the Louvre was completed to be SOLD for money. What's the proof of that theorem, really?

The only argument I can see for this, at all, is if that one takes a commission to paint someone's daughter or wife, (or husband, let's not be sexist here) and does it accurately and competently, and makes him/her look like a beast, well...yes. Compromise may well be required. And when you work in a strictly-commercial environment, like an Ad Agency, you have to do what the client likes/wants/works to sell their product. But, those are specific cases. The idea that art for the love of it is somehow superior to art done for money seems pretty thoroughly disproven, if you look at what we consider to be art today, on all fronts. Whether written (Joyce serialized Ulysses in publication), sculpture, watercolors, modern interpretive dance (do you all think that the dancers in those companies are dancing for free, or the choreographer is working for free?), the idea itself doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

Moreover, I think this does a disservice to the artist. The argument below:

Those same people are normally working regular jobs, or, if they are fortunate enough to be a business person in addition to being a photographer, they take pictures on demand: weddings, product photography, and so on.

They are selling their time as labor, taking the pictures their comissioner wants, in the hope that someday, they'll hit jackpot with the pictures THEY want to take.

So yes, in my honest opinion, creating art often takes only time and effort. If you are very good *and* very lucky, you may someday earn some money as compensation, but you shouldn't expect it.

As I said: if you sell your time as labour, you're doing what other people want you to do, and they pay you for it. If you use the time to create art, you *hope* that you are creating something others *might* want, someday. If you're going to take a risk, then you'd better start a company, doing stuff you know people will pay for. Your chances of success are much bigger.

Of course, you are correct that copyright (also) protects art that does not sell... and therefore you can hope to sell it in the future, some day.

...essentially says, "what you do for art is not work." It's not labor. That, somehow, it's fun and thence, all the sweat and labor and study and effort that went into becoming a brilliant painter, or a great writer (the infamous 10,000 hours) may be freely discounted, and ignored. That because it's art, the artist didn't really work, and therefore, should be happy as an unpaid hobbyist.

I mean...what kind of thinking is this?

When I read a piece of literary fiction, or even genre fiction, I know damned well that somebody sat at their computer, pen and pad, whatever, for a year or two or 10, and WORKED at writing that. Simply because I choose to read their labor for entertainment doesn't mean that they didn't work at it. If one plays video games, do you assume that all those game designers--who are artists in their own right--did it for love, and shouldn't be compensated, either?

Honestly, this mindset seems to be cognitive dissonance. Art is something high and wondrous and noble, that should only be attempted or achieved for the love of it, but at the same time, it's ONLY art, created with time, and therefore, unworthy of being considered labor, and the work put into creating it has no value. Hunh? Do you think the same about programmers, lawyers, accountants, and other professions that sell their time by the hour?

People seem to be viewing copyright issues as some "constraint" to prevent (these same evilly capitalistic, but simultaneously nobly artistic) authors from "profiting" (gods forbid, crass filthy lucre) from their labors for "too long," too long being determined by the poster, and seemingly based on some type of worthiness standard. To the contrary--copyright exists to encourage these artists to create, so that they are rewarded for their labors; so that their labors are not taken and used/viewed/sold without compensation to the artist who created them.

And the "too long standard" seems to be established by the mere convenience of the person who thinks that the works are valuable enough to entertain, enlighten or enrich him or her...but not valuable enough to pay for that entertainment, enlightenment or enrichment. And certainly not enough to allow an artist's family or children to enjoy the fruits of his labor! Oh, no...for that, he should get a REAL job, so that his earnings aren't taken from his family when he dies. Silly bastard, why should he have the same rights as everyone else? He's only an artist, after all. Obviously, as we can see here from these discussions, indirectly opined by so many, that's not a "real" job.

I would seriously love to see the arguments here all in favor of taking an electrican's life savings away from his family when he died. Or an accountant's. Or anyone else's--particularly your OWN. You'd never even consider it. In short--you're simply arguing that artists belong to some lesser class of people, some subset that don't deserve to earn and keep their earnings like everyone else. And it's only being argued because some of you want faster access, at no cost, to the products of their artistic lifetimes. That's the real irony.

Hitch