How long should a copyright last?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by gmw

<snip>

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.

In photography, there are many people who try to shoot that ONE picture that will get them into National Geographic, or on the national news, and make them famous at the same time. Because, from that time onward, every picture they will ever take will be seen as brilliant.

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.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

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

Yep, and I've been taking pictures for close on four decades - as a hobby - but I'm not about to claim to be an expert. The ten thousand hours thing overlooks the nature of the time spent.

But you don't answer the difference between the the initial creation and the publication. With books in particular (I can't speak for the other arts), there is a lot of work in making the final product suitable for an external audience. Take away the incentive to refine the work and everything will look like the most amateur self-published work that people complain about here regularly.

It is a risk, it is a gamble, and as you say - as a money making enterprise - a person would be better off starting a company or maybe getting a job at McDonald's. Which is exactly why I said you had explained the reason for copyright. The possibility of making an income, even if slim, is enough that many people do take the gamble, as a way to justify spending more time doing the thing they love doing. Take away that incentive and some people would still write, but there is much less chance anyone else would see it.

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I am not in favour of permanent copyright either, but I think this is a straw man argument. There are all sorts of property that have been inherited throughout the centuries, and I assure you that very little of it is partially owned by me, alas. What is more likely is that a single heir will receive it, or the collective heirs will either sell their shares to a single heir, or the estate will monetize the copyright by selling it to someone or some corporation, or if no heirs are found, it will be go to the state. In the long run, I expect that there would be a few publishing houses that would buy up most of the unwanted copyrights (presumable for next to nothing for anything out of print). If you think the "Happy Birthday Song" copyright issue is ridiculous, this would only make it a billion times worse.

Say my grandfather wrote a number of popular novels in the 40s. All of them long out of print. The copyright would still be in force. I might be an heir. Wouldn't earn a penny for me. Why would I check? Why would I care?

Every letter you've ever written is under copyright. Do you have the rights parceled out in your will?

[Maverynthia]

I said fixed length, make it like it was back when it was first introduced, which I think it was 10 years at the time. This applies to companies too. Also families CANNOT profit if the artist dies early, the dead person wrote the book, not the living people.

[Hrafn]

Fixed length, of somewhere between 20-40 years. Any longer than that and it has negligible impact on author incentives to create -- which is the only economically-legitimate rationale for offering a government-mandated monopoly (how many authors do you know who would decide whether to sit down to write based on the royalties they might get in 40+ years, let alone the royalties their children might get?).

[teh603]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

I've been teaching my kids about copyright & we all agree that the current US copyright it too long (basically life + 70 years). The question we can't seem to agree on is how long it should be. What's your opinion?

Go back to Life Plus 20, and add a reversion clause to"work for hire." It'd be real bad if the next Jack Kirby had to face the same legal battles that the original one did.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by gmw

Which is exactly why I said you had explained the reason for copyright. The possibility of making an income, even if slim, is enough that many people do take the gamble, as a way to justify spending more time doing the thing they love doing. Take away that incentive and some people would still write, but there is much less chance anyone else would see it.

I fully agree with that, but then again, I don't see a reason for a copyright to last as long as 70 years after the creator's death.

As is pointed out in this and other threads, many copyrighted works just go out of print, because it's not economically viable for the copyright holder to produce then anymore. There are not enough people who want to read them, so they'd incur a loss on the production.

Had these works been out of copyright, they'd have been in the public domain already. Someone would have created an e-book out of them, just for the love of it, and then it would have been available to the (small number) of people who wanted to read it.

[rem736]

i think that 50 years from the author's death is very reasonable. the current 70 years is a bit long.

[wizwor]

The copyright laws need to be completely re-imagined. Books should be relieved of regulation in a progressive fashion. After a very short time, books should be free to share and for libraries and schools. Later, gradually, the license for derivative works should fade away. So, maybe...

After 10 years, sharing for no profit is allowed
After 20 years, derivative works are allowed with defined license fees
After death, public domain

This preserves the most profitable sales windows for the author and publisher while creating a regulation free public domain in a more reasonable time frame.

[KyBunnies]

Fixed length no more than 50 years from creation of work. Children and grandkids should not profit from the work of someone else.

Publishing companies should NOT be allowed to reissue and copyright public domain work when they write a new preface.

[6charlong]

I think 25 years is a reasonable time. After all, the end of copyright does not mean the author can no longer sell his/her book, in fact, it sometimes means the author CAN start selling his book.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

I think 25 years is a reasonable time. After all, the end of copyright does not mean the author can no longer sell his/her book, in fact, it sometimes means the author CAN start selling his book.

That's a good point.

[gmw]

It is interesting, and I find surprising, to see the number of people that don't see abstract creations as a property to be bought and sold and inherited. (Or that's the way I interpret some of the posts here that would, seemingly arbitrarily, strip this property from the current owner, like repossessing a house.)

At first I thought it might be because intellectual property is abstract, and its status as a property is due largely to provisions in law. But then I thought about business. A business may have physical assets, but its actual value is largely abstract, and its status as a property is quite distinct from its physical assets. Few people seem to have trouble with the idea that a business (or shares in a business) is property that can be bought and sold and inherited.

Or is it that people don't like the idea of people earning money for something when they are no longer working for it? (Never mind that the labour may not have been paid for in the first place.) But few people complain about the interest or dividends that they receive on their investments - investments they are happy to buy, sell and leave in their wills. So this can't be it either.

Is it simply that intellectual property can be so easily copied now that people think the value is in the electromagnetic arrangements rather than the abstract concept they represent? Perhaps the logic is that since I can easily have a million copies of something, the value of any one of those copies must be negligible. So here, give me the original and I'll make a million copies, but I'll only read one of them and pay the creator one millionth of the cover price.

None of this is to argue that copyright should be longer or permanent, there are other factors at play, but I do wonder if our view of the value of intellectual property is being unjustly distorted by technology.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by gmw

Is it simply that intellectual property can be so easily copied now that people think the value is in the electromagnetic arrangements rather than the abstract concept they represent? Perhaps the logic is that since I can easily have a million copies of something, the value of any one of those copies must be negligible. So here, give me the original and I'll make a million copies, but I'll only read one of them and pay the creator one millionth of the cover price.

None of this is to argue that copyright should be longer or permanent, there are other factors at play, but I do wonder if our view of the value of intellectual property is being unjustly distorted by technology.

No bit of fiction stands on its own. Everything borrows from what came before. Once the idea of monetizing every idea takes hold, where will it end? It may seem far fetched right now, but there's no reason the same kind of patent trolls that are strangling technological progress won't move into the arts as well. It all depends on how cheaply they can do it and what kind of money they can pull out of it. Will authors be willing to face a law suit over some plot development if accused of copying some previously published work owned by a publishing troll? I think this "Intellectual property" business is going to bite the artists in the ass more than it will help them down the road, because it plays into the hands of those who make their living out of this kind of stuff.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by rkomar

No bit of fiction stands on its own. Everything borrows from what came before. Once the idea of monetizing every idea takes hold, where will it end? It may seem far fetched right now, but there's no reason the same kind of patent trolls that are strangling technological progress won't move into the arts as well. It all depends on how cheaply they can do it and what kind of money they can pull out of it. Will authors be willing to face a law suit over some plot development if accused of copying some previously published work owned by a publishing troll? I think this "Intellectual property" business is going to bite the artists in the ass more than it will help them down the road, because it plays into the hands of those who make their living out of this kind of stuff.

You seem to be confusing copyright with patents and trademarks. Copyright does not protect an idea and imposes no constraint over anyone else's original creation.