Why public domain

[gmw]

I suspect that one of the reasons why fan-fiction is both tolerated and reticent in its behaviour is that no one wants to really push it when it might well backfire - in either direction. Better this limbo where both sides are getting most of what they want than the possibility of either outright rejection of fan-fiction or opening the way to full commercialisation of fan-fiction.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by shalym

That would be fine, as long as copyright owners have to pay to maintain their intellectual property just like I have to pay to maintain my physical property. (I have to pay property taxes on my house, land and car, I have to maintain my house and car, I have to have a place to store all of my other physical property such as books, clothes, etc, which costs money)

Shari

Taxes are an entirely different subject. The cash in you bank account is property but not property tax.

I imagine when George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars for $4B, he had to pay taxes.

[leebase]

I accept that Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austin works are good examples as counter arguments to my hyperbolic “no one will invest in properties they can’t own”. Of course...one needn’t look past Disney for such examples.

I’d say this in reply....Disney and the folks behind the Holmes shows and movies were willing to invest in pre-existing stories...because they knew their own works would be protected by ownership and the value of the existing works was worth exploiting even though others can equally exploit those same works.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by leebase

The cash in you bank account is property but not property tax.

This is a reasonable point. Taxes on intangible personal property have gone out of style in the U.S., partly because they were hard to enforce.

Originally Posted by leebase

Disney and the folks behind the Holmes shows and movies were willing to invest in pre-existing stories.

Disneyland was opened in 1955, when U.S. copyright length was a maximum of 56 years. That was still true in 1971 when the much larger Walt Disney World opened in Florida.

Wasn't each a bigger investments than any contemporary motion picture, and meant to generate substantial revenue over a longer time period?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by leebase

Just the opposite. The creation of intellectual property has unleashed an amazing amount of good for society.

In the case of Disney and other major businesses...there still ongoing investment and THAT investment is why the properties have so much current value. Value that rightly goes to the those creating the value.

Time to end all time limits on fiction copyrights.

Actually, just the opposite. The limited system has produced far more new content, of every sort, than society knows what to do with.

And it has done it with terms less favorable than today's, such as a maximum 56 year term from 1909 to 1976.

It seem that you need to show how perpetual copyright would produce more and better. Even if you could, given what has been and continues to be produced, you need to explain why more and better is worth the cost. I don't see it.

Virtually no property lasts forever. Entropy overtakes it. I see no reason to make an exception for "Intellectual Property".

[leebase]

Don’t need to show anything of the sort. The principal is enough. You create something....it’s yours, not society's.

The case for medical and mechanical time limits on patents is due to the scarcity of solutions. There is no scarcity with fiction.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by leebase

Don’t need to show anything of the sort. The principal is enough. You create something....it’s yours, not society's. [...]

Do not confuse possession with ownership. Ownership is not an absolute thing. Ownership is an abstract concept that exists only because our society says it does, and it even says what rights come with that ownership*. If you want to change the rules, then as a participant in society you must justify the changes to others (unless you are a monarch or dictator).

* eg: surface rights versus mineral rights in real estate properties.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by leebase

Don’t need to show anything of the sort. The principal is enough. You create something....it’s yours, not society's.

I might agree with that if the something you create has letters and words and punctuation you invented yourself. Of course it might be hard to find readers for such a thing.

If you use words and customs and phrases and relationships that are part of our culture then why should you own it?

Barry

[barryem]

I read today that during the great depression Roosevelt's WPA got publishers to hire authors to write books, paid for by the WPA, that could be sold cheaply to the public so that even the poorest would have something to read. The article said that this was how paperback books began to get popular.

This might be a plan to deal with some of the problems in publishing today. If someone wants to write a book they get paid a salary while they write it and then it belongs to the government.

Not a serious suggestion but it does point out that there might be other, better ways of having books to read.

Barry

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by barryem

I read today that during the great depression Roosevelt's WPA got publishers to hire authors to write books, paid for by the WPA, that could be sold cheaply to the public so that even the poorest would have something to read.

I never heard it described that way before.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by leebase

Let’s say “To Kill A Mocking Bird”. No one should get to write the sequel except Harper Lee or someone who paid her for the rights....or paid her descendants.

She had no children, but googling indicates that she left the bulk of her estate to four relatives.

In three centuries, none of them may have living descendants. Or they may have thousands of descendents living in dozens of countries with differing copyright laws.

In a thousand years, either there will be no descendents of the original legatees, or almost everyone on earth (and Mars?) will be one.

I support what is still the rule the largest number of people live under, the Life + 50 standard adopted at the 1896 Berne Convention. Standardizing reduces costs of administration.

[MGlitch]

Lee’s case might be interesting for other reasons, her sister and lawyer until she passed had said Lee was in the habit of signing anything put in front of her by someone she trusted. There’s some evidence to prove this as Lee did actually sign the rights away at one point but obviously got them back.

How can we be sure the authors will is actually being properly enacted.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Don’t need to show anything of the sort. The principal is enough. You create something....it’s yours, not society's.

The case for medical and mechanical time limits on patents is due to the scarcity of solutions. There is no scarcity with fiction.

You seem to have this idea that simply because you assert something, it absolutely must be so. There is an old saying, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You make an extraordinary claim, yet seem to think that it requires no proof other than you think it to be so.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by barryem

I read today that during the great depression Roosevelt's WPA got publishers to hire authors to write books, paid for by the WPA, that could be sold cheaply to the public so that even the poorest would have something to read. The article said that this was how paperback books began to get popular.

This might be a plan to deal with some of the problems in publishing today. If someone wants to write a book they get paid a salary while they write it and then it belongs to the government.

Not a serious suggestion but it does point out that there might be other, better ways of having books to read.

Barry

I remember reading that cheap paperbacks got their start during the second world war as a way to give solders something to do that didn't involve getting drunk and getting into a fight at a bar.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

She had no children, but googling indicates that she left the bulk of her estate to four relatives.

In three centuries, none of them may have living descendants. Or they may have thousands of descendents living in dozens of countries with differing copyright laws.

In a thousand years, either there will be no descendents of the original legatees, or almost everyone on earth (and Mars?) will be one.

I support what is still the rule the largest number of people live under, the Life + 50 standard adopted at the 1896 Berne Convention. Standardizing reduces costs of administration.

I don't support it, but the odds of getting it changed are slim and none. Actually, if they could come up with a solution for the orphaned work, it wouldn't be so bad.