How long should a copyright last?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Too long copyright hurts other creators more than it hurts consumers. The problem is that the work isn't entering the commons where it could be used to make new work. That hurts consumers a little since they don't get the benefit of the new work, but it hurts creators more by stifling creativity. People should be prepared to honor the copyright bargain.

rjb

Care to try and explain this? Why does work have to be in "the commons" to be used to create new work? I presume this is about all work being part of a "long conversation", but if I can read the book - via purchase or from the library - then being in the commons seems irrelevant. I'm trying to remember if there was ever a book that I really wanted to read that I couldn't get my hands on, legitimately, one way or another. ... I did want the full version of the Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs - I'd read only an abridged version as a child - but that was a matter of wanting a copy for my shelf, the full version was available from the library even when it was difficult to find in shops.

The vast majority of what I've read has been protected by copyright and yet I don't feel stifled. Should I be feeling oppressed? What am I missing?

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by gmw

Care to try and explain this? Why does work have to be in "the commons" to be used to create new work? I presume this is about all work being part of a "long conversation", but if I can read the book - via purchase or from the library - then being in the commons seems irrelevant. I'm trying to remember if there was ever a book that I really wanted to read that I couldn't get my hands on, legitimately, one way or another. ... I did want the full version of the Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs - I'd read only an abridged version as a child - but that was a matter of wanting a copy for my shelf, the full version was available from the library even when it was difficult to find in shops.

The vast majority of what I've read has been protected by copyright and yet I don't feel stifled. Should I be feeling oppressed? What am I missing?

You are missing the strong feeling that you should have your cake and eat it too

Helen

[tompe]

Originally Posted by gmw

Care to try and explain this? Why does work have to be in "the commons" to be used to create new work? I presume this is about all work being part of a "long conversation",

No. it is about re-mixing. Creating new versions of other works, using other work in a new creative way. Zombies and Jane Austen ought to be a good example of that.

[Ekaros]

25 years for non-commercial use, life for commercial(whichever is longer).

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by tompe

No. it is about re-mixing. Creating new versions of other works, using other work in a new creative way. Zombies and Jane Austen ought to be a good example of that.

Thank you for your help. It's tiring talking into a headwind.-)

rjb

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by tompe

No. it is about re-mixing. Creating new versions of other works, using other work in a new creative way. Zombies and Jane Austen ought to be a good example of that.

Walt Disney made a living mining the public domain. If copyright was eternal, he couldn't have done that. We've been telling and retelling the same stories, with various alterations and reinterpretations for as long as humans have sat by the campfire telling stories. The public is the default - people aren't being "given" something when a work enters the public domain. I'm all for copyright, it meets its purpose of incenting people to create new works. But that point is lost if copyright is eternal. The public domain is an essential element of culture.

If we had eternal copyrights, why not eternal patents? It's the same principle. But if we had eternal patents, advancement would end: making fire by banging to rocks together that would be someone's patent. Stone tools? Someone's patent. Forging metal? Someone's patent.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Walt Disney made a living mining the public domain. If copyright was eternal, he couldn't have done that. We've been telling and retelling the same stories, with various alterations and reinterpretations for as long as humans have sat by the campfire telling stories. The public is the default - people aren't being "given" something when a work enters the public domain. I'm all for copyright, it meets its purpose of incenting people to create new works. But that point is lost if copyright is eternal. The public domain is an essential element of culture.

If we had eternal copyrights, why not eternal patents? It's the same principle. But if we had eternal patents, advancement would end: making fire by banging to rocks together that would be someone's patent. Stone tools? Someone's patent. Forging metal? Someone's patent.

Well, no---it simply means that someone would have to pay to use tools, forge metals or the like (or, to be precise, to use implements that would make those things easier). And, as was stated previously, however long copyright lasts, it does not stop anyone from reading the works--it simply discusses how long the original creator is paid for the use, or whether you have to borrow it at the library, if you wish to read it for free.

There's a constant theme throughout this thread as though when a book is copyrighted, it's locked away forever from the public eye. Nothing is further from the truth; it's copyrighted for the very purpose of putting it in the public eye. If you write a book, (and it is, under US law, copyrighted at that point in time, mind you), registering the copyright indicates that your intention is to put it in the public's hands. You then publish it or are published, and the book is freely available to the public--at a price; or, you walk down to the library to read it for free. Those are the terms. The book doesn't get locked in a vault where you can't get it. It does mean that you don't get it, in a possessory sense, for free. Which, it seems, brings us back to the entire point of this discussion, really.

With regard to mining public domain for the lofty goals of making more Pride and Prejudice and Zombie books, or what-have-you, there is always derivative copyright. To reference a book already referenced in this discussion, The Dune Encyclopedia is one such work--a derivative copyright. {shrug}. Yes, you have to obtain the permission of the copyright holder, and they retain the right to all the original characters, but it's not undoable.

I admit I'm a little...taken aback that now this conversation has moved from how long a copyright should last, in a more general sense, to how long a copyright should last so that new authors can use the characters, places or settings from expired copyrights in order to create "new" works. Given the explosion of P&P and Zombies-like works we've seen in the last 3 years (and P&P "sequels" and every other type of continuation of every type of classic book), that industry certainly seems to be heavily inhabited. I don't know how "thriving" it is, in terms of the...creators...being able to make money at it.

Shows like Grimm, et al, certainly make the same type of use of memes, cultural figures/myths, etc., as did Disney. Moviemakers certainly mooch ideas from other moviemakers without any copyright infringements seeming to stand in their way, so I can only presume that the topic we're discussing here is using specific characters, locations, and stories, rather than just general ideas or storylines.

I mean, just like everyone else, I'm sure, I'm dying to see a Three Musketeers and Jurassic Park mashup, but I guess I'll just have to wait.

Hitch

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, no---it simply means that someone would have to pay to use tools, forge metals or the like (or, to be precise, to use implements that would make those things easier). And, as was stated previously, however long copyright lasts, it does not stop anyone from reading the works--it simply discusses how long the original creator is paid for the use, or whether you have to borrow it at the library, if you wish to read it for free.

There's a constant theme throughout this thread as though when a book is copyrighted, it's locked away forever from the public eye. Nothing is further from the truth; it's copyrighted for the very purpose of putting it in the public eye. If you write a book, (and it is, under US law, copyrighted at that point in time, mind you), registering the copyright indicates that your intention is to put it in the public's hands. You then publish it or are published, and the book is freely available to the public--at a price; or, you walk down to the library to read it for free. Those are the terms. The book doesn't get locked in a vault where you can't get it. It does mean that you don't get it, in a possessory sense, for free. Which, it seems, brings us back to the entire point of this discussion, really.

With regard to mining public domain for the lofty goals of making more Pride and Prejudice and Zombie books, or what-have-you, there is always derivative copyright. To reference a book already referenced in this discussion, The Dune Encyclopedia is one such work--a derivative copyright. {shrug}. Yes, you have to obtain the permission of the copyright holder, and they retain the right to all the original characters, but it's not undoable.

I admit I'm a little...taken aback that now this conversation has moved from how long a copyright should last, in a more general sense, to how long a copyright should last so that new authors can use the characters, places or settings from expired copyrights in order to create "new" works. Given the explosion of P&P and Zombies-like works we've seen in the last 3 years (and P&P "sequels" and every other type of continuation of every type of classic book), that industry certainly seems to be heavily inhabited. I don't know how "thriving" it is, in terms of the...creators...being able to make money at it.

Shows like Grimm, et al, certainly make the same type of use of memes, cultural figures/myths, etc., as did Disney. Moviemakers certainly mooch ideas from other moviemakers without any copyright infringements seeming to stand in their way, so I can only presume that the topic we're discussing here is using specific characters, locations, and stories, rather than just general ideas or storylines.

I mean, just like everyone else, I'm sure, I'm dying to see a Three Musketeers and Jurassic Park mashup, but I guess I'll just have to wait.

Hitch

I don't see why you should be taken aback...

Nobody is willing to agree on what a copyright actually is, why copyright came into existence, or whether it should unilaterally modified or not.

Why should they not have different reasons for defining what they believe copyright length should be, and why?

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Moviemakers certainly mooch ideas from other moviemakers without any copyright infringements seeming to stand in their way, so I can only presume that the topic we're discussing here is using specific characters, locations, and stories, rather than just general ideas or storylines.

Correct. Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Storylines (as I interpret the term) can rarely be copyrighted. "Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl to nasty rival. Boy defeats rival and wins girl back." That's a storyline that can't be copyrighted. Probably. OTOH "Popeye meets Olive Oyl. Brutus steals Olive Oyl from Popeye. Popeye thrashes Brutus and wins Olive Oyl back." That's a storyline that can be copyrighted. Probably. The difference is specific characters. Other copyrightable differences might be locations or activities. (Rollerball, from the movie of that name, would be an example of a copyrightable activity. A baseball game would not. Probably.) IMO a 'storyline' should be fairly generic as in my first example. Characters, locations, activities can usually be changed enough to make them non-infringing. But in the final decision infringement is what a judge thinks it is whether I agree with the decision or not. That's way I keep saying "Probably".

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, no---it simply means that someone would have to pay to use tools, forge metals or the like (or, to be precise, to use implements that would make those things easier). And, as was stated previously, however long copyright lasts, it does not stop anyone from reading the works--it simply discusses how long the original creator is paid for the use, or whether you have to borrow it at the library, if you wish to read it for free.

That would certainly crush innovation. With eternal patent, anyone wanting to make a bow and arrow would have to pay the holder of the patents of the pointed stick, the arrow, the fletch, the bow and the string. The number of people who would need to be paid would be staggering. Metallurgy would require paying people for thousands of years of innovations.

With a limit on the period of patent, inventors get the exclusive right to their inventions, in exchange for it entering the public domain. They are free to forgo patent; they can opt to make it a trade secret. If they do so, they can have exclusive use of the technology for as long as they can keep it secret.

There's a constant theme throughout this thread as though when a book is copyrighted, it's locked away forever from the public eye. Nothing is further from the truth; it's copyrighted for the very purpose of putting it in the public eye. If you write a book, (and it is, under US law, copyrighted at that point in time, mind you), registering the copyright indicates that your intention is to put it in the public's hands. You then publish it or are published, and the book is freely available to the public--at a price; or, you walk down to the library to read it for free. Those are the terms. The book doesn't get locked in a vault where you can't get it. It does mean that you don't get it, in a possessory sense, for free. Which, it seems, brings us back to the entire point of this discussion, really.

Copyright - if excessively long - does make works disappear. They cease to be offered for sale and effectively vanish.

I admit I'm a little...taken aback that now this conversation has moved from how long a copyright should last, in a more general sense, to how long a copyright should last so that new authors can use the characters, places or settings from expired copyrights in order to create "new" works. Given the explosion of P&P and Zombies-like works we've seen in the last 3 years (and P&P "sequels" and every other type of continuation of every type of classic book), that industry certainly seems to be heavily inhabited. I don't know how "thriving" it is, in terms of the...creators...being able to make money at it.

I don't see why you should be taken aback, they go hand in hand. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies may not be great literature, but it's far from the only example of derivative works. The Brothers Grimm were free to do as they wished with the stories they collected because they were in the public domain. Mark Twain needed no permission to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Disney was free to do as they wished with the source material for their movies. About every year someone does a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We're better off because people can reinterpret these works.

I'm not advocating for an end to copyright. I'm not even advocating for a reduction in the terms of copyright, merely that it should not be extended without limit.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

With eternal patent, anyone wanting to make a bow and arrow would have to pay the holder of the patents of the pointed stick, the arrow, the fletch, the bow and the string. The number of people who would need to be paid would be staggering. Metallurgy would require paying people for thousands of years of innovations.

Not necessarily although it would definitely change how licensing is handled. We could look to music copyrights for examples-a radio station doesn't negotiate licensing fees with the owner of every song they play. What they negotiate is a fee to the musicians' union (ASCAP, I think it is). The union then handles disbursing the fee to the individual musicians. Still, I suspect you're right about stifling innovation. Or maybe progress as some of the innovators would probably spend their time 're-inventing the wheel' to avoid paying the fee rather than going on to invent the wagon (or car).

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

About every year someone does a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We're better off because people can reinterpret these works.

Not a good example IMO-I've seen the last couple of remakes & believe we'd have been better off if they hadn't been made. Tastes differ, of course.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

That would certainly crush innovation. With eternal patent, anyone wanting to make a bow and arrow would have to pay the holder of the patents of the pointed stick, the arrow, the fletch, the bow and the string. The number of people who would need to be paid would be staggering. Metallurgy would require paying people for thousands of years of innovations.

With all due respect, it doesn't seem to have stifled innovation whatsoever, has it? Whether it's medicines, in which case, competitors try to find a less-expensive or more-efficacious alternative, or it's Ford trying to beat GM, the mere existence of patent hasn't stifled invention one iota. If anything, it seems to stimulate other people to try to build a better mousetrap, to (wait for it) make money with that better mousetrap, don't you think? I'm not arguing for "eternal patent," by the way, but obviously, patent didn't preclude different car companies starting up, nor different airplane manufacturers, furniture-makers, and so on and so forth.

With a limit on the period of patent, inventors get the exclusive right to their inventions, in exchange for it entering the public domain. They are free to forgo patent; they can opt to make it a trade secret. If they do so, they can have exclusive use of the technology for as long as they can keep it secret.

Yes, which seems to not really work very well, generally speaking, but--so they do. To do so, they severely narrow their marketplace (I'm talking about normal inventors, rather than Apple). Or they license their product to be used by OTHER companies, who can build on top of their invention. This is obviously the case, or we'd all be sitting here writing to each other with paper and quills, wouldn't we? The massive rush of innovation of the 19th and 20th centuries in particular just doesn't really seem to argue your case for you.

Copyright - if excessively long - does make works disappear. They cease to be offered for sale and effectively vanish.

Yes, but isn't that their writer's prerogative? To sit on his book for however long the copyright grants? Let's take the discussion to extremes, which is always how you test a theorem: Assume I have an unpublished but complete novel sitting in my desk. For all intents and purposes, it's copyrighted from the date I finished it. At what point, exactly, are you entitled to a copy in the public domain? Let's not forget: copyright has precisely nothing to do with whether or not a book is ever published or released, just as patent doesn't mean something will ever be built. Legally, when is the public entitled to my unpublished manuscript? It's copyrighted--so, given that I live in the US, when, exactly, do you think that the public should be able to see it, and use it as they see fit?

I don't see why you should be taken aback, they go hand in hand. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies may not be great literature, but it's far from the only example of derivative works. The Brothers Grimm were free to do as they wished with the stories they collected because they were in the public domain. Mark Twain needed no permission to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Disney was free to do as they wished with the source material for their movies. About every year someone does a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We're better off because people can reinterpret these works.

I'm not advocating for an end to copyright. I'm not even advocating for a reduction in the terms of copyright, merely that it should not be extended without limit.

Again, with all due respect, in both the cases of the Brothers Grimm and Twain, that's not quite on point. The Brothers Grimm collected, tweaked, edited, rewrote and refined folk tales and compiled them--they didn't just regurgitate someone else's already-written work, or append an editor's note and reprint it. Much of what they produced was created from verbal storytelling. (Like talking about...Santa Claus, or the Boogeyman). In Twain's case, Arthur is a figure of legend. His "character" is not subject to copyright, and arguably, Twain didn't grab the Arthur of Le Morte d'Arthur. (He may have--but 400 years had passed). Those, I think, should not be part of any discussion about "derivative" works, in the context we're using, do you?

I don't disagree that copyright shouldn't be "forever;" I've never argued that. I do think it's reasonable that an author receives life plus X, or at least, some fixed length of time, regardless of whether he dies the day after he publishes or 90 years later. And I certainly disagree that copyright should expire upon death as a fixed point in time, due to the reasons I cited earlier. Far too many people seem to look upon royalties paid post-death to the survivors as some type of "unjust enrichment," (which sounds pretty similar to the green-eyed monster, to me) without having the slightest understanding of what most royalty checks really look like, or how estates truly pass from a legal standpoint.

I just...much of what gets discussed, not merely here, on this thread, but "around" the Net in general, feels sort of...venomous to me. As if writers don't work, or don't earn what they receive. Now, sure, JK Rowling may well be the richest woman in the world, but, hey...isn't she the inspiration for zillions of would-be's on Amazon? Who knows how many great books will be written by wanna-be JK's? (I don't mean imitators, per se; I just mean people inspired by her story.)

I know a lot of working authors--I don't mean the Dan Browns of the world, although I'm lucky to know a few of those, also--but the everyday, put-out-a-novel-a-year authors. Now, sure, there are a few Rex Stouts in the world, who put out a novel a month or 4x a year, but I know exceedingly few who don't put in an 8-hour or more day, between writing, marketing, meeting fans, readings, email...they're not sitting on their duffs collecting huge checks. It's a job, like any other. If some folks would stop romanticizing it (or dismissing it) as some glamorous thing, and realize that it's just a job, I think that reasonable people could come up with numbers that make sense, for all parties. Between folks imagining that authors just type up a novel in a few days, versus the other end of the spectrum, people wanting books ASAP without paying for them, it creates a pretty big gap to bridge.

Just my $.02. (Again. For the nth time. I swear, I really am trying to be done with this thread. I just happen to have a lot of experience in the area. )

Hitch

[gmw]

Originally Posted by tompe

No. it is about re-mixing. Creating new versions of other works, using other work in a new creative way. Zombies and Jane Austen ought to be a good example of that.

As already noted, copyright protects original expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. I don't have the expertise to know exactly where the cut off is, but there I doubt if there would be a problem with someone writing a book about a zombie boy going to a zombie school and being hunted by an evil zombie who wants to be dead forever, it's possible that calling it "Harry Rotter, the boy who died" might be a bit much, but you'd have to speak to your local IP specialist about that.

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Thank you for your help. It's tiring talking into a headwind.-)

rjb

Just speak a little louder. Even the phrase "fan fiction" would have been enough to give me a hint as to what you were talking about.

Fan fiction sits in a curious limbo, but it is interesting to note that copyright doesn't seem to have prevented its proliferation, only from it being exploited for money ... but even that is not entirely true. Wikipedia says:

The Fifty Shades trilogy was developed from a Twilight fan fiction originally titled Master of the Universe and published episodically on fan-fiction websites under the pen name "Snowqueen's Icedragon".

So it's a little hard to argue that copyright is standing in the way of people creating new work, all it requires is a little effort on the part of the writer - is that asking too much?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by gmw

As already noted, copyright protects original expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. I don't have the expertise to know exactly where the cut off is, but there I doubt if there would be a problem with someone writing a book about a zombie boy going to a zombie school and being hunted by an evil zombie who wants to be dead forever, it's possible that calling it "Harry Rotter, the boy who died" might be a bit much, but you'd have to speak to your local IP specialist about that.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is not just inspired by the original. It uses the original text. So it uses the original expression of the ideas.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by tompe

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is not just inspired by the original. It uses the original text. So it uses the original expression of the ideas.

I'm happy to wait for at least life+50 for such cleverness to become a commercially legitimate art form. (I'm not denying that there is cleverness involved, but I'm not convinced it's a significant reason to want to change copyright.)