How long should a copyright last?

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

Most of the works that I want to see in the public domain are unavailable. They sit languishing.

I don't like the "only a penny a day" argument. My income is severely limited. $100 is $100. Even Bill Gates does not have an unlimited supply of pennies.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction was marked by writers providing stories to magazines for Pennies a word. Thanks to ebooks an author can have control of the availability of his stories and clear a couple of dollars per book sold.

The whole idea of copyrights was opposed to "the one book wonder". It was supposed to incentivise the production of books/works. The idea of authors writing one book and being set for life as well as providing for the next two generations, is ridiculous, on its face. Almost all those trying to make a living writing, also have day jobs, write many stories and get few published. Those that make any real money are few and far between. But they keep writing.
They keep at it even when they have one that is paying off. Their writing career is not dependent on any one book.

Luck;
Ken

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Art for art's sake....I don't think that is quite the issue. The issue is that in any creative endevor, most of the time people will fail. You can sneer and call the failures wanna-bees, but the fact is only a few people of any artistic endevor are commercial sucessful. And of those, a rare one will be come a mega-success. The right place, the right time, the right product....Try hitting that triple bullseye.

I don't disagree with this. I suspect that 99.95% of all would-be professional ballplayers fail, somewhere along the line, as do 99.95% of all would-be Olympic skaters, and on and on. Only 00.05% of all actors and actresses who decide to become stars do so. If we're talking about the pointy end, then most won't make it. Them's the breaks. The everyday slob with a job at the factory or making ebooks WILL make it, because his/her goals are set more realistically, or simply lower--paying the mortgage and the like.

Just because an author doesn't earn 7 digits doesn't make him or her a failed artist. Are all those other people still throwing pitches, doing triple-axels and acting at community theater for the "love of it?" Why is "art" the only thing that, apparently, has some requirement that they all keep trying and going, when we tell failed actresses to go home to (wherever) or washed-up ballplayers (or high school seniors) that they simply aren't good enough? If you had a buddy who couldn't field, you wouldn't tell him at 30 to keep trying out for a Pro Ball team, would you?

Vis-a-vis hitting the triple bullseye--try launching a company. Same thing. There's not one thing different about someone starting a new restaurant, becoming a supermodel, launching a company, building an hotel, etc., than there is becoming a brand-name author or painter or what-have-you. That's called "big success." There's a reason it's called "BIG success;" because not everyone achieves it. Most restaurants fail in their first year, as we all know, and only 1 in every 7 will still be open in 5.

And it has nothing to do with skill or quality. Sorry, not true. I've seen master artists have their works ignored, and I've seen pig slop become a runaway success.

Yes, I've certainly seen pig slop become runaway bestsellers; I could name a lot of books on the top lists that wouldn't earn me any friends here, no doubt. What does that have to do with copyright?

The point about art for art's sake in cold-bloodedly blunt. You had better enjoy doing it for it's own sake, because the odds are massively against you making a comfortable living off of it. You can't just look at the sucesses, just like you can't trade a stock chart out of the middle. Van Gogh was a failed artist in his lifetime. Nobody had even heard of Emily Dickinson in her lifetime. H P Lovecraft invented the modern horror genre, and lived and died in abject poverty. E.E.Smith PH.D. invented space opera, and bluntly said that he made more money laying bricks that he did writing. Bad quality? His works stayed in print from the late 1950's for nearly 50 years in paperback. (He died in 1965.) Frank Herbert almost never got Dune published in the 1960's. Would he have been a wanna-bee if it hadn't got published?

Yes, as I just said--exactly like anyone else in any other profession in which they desire to become a household name or a runaway bestseller. So what? And, yes: if Frank Herbert, who is one of my all-time favorite authors, had not been published, he would have been a "wanna-be." That's the harsh truth of it. Some make it, many don't. As we've seen with the self-pubbing boom, there are many, many good reasons for this, too.

As to money and copyright....Follow the money. Who gets most of it? The artist? Shucks no, the middleman gets it. Whether that middle man is a Hollywood Studio, a Music Label, or a Publishing Company, they get most of the money. And being Corporations, they insist that they deserve every possible dime that can be milked from these copyrights - forever. Sure they'll throw the few alms they are required to the artist and/or heirs, but make no mistake, they don't give a D.R.A. about the artists in question. The art's just something to flog...And the artist's cut is just a tax, a tax they don't even have to pay if they don't exploit it. You can't get a sweeter deal than that - if you are a middleman.

This sounds like a bit of a rant against the whole "evil corporation" shtick, and I'm not going to have that fight. Most of my clients are perfectly good midlist authors who took their rights back, and are making their mortgages by the sweat of their own brow, sans agent or publisher. Given that we're talking about copyrights, today, then we should consider this in light of the new publishing paradigm, not whether or not MGM owned the rights to some movie back in the day over which Star X got screwed. It happens.

Part of the reason it happens is because those companies--those movie companies, those publishers, etc., take all the monetary risks. No, they don't put in the creation time; but they put up all the money upfront to make the book, in so many ways. They pay for those 5,000 review ARCS that get sent to every reviewer in every bohunk town in the US (or wherever).

They pay the thousands to the editor, to make it readable. They pay the cover creator (in the trades, this is thousands, not hundreds, of dollars). They pay for any advertising, and they work that book for 6-12 months before it ever hits the shelves, marketing-wise. Sorry, but, that's the way of life--he who puts in the cash gets to earn the biggest share.

This is the way in any business deal, not simply IP or publishing. I've never understood why people think that the companies and individuals putting in the cash shouldn't get fed at the trough first. It's simple risk-reward. You think that publishers would do all that--given that the vast majority of books published, by trade pubs, never even EARN OUT THEIR ADVANCES to the author--if they couldn't count on a hit feeding them every once in a while? Really?

None of you, it seems, ever considers how many books a Random House and its imprints publishes that not only don't hit, but don't even pay them back for having done all the economic heavy lifting in the first place. I can tell from the discussion that there is not a single person here from inside a publishing house, because they would tell you exactly what the numbers are--and they're not pretty.

But the whole copyright deal was based on the <public>, not the creator, granting the limited monopoly to encourage more creation of copyright items (art). The question is - how long is the optimum length to encourage more creation? Not grant a perpetual source of income for Corporation, not to feed the widow(er), the grandkids, or the great-great-great grandkids of the artist. But to encourage the artist to create more?

Why shouldn't it feed the widow and the grandkids? Why should a creator create, if he can't leave his earnings and future earnings to his family?

And the ultimate point about encouraging the the creator - dead creators don't create.

No, but live ones with families certainly do. It boggles my mind that you all think that authors are so self-centered that they won't care if their copyright expires upon their death, leaving their families with nothing, just so some people can read their books for free a few years earlier.

I have an author who died recently. His widow and family are supported, entirely, by his royalties from his lifetime of writing. His widow is on various life-assistance machines. Would you like to come over and pull the plug, or would you just like some anonymous soul to do it for you?

The historical record shows that a 56 year copyright is adequate to produce the necessary incentive. And I can use the period from 1909 to 1976, as an example of all the art that was created under the 56 copyright. If certain artworks were not created under these terms, because they were too short, I cannot see the gain later on by extending the copyright in the post 1976 era. Now There may be arguements for somewhat longer, and maybe a little shorter (McCauley favored 42 years), but continually extending copyright does nothing but enrich the middlemen. It is even contraproductive, as it merely provides incentives to milk old material, rather than create new material...

Sorry, I must have missed your citation for the reasoning/support on this, can you post it again?

I'd also think that at least some of you ought to consider what would happen to book prices if an author knew that he wouldn't be earning out over 20 years, or he couldn't leave ongoing royalties to his children. They'll GO UP, not down, because authors will want more money upfront to sell their stories, not less, so that they can bank it, and thus not have it taken away upon their demise. Law of Unintended Consequences, anyone?

Hitch

[GrannyGrump]

I have only skimmed this thread (archived it to read at home at my leisure), and even before I read Hitch's post, I intended to vote for "Life + 20", to go on the assumption that a writer who dies early and unexpectedly might have minor children who need support until they reach their majority.

"Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain." Writers, much like anyone else, surely need to feel that they are supporting their loved ones, and to know that that support can continue after their death. Take away that incentive, and things will get interesting (as in, may you live in interesting times.)

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I don't disagree with this. I suspect that 99.95% of all would-be professional ballplayers fail, somewhere along the line, as do 99.95% of all would-be Olympic skaters, and on and on. Only 00.05% of all actors and actresses who decide to become stars do so. If we're talking about the pointy end, then most won't make it. Them's the breaks. The everyday slob with a job at the factory or making ebooks WILL make it, because his/her goals are set more realistically, or simply lower--paying the mortgage and the like.

Just because an author doesn't earn 7 digits doesn't make him or her a failed artist. Are all those other people still throwing pitches, doing triple-axels and acting at community theater for the "love of it?" Why is "art" the only thing that, apparently, has some requirement that they all keep trying and going, when we tell failed actresses to go home to (wherever) or washed-up ballplayers (or high school seniors) that they simply aren't good enough? If you had a buddy who couldn't field, you wouldn't tell him at 30 to keep trying out for a Pro Ball team, would you?

Vis-a-vis hitting the triple bullseye--try launching a company. Same thing. There's not one thing different about someone starting a new restaurant, becoming a supermodel, launching a company, building an hotel, etc., than there is becoming a brand-name author or painter or what-have-you. That's called "big success." There's a reason it's called "BIG success;" because not everyone achieves it. Most restaurants fail in their first year, as we all know, and only 1 in every 7 will still be open in 5.

Yes, as I just said--exactly like anyone else in any other profession in which they desire to become a household name or a runaway bestseller. So what? And, yes: if Frank Herbert, who is one of my all-time favorite authors, had not been published, he would have been a "wanna-be." That's the harsh truth of it. Some make it, many don't. As we've seen with the self-pubbing boom, there are many, many good reasons for this, too.

Hitch, I have nothing against anybody going for the "brass ring". I have no problem with them becoming raging successes, nor do I have a problem with them failing abjectly. What I do object to is changing the rules of the game retroactively.

Originally Posted by Hitch

This sounds like a bit of a rant against the whole "evil corporation" shtick, and I'm not going to have that fight. Most of my clients are perfectly good midlist authors who took their rights back, and are making their mortgages by the sweat of their own brow, sans agent or publisher. Given that we're talking about copyrights, today, then we should consider this in light of the new publishing paradigm, not whether or not MGM owned the rights to some movie back in the day over which Star X got screwed. It happens.

Part of the reason it happens is because those companies--those movie companies, those publishers, etc., take all the monetary risks. No, they don't put in the creation time; but they put up all the money upfront to make the book, in so many ways. They pay for those 5,000 review ARCS that get sent to every reviewer in every bohunk town in the US (or wherever).

They pay the thousands to the editor, to make it readable. They pay the cover creator (in the trades, this is thousands, not hundreds, of dollars). They pay for any advertising, and they work that book for 6-12 months before it ever hits the shelves, marketing-wise. Sorry, but, that's the way of life--he who puts in the cash gets to earn the biggest share.

This is the way in any business deal, not simply IP or publishing. I've never understood why people think that the companies and individuals putting in the cash shouldn't get fed at the trough first. It's simple risk-reward. You think that publishers would do all that--given that the vast majority of books published, by trade pubs, never even EARN OUT THEIR ADVANCES to the author--if they couldn't count on a hit feeding them every once in a while? Really?

None of you, it seems, ever considers how many books a Random House and its imprints publishes that not only don't hit, but don't even pay them back for having done all the economic heavy lifting in the first place. I can tell from the discussion that there is not a single person here from inside a publishing house, because they would tell you exactly what the numbers are--and they're not pretty.

Maybe they need better actuaries...Hitch, you are totally overlooking the law of large numbers. Would you personally bet your life saving on a deal that you had honest odds on 60/40 in your favor? Of course not, you couldn't afford the risk. How about 1000 bets with the same odds, each of 1/1000th of your total wealth. You'd jump on it, high order probability of 10% payoff, with low risk. (You can draw your own Bell Curve...)

What do you think those big intermediaries are doing? They're playing the part of being the House at a Casino. Some big losses, some big wins, with the odds in favor (on average) to the House. If they're not making money, then they need to reprice the inflows and the outflows better in order to match the odds.

These "Casinos" were formed under the rules that anything that was left over after a period of time (56 years from 1909 to 1976) was to be given back to the people who set the rules that allows those "Casinos" in the first place. Everybody and his dog knew the rules, both the House and the gamblers (creators). But towards the end of those 56 years, the House ("Casino") realized that OMG, there will be money that we have to give away. We can't have this, and quick, politician, here's your bribe, let us keep the money. We'll ever cut the winning gamblers in on the deal. (and who cares about the losers.) Sorry, I don't accept that logic. It's just corruption...

Originally Posted by Hitch

Why shouldn't it feed the widow and the grandkids? Why should a creator create, if he can't leave his earnings and future earnings to his family?

No, but live ones with families certainly do. It boggles my mind that you all think that authors are so self-centered that they won't care if their copyright expires upon their death, leaving their families with nothing, just so some people can read their books for free a few years earlier.

I have an author who died recently. His widow and family are supported, entirely, by his royalties from his lifetime of writing. His widow is on various life-assistance machines. Would you like to come over and pull the plug, or would you just like some anonymous soul to do it for you?

What happens to the widow and family of a free-lance computer programmer (who is allowed no copyrights) under the same circumstances? Or an inventor? Is his/her labor less worthy? Or is having a copyright a special class over and above everybody else in the world? Copyright is the <only> form of labor that is treated as capital. It was a special class created by the public for a limited duration, for a specific reason. The reason was for the <long term> benefit of the public, <not> for the long term benefit of the creator. Don't take my word for it, study the history of copyright...

Originally Posted by Hitch

Sorry, I must have missed your citation for the reasoning/support on this, can you post it again?

http://yarchive.net/macaulay/copyright.html

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'd also think that at least some of you ought to consider what would happen to book prices if an author knew that he wouldn't be earning out over 20 years, or he couldn't leave ongoing royalties to his children. They'll GO UP, not down, because authors will want more money upfront to sell their stories, not less, so that they can bank it, and thus not have it taken away upon their demise. Law of Unintended Consequences, anyone?

Hitch

You're seeing the Law of Unintended Consquences in the Orphaned Art situation now. But, excuse me, they were just wanna-bes, they don't matter...

And as I pointed out 56 years seemed to work just fine....Easy to measure, and long enough for the original purpose.

Here's a unintended consequence that may hit most people here. I have pictures from WWII of my father and other people in his outfit. Candid snapshots. Legally I can't copy them. Somebody else took the pictures (unknown to me at this distance) that person(s) hold the copyright, not me. And the same thing holds true for any of the old family photos.

You may correctly note that nobody will sue, but that's not the point. The point is that the unintended consequence of stretching copyright, is to legally prevent me from preserving my own history....

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'd also think that at least some of you ought to consider what would happen to book prices if an author knew that he wouldn't be earning out over 20 years, or he couldn't leave ongoing royalties to his children. They'll GO UP, not down, because authors will want more money upfront to sell their stories, not less, so that they can bank it, and thus not have it taken away upon their demise. Law of Unintended Consequences, anyone?

Most of us arguing against extending copyrights are not arguing for extremely short or no copyrights. We just want them down to a length that is reasonable for everyone, and not just for those who want to control the book market.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by grannyGrumpy

I have only skimmed this thread (archived it to read at home at my leisure), and even before I read Hitch's post, I intended to vote for "Life + 20", to go on the assumption that a writer who dies early and unexpectedly might have minor children who need support until they reach their majority.

"Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain." Writers, much like anyone else, surely need to feel that they are supporting their loved ones, and to know that that support can continue after their death. Take away that incentive, and things will get interesting (as in, may you live in interesting times.)

Practically speaking the vast majority of books are published - once. They are on the shelves a few months then pushed off to make room for the next month's crop of books. Any money the author gets will come from those few months, year at the most. Then because of the long copyright the publisher who owns it won't publish it again and no one else can either. The book simply disappears and the author gets nothing. With a more reasonable copyright the author could at least spend a little time converting it to an ebook and at least make a few sales himself and the book wouldn't be lost in publishing limbo.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by oddly bodkins

I hit the wrong button. I meant to vote for post death link should be shorter. I suppose that's what I get for not paying proper attention. I'm sorry about that.

Using Moderator Powers, I have moved a vote from one to the other.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Are we to believe that authors would be saying to themselves " I guess I better not write another book, if I'm only going to collect on it for thirty years."

That's not believable. You are right on that.

But if just the US changed to thirty years, I think that some of the most influential people in the world would instantly experience a decline in backlist royalties and thus have a new big reason to hate us.

As for what would happen if most nations agreed to thirty years:

I may have posted in favor of 30 year copyright before, but tonight it feels too short for me. Readers could then commonly find bestsellers written by their contemporaries at gutenberg.org. This would make the public domain far more competitive against new books, reducing the incomes of agents, editors, and authors (I persist with the idea that it often takes a village to make a great book).

Someone may say that even works written by authors who died a century ago compete with new books. They do, but less so. And generations after authors have died, many eBooks will no longer be sold due to difficulty in determining ownership of rights. So a balance has to be struck between too-long copyright blocking availability, and too-short lowering incomes.

I'm going to stick with favoring Life + 50, at least until I change my mind again.

[calvin-c]

One thing that strikes me about most of these posts is that they seem to view copyright as affecting 'books as entertainment'. Should we have different copyright lengths for different media? How about for different purposes? I don't disagree with the focus on published material even though copyright applies to currently unpublished material too. After all, if nobody (including me) is interested in publishing what I say then why would I worry about copyright protection for it?

Ever tried to get copies of old TV or radio shows? Two words: Im Possible. The problem might be the lack of archiving technology back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Yet a few keep turning up-is it like fossils or is it that they're still under copyright?

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Ever tried to get copies of old TV or radio shows? Two words: Im Possible. The problem might be the lack of archiving technology back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Yet a few keep turning up-is it like fossils or is it that they're still under copyright?

That's a little early even for radio. If wikipedia is to be believed broadcast radio really started in the 1920s and TV was a little after. So it's lack of content to be archived as much as the technology itself (though right up to the mid-20th century it was common to broadcast but not record, and of course archiving was expensive - <insert anecdote about lost Dr Who episodes etc here>).

So I suspect it that's rather than the limitations of copyright.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Ever tried to get copies of old TV or radio shows? Two words: Im Possible. The problem might be the lack of archiving technology back in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Or perhaps it might be because TV and radio didn't exist in the "late 1800's and early 1900's"?

The simple reason that "early" (once they actually existed, that is...) radio and TV shows don't exist is that for the first few decades of their existence everything was live; there were no recordings. It has absolutely nothing to do with copyright.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Or perhaps it might be because TV and radio didn't exist in the "late 1800's and early 1900's"?

The simple reason that "early" (once they actually existed, that is...) radio and TV shows don't exist is that for the first few decades of their existence everything was live; there were no recordings. It has absolutely nothing to do with copyright.

Ouch. You're right-I was thinking about when radio was invented, not when it was used for broadcast and even less when 'shows' were broadcast. My bad, sorry about that.

[Greg Anos]

Actually, much radio was recorded, for rebroadcast in market that couldn't be reached live. They were recorded on huge vinyl discs called "transcription discs". They were 16 inches (just under a half metre) across, and many still exist. (Bob Hope kept the copyright on his and all the discs of his shows. I have some commercial CDs of his shows in WAV format, made from them, the sound is mono (of course) but top notch, as good as it would have sounded when broadcast.

However, most radio shows didn't bother, and the public didn't have access to the equipment to play them back, so they often got junked. Even today, there isn't enough market to justfiy high quality transfers from the existing masters. (Bob Hope released around 20-40 shows during his lifetime, they didn't sell enough to keep re-releasing them. He did a show a week for 20 years or so, that's around 1,000 shows.)

TV is more of a mixed bag, sometimes it was recorded with a specially synced movie camera (synced at 60 frames a second) filming a matching TV screen, sometimes not. This technique was call a Kinetoscope. Once again, there is no market for old Kines, a hugh hoard of early '50 to late '50 Kines was found in an abandoned mine in the Sierra mountains, under perfect storage conditions, but nothing has come of it, no market exist to make it worthwhile to transfer...

For more detail on "transcription discs" here's teh Wiki link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_disc

[Greg Anos]

More on American Radio broadcasts. The Entire NBC Radio Show archive of transcription discs was donated to teh Library of Congress. for more on that, and a interesting read see the following link -

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/radio.html

Since these were recorded in New York and California, they fell under state copyright laws, which were later subsumed into Federal copyright law. The Federal law was extend in 2009, (in a sneaky add-on to the bank bailout bill) to the year 2067.

They aren't available commercially, and they won't be PD for another 54 years, assuming they are not extended again. Nobody is making any money off of these copyrights, please explain to me why this Corporate hoarding to so important...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by crossi

Practically speaking the vast majority of books are published - once. They are on the shelves a few months then pushed off to make room for the next month's crop of books. Any money the author gets will come from those few months, year at the most. Then because of the long copyright the publisher who owns it won't publish it again and no one else can either. The book simply disappears and the author gets nothing. With a more reasonable copyright the author could at least spend a little time converting it to an ebook and at least make a few sales himself and the book wouldn't be lost in publishing limbo.

"Publishing Rights" are not the same as "length of copyright"

I think you're conflating copyright with rights, but more on that down the post.

Back in the Old Days, and the MidLister "Death Spiral"

For dog's years, back in Ye Olden Days of print publishing, a midlist author could count on continued printed editions of their books for quite a while. This was, not even 20 years ago, the way most legacy-pubbed authors lived. They received a steady, if not huge, stream of royalties over time. Once that had a few titles up there, those steady smaller royalties could support them, if not lavishly, at least, reasonably. Library purchases made up a good amount, believe it or not. This mostly worked from both viewpoints--the publisher's and the author's--because the publisher had already spent the biggest chunk of money the first time around (editing and the like), and only had to spend enough for a smallish second print run, then third, and so on, and thus, the author had a nice stream over time.

However, due to the economic pressures I mentioned in my last long post (as opposed to the first doozy-in-length), that model became increasingly hard for publishers to maintain, and they started dropping midlist authors like hotcakes. There were simply too many midlisters that didn't get read "enough," had a higher rate of unsold books, didn't earn out, and the publishers stopped making that second investment (of printing) in them. Too many discounted books, really, is the short of it. The publishers, with ever-increasing disparities between best-sellers and not-bestsellers, started to cut where they had the least return--the no-sellers and then the lower-level midlisters, and now ever more midlisters.

You'll have particularly noticed this in the fantasy and sci-fi genres--if you read Ace, Tor or Baen or the like, you'll have seen an ever-decreasing amount of shelf-space for those "old reliable" midlist authors you used to read. Many of them just got dropped altogether by their publishers, forcing them to seek out new publishers, or in some cases, create a new pseudonym and submit to new publishers, to reinvent themselves as a new property. Somewhere, there are some good blogs using/reusing the "Death Spiral" as a title, about this very phenomenon.

Meanwhile, Publishing Rights versus Copyrights

Anyway, back to the instant topic: what you've said doesn't really have anything to do with the length of copyright, per se; it's about the term of rights that the author sells to the publisher. Nowadays, that's usually 7 years, and while many authors were fortunate enough to finagle contracts that didn't include electronic rights, in the 90's and early 2000's, of course, that's a hard sell today. I can't think of any author I've met who wasn't able to get their rights back after 7 years, or sometimes, even sooner.

You realistically cannot expect a publisher to put the kind of money and effort into a book that they do, and then be willing to give all the equity created, however much, back to the author in some ridiculously short period of time, say, a year. A 7-year period for rights seems to me to be a decent-enough length of time for both parties, although we may even see this change to something more like 5, in the current high-speed, short-attention-span climate. That might suit both sides better. (On the other hand--look at late bloomers like GOT.)

Generally, there seems to be a conflation here, in this thread, between the length of copyright versus the duration of rights owned by a publishing house. Many of the posts about books disappearing into the ether seem to indicate/imply that books owned by corporations, outright, can disappear into the ether for all of eternity (a hopeful reader's lifetime, anyway), for the copyright period of X (life + 50, whatever it ends up as, if it even changes). But the vast majority of authors do not sell their book rights for the duration of the copyright period in toto. They sell the print rights, e-book rights, audiobook rights, foreign rights, etc., for a short and explicit contract duration. (Obviously, we're not discussing work-for-hire here, in numerous ways.)

For the purposes of this thread, we should distinguish between an older style of publishing--when, for example, someone might sell the entire rights of a short that they wrote to Black Mask--and today's publishing paradigm, or at least, publishing after 1950 or thereabouts, because conflating the two just confuses the issue.

...Versus the "Death Star" Scenario

I say to you that this situation will become worse--more authors will sell their entire rights to a corporation (oh, the horror!) for the duration, if some type of "cut off at death" scenario arises. (The "Death Star" scenario. When you die, your royalties explode into nothingness.)

I've worked for deferred payment in many, many instances (in my previous life developing 5-star hotels--I would get a very hefty chunk of my payment when the hotel opened), and I certainly would NEVER agree to some idiotic scenario in which, if I died, the money that was owed to me suddenly wasn't payable to my heirs. That's just...the kindest word I can use is "ridiculous." My web developer works that way, somewhat--50% upfront, the balance upon completion (quick aside: I've found that this tends to actually get web work done within a year of the originally-agreed due date, rather than 2, 3 or 5 years down the road); should I not pay his family the 50% if he completes the work and then gets hit by a bus? Man, there's a deal.

When folks think about these things, they need to contemplate it without the wacky tabaccy. Just because someone a) essentially works on commission, selling one item at a time, and b) takes this commission in a deferred way, over a very, very long time, does not mean that somehow, someway, the monies he earned when he created the thing in the first place aren't owed to him if he DIES. They're owed to his estate, just as my deferred payments would have been and my web guy's payment would be. I absolutely don't understand how anyone here can justify such a silly argument.

A sculptor can receive his payment for his year, or 6 months, or whatever, when he sells his work. Ditto a painter. A dancer sells his work show-to-show. Most film folks get a payment that is hardly shabby, compared to what the average working slob gets, plus, if they are good, a small piece of the action (more royalties, which, by the way, CERTAINLY get paid to their heirs if they die--think about Law & Order, for an example).

The Door To Door Salesman...

Only authors are really forced to sell their wares "door to door," one copy at a time, and to wait however long it takes for as many people possible in the entire world to buy a copy. Can any of you imagine, trying to sell all your time--let's say, to make it easy, a year's worth of time--door-to-door, a minute at a time? Particularly on some type of deferred schedule?


It would be helpful if we could stop confusing length of copyright with publishing rights. If we want to discuss publishing rights, then let's discuss that. But length of copyright really has very little to do with the publishers, except in unusual situations, e.g., when rights are sold by a family to a corporation or placed in a trust. This isn't typical, and if we're going to discuss this intelligently, we ought to distinguish which type of scenario we're complaining about. Otherwise, the whole muddle starts to make no sense, as in when we conflate 75 years to mean that "a work will disappear forever because some evil corporation will never publish it again."

Just my dime's worth ($0.10), this time. I apologize for the length (truly, I do), but this can't be discussed with any productivity if we keep commingling the terms and the legalities.

Hitch