I, like you, through for a while that length was the problem, now I've poked around enough and known about enough actual examples where shorter length wouldn't have prevented the problems that happens with copyright. The content Sony had repeatedly removed from people's libraries was well within copyright term, shorter copyright wouldn't have saved it. What would have saved it is copyright scope that never extended to controlling access to copies already sold
In addition to Disney, California congresswoman Mary Bono (Sonny Bono's widow and Congressional successor), and the estate of composer George Gershwin supported the act. Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, said:
Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress.
It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched.
However, the counterpoint can also be made that it should be extended, as the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions, with the short patent lifetime forcing pharma companies to command absurd prices just to recoup the R&D cost.
(IMHO: the system on how we research pharmaceuticals and how we fund it must be drastically reformed. The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free, it's already bad enough)
See insulin prices difference in europe vs US
centralize all chemistry research behind the closed doors, weapon-level export controls on U.S.-made fever drugs simply because they are U.S.-made, severely control international collaboration, and so much more.
the problem is that the scientific community will rightfully revolt and the rest of the world will pull ahead of the U.S. in a relatively short amount of time. plus, since open science will have been long dead in the U.S. under such conditions, random breakthroughs at a basement or a non-prestigious university will cease to exist as a concept.
China and India piggybacking is the least bad thing to happen. rather, it's an indicator of how open the open science in the U.S. is
So... the US and European tax- and insurance payers are supposed to pay the billions of dollars for R&D and amortization, just for China to copy everything?
It's bad enough if China does that for their internal market. But they don't stop there, their clones and fakes flood back into our markets as well, leading to regular warnings such as [1] from government authorities for consumer safety.
This is unsustainable on so many levels, it needs to stop.
[1] https://www.swissmedic.ch/swissmedic/de/home/humanarzneimitt...
I think this is an inversion of cause and effect.
They drop insane money up front to do a trial, get approved, and then have low single-digit years to recoup all that investment before the new medication goes off patent a competitor markets a generic that blows up the market and likely isn't as well-tested.
And then, in the extreme case, you might get blown away on the street and have your murderer canonized.
But I guess that AI will fix all these perverse incentives Real Soon Now.
Ahem
That was health insurance. Different beast.
Not excusing pharma, but that bit of extreme casting doesn’t really belong in the conversation.
Like most things in life, “It Depends” is probably applicable, here. Copyright, patents, and trademark exist for a reason.
Abuse of these structures, is the real issue.
Like people that argue for unfettered capitalism, or total legalization of all vice, we need to think about basic human nature, when discussing these things. That doesn’t happen, usually. It’s either all or nothing. We don’t consider that moderation, and benevolent structure, are possible (which they might not always be, considering human nature).
The hard part is imposing just enough structure to ensure that we get maximum effect.
About a month ago, there was a post about the “Pareto Front,” that point at which maximum desired effect is achieved, with optimal resource usage, and side effects. The zenith.
That can also apply to social infrastructure, but it’s really, really difficult, and lawyers and social scientists don’t think that way.
I honestly feel as if very few people take basic human nature into account, when designing pretty much anything.
I seem to remember a guy living in a cabin, writing manifestos, and mailing bombs to tech people and academics.
If that's true then that value system is entirely messed up and needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt.
It’s so rare for any work to still be making money that long that it would hardly change the calculation.
I think most people are in support of some financial incentives via protection, but 70 years is just insane.
I'd love to see it brought back down to that again.
If you spend five years writing a book and then get to sell it for two years, and everyone will just think "I'll get it in two years", you might not like that.
The real problem is that it's hard to predict the commercial success of a creative work, especially when it doesn't exist yet. Publishing is a hit-based where most books barely sell, but then a few make more than enough to cover the losses incurred by giving long-shot authors a chance.
With much shorter copyright terms, I guess only sequels of already-popular works would get significant funding.
Anything below 5-10 years and you have literal starving authors. Anything less than 5 and you may as well abolish it altogether.
for the authors themselves I don't see much difference between having no copyright at all and being thrown a few pennies on their work from amazon. either way the ability to make a living from those pennies clearly isnt motivating them.
the future jk rowlings of the world will still buy lottery tickets to fame and fortune whether or not she ends up being worth $20 million (weak/no copyright) or $1 billion (strong copyright).
In what way is the system as it exists currently failing to encourage the creation of new works?
My point is that it doesn't need to do that. Copyright could still encourage creation of new works with a much shorter duration, without the downside of locking our culture up in monopolies for life + 70.
You could equally solve the issue by providing provisions for archival. Or a provision that requires a work to be freely available for sale.
The creator having a monopoly on the work seems to me to encourage the creation and sharing of work as intended.
I wouldn't say we have more "traditional" art that an author spends time creating with the vision of selling copies for years to come, than we did when copyright terms were shorter.
Is there a lot of fan art, yes, there's also massive amounts of original works as well. There is no lack of either.
Which includes giving creators royalty rights that can be passed on to their heirs, so the elder author can finish their manuscript on their deathbed as a gift to their family.
NEVER have I argued for life+70 and I never will.
I know a few great works were published posthumously, but most of these were because somebody thought it was really important to share, not because it was a golden goose they wanted to start... milking.
And again, to be clear, since apparently people think I’m defending life+70. I am abso-fucking-lutely not.
I want 14+14 or raw 28 back.
Edit: oh apparently I do, thanks Kagi Assistant.
Otis Redding Died in a plane crash literally 3 days after recording a famous track and his family earned a LOT after his passing.
"We" is doing a lot of work here. I realize that it's basically impossible for an entire population to have coherent motivations, but I support copyright because I think artists have the right to control what happens with their work and to sell it if they can. I believe that this right extends, like all rights, until the end of the author's life. I don't really care one bit about encouraging the production of new works.
which is too long, and also too short - what about authors who wrote finished their book on their deathbed? Then their rights are shorter than someone young - an unfair discrimination.
That's why age should be irrelevant. Copyright is useful, and should be granted. However, current copyright grants last far too long - age plus some years beyond. Not to mention corporations lobbying to increase the length right as some copyrights for some works are about to enter public domain.
Therefore, copyright should be granted for a single period and end - like patents. 20 years seems to be a good middle ground, but i could hear arguments for slightly longer or shorter.
I suggest to rather look at it under the angle whether estates should be able to inherit author’s identity (or some of it), to continue the will.
Abolishing the copyright or not is not that important if nothing is done in front of that to guarantee that every single human are granted unconditional access to decent life conditions.
> Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose
Creative work takes a lot of effort and resources (ex: movie production, games, books (hello Knuth)) and can be easily copied/imitated in a digital age.
It you think copyright should be shorter to everyone, then inheriting something valuable shouldn't be a thing as well?
inheritance has nothing to do with copyright. Financial assets are not monopolies. Copyright is only a valuable asset because of the granted monopoly on copying/distribution.
Therefore, to reduce the value copyright has (as it currently does seem to have too much), reducing the granted terms should be sufficient. Like patents, a good 20 years seems like a sufficiently long time to recover cost of production, while letting people who are currently alive to produce derivatives of it afterwards.
If I spend $20m on building a house or creating a computer game, why house can be inherited indefinitely and creative work is not? I would have a monopoly on this specific building and on this specific creative work, but anyone is free to build/create anything else.
If J. Rowling created Harry Potter universe, why her family can't own it indefinitely? We somehow accept this notion for other assets, but treat copyright differently.
p.s. creative work is more valuable as it has something that money can't buy (authenticity, taste, sincerity, etc)
The framing isn't charitable. People want to weaken copyright because it is a government granted monopoly. There are negative economic effects (i.e., for everyone) to government granted monopolies. Other assets generally aren't government granted monopolies.
The negative economic effects of monopolies stem from a lack of competition leading to insufficient supply, but there's no lack of competition or insufficient supply of copyrighted works. Even if copyright were indefinite like other property rights, it wouldn't stymie the supply of new works, but rather expand investment due to raising the future expected profit.
they are not fungible, unlike houses.
Also, if you could copy a house like you could copy digital goods (i would download a car), i am also going to claim that the "monopoly" on the house must also be shortened.
Because copying houses is inherently expensive, while copying creative works is inherently free. To make creative works act like houses you have to add artificial cost to copying, which is a tax the public has to pay for the entire duration of copyright.
If the public has to pay a tax they should get something out of it, and that something is the incentive for authors to create new works. But does copyright have to be for life + 70 in order to incentivize new works? Clearly not! It could be much shorter while still providing plenty of incentive.
You also don't have to rent/buy a place to live, but I wouldn't want to live a life without a roof over my head or access to creative works of my culture. When you accept that access to media is a necessity (and people today do treat it as such, just try finding someone who doesn't listen to music, watch videos, read books...), you clearly see that having copyright is a decision made by the state that results in wealth transfer from every citizen to authors and publishers.
Those authors/publishers do provide value, so it's not necessarily a bad thing, but as with every market intervention, the specifics need to be carefully considered.
Why don't the builders get infinite royalties on use of that house? Wouldn't that also be reasonable. At least as long as it stands. I don't think that would be unfair comparison.
They do, some build to rent indefinitely or sell to other who rent out the property.
But copyright restricts others from building on top of previous works. Can her family forever sue anyone into poverty for naming a wizard “Harry”? Does that even make sense in 100 years from now when most people have never heard of Harry Potter anymore?
For your building analogy, it would be more like the builders created your building there, and now you own it. It has a red roof and blue shutters. And also the government passed a law that said nobody else can own a building ever again with a red roof and blue shutters, otherwise you, the owner of the idea of those colors, can take possession of every new building like that.
We're there already, considering the cost of actually enforcing your rights, but it would be bizarre to codify that into law.
That's an americocentric view. Copyrights are shorter around the world. In fact, iirc, US has some of the longest ones.
Might want to check your facts mate.
Copyright doesn't just protect profit-generation with the property - it also ensures the original material is not altered over time.
Alas, this is a very useful function of copyright and basically ensures that good works remain good, and don't get easily subverted.
In this day and age, though, we've evolved better methods to ensure this alteration of original content doesn't have a negative impact (whether on the profit-making or indeed on behalf of the final user of the material).
Governments could shift from enforcing the copyright monopoly, to providing an open, public, free fingerprinting service - akin to a PKI for all content - which would allow entitites to copy materials, but also allow individuals to verify immutable materials.
>We shouldn't be handing out generational monopolies willy-nilly.
Agreed. We should, though, be making sure the end-date is set for 'verified materials' to a period appropriate for re-verification by human means ...
There is a very good reason that we all read the same copy of Orwells' 1984: because the copyright was enforced to ensure the work was not altered. This is ++good.
That the originator/owner of the copyright is still able to assert agency over their works is the end result of copyright being used effectively. That some choose to end the lifetime of their works, an entirely acceptable result of the policy mechanism.
I still maintain that its utility in preserving works outweighs the history of works being lost due to originator/owner agency. I concur, however, that there are better ways to accomplish this in this day and age ... information does want to be free, after all.