Title.
https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf
Research by mathematician Rufus Pollock in 2009 pegged optimal copyright length at 15 years, regardless of time of authorial death. So if I copyrighted something at 30, I would lose the copyright automatically at 45, even if I lived to 90.
So glad to see another reference to this guy’s work in the wild.
As an amusing side note, the original term of copyright in the first law that established it (the British Copyright Act of 1710) was a flat 14 years, with a mechanism that allowed you to apply for only one extension of an additional 14 years. So most things would be 14 years, and whatever select things were particularly valuable or important could have 28 years. Under Pollock’s analysis this is just about the perfect possible system. So by sheer coincidence this is something that we got right the first time and ever since then we’ve been “correcting” it to be less and less optimal.
This estimate is also an overestimate according to the paper.
First, much creative endeavour builds upon the past and an extension of term may make it more difficult or costly do so. Were Shakespeare’s work still in copyright today it is likely that this would substantially restrict the widespread and beneficial adaptation and reuse that currently occurs. However we make no effort to incorporate this into our analysis despite its undoubted importance (it is simply too intractable from a theoretical and empirical perspective to be usefully addressed at present).
This means that the real number is significantly less than 15, maybe more like 12.
Whats the TL;DR on why?
Should be X years after publication, lifespan should not matter.
A person at age 200 (I mean in the future when they find anti-aging tech) should not be able to gatekeep the stuff they wrote when they were 25.
A person publishing a book at age 30 then dies next day in a car accident should not lose the right to pass on profits made from the book to his/her children.
Copyright should be fixed-length, fuck lifelong copyright, fuck “corporate personhood”.
Also this length should be at most 25 years and 10-15 years is better. These 75+ year copyrights are total BS.
They shouldn’t need to inherit anything wealth from their parents. We are playing wackamole instead of just building a better system than the current obviously flawed models that we all… Inherited. Ironic
Bigtech would hire hitmen to go after PhD students
Could be incentive to murder content creators.
You should separate the art from the artist.
I cannot do it when the artist is using the money to hurt people.
Just give me a moment
Breaking news, popular book series enter public domain as the author was Luigied last night.
Separate the art from the artist with extreme prejudice
It should return to the original design: 14 years from creation, and then 14 more years if requested and paid for.
Plot: a rival publisher hires a killer to murder a successful author over the copyright.
I was just thinking about that. If the copyright is tied to the author being alive, that’s essentially putting a huge target on your back. People have mysteriously died for much less than that.
Well, we need to figure out how to kill companies first. They own the copyright in the situations you would care about.
So, it kind of already works that way. If the company dies, no one is gonna come after you. Unless it was sold of to another company, that is.
It is always sold to another company. If a company is “destroyed” - eg, they must declare bankruptcy - then their assets will be sold off to pay back their debts. IP counts as an asset, so it would be sold to another company. It would not simply enter the public domain.
Meanwhile, you probably don’t want to kill all companies. Your friendly neighborhood taco truck is, after all, a company.
Would have made all of Disney and Universal’s IP buy-ups over the last decade+ a lot more interesting.
That’s how it used to be. It only became a problem when it stopped being an individual who owned rhe copyright and instead was owned by a corporation.
Now corporations are treated as people, so this change would only make it worse for the little guys.
Nah. I’d prefer a hard and fast 50 year limit.
Or even as a compromise, between 50 years and the current deadline standard, have it released to the creative commons non commercial.
Headline from the past: Sadly, our beloved Walt Disney died yesterday after apparent suicide by 20 knife stabs to the back.
Limit copyright to 5 years.
Abolish patents entirely.
Greed and selfishness are unacceptable foundations for any society.
Why the difference? Why should an artist who creates a popular character get 5 years of monopoly to profit off of their creativity, while an inventor who creates a better mousetrap not reap these benefits?
Rich bastards would still fuck it up.
The guy who invented insulin made it free for all rather then patenting it because it’s literally a life saving medication.
How’s that going in the US?
Those insulin are still available at $25 a vial, no prescription, no insursnce. But those are not the newer fast-acting ones and (I’m not an expert on this) are supposedly less effective than the more modern insulin.
I am in favour of that.
I’m all in favor of shortening copyright length, but it shouldn’t be tied to a creator’s lifespan. It’s too variable, and it doesn’t make sense for anything that more than one person worked on.
I think a reasonable compromise would be 20 years default, after which point you could apply for a 5 year extension twice. Extensions will only be granted if the work is still being made accessible, either new physical copies are being printed or digital distribution is available.
But I would also include a clause that if a work is no longer accessible, such as being pulled from streaming services, an online game being shut down, software not updated to be compatible with modern platforms, etc, copyright is considered to be in a weaker state where end users are permitted to pirate it for noncommercial purposes.
I would shorten the initial term to 15 years instead but keep everything else the same, if the author can’t be bothered to even file for an extension then they probably aren’t earning money from the thing anyway. See below for why 15.
It should be held by government and every company that makes money out of copyrighted material should pay it in taxes and authors should get money from government as long as they live. It can be steam % so 70% author 30% government. When author dies government gets 50% children gets 50% after that grand children 30% and then back to 0%.
This way each country would benefit from their brightest minds now it’s just foreign corporations benefit from everything.
Honestly we need to make inheritance an obsolete custom. Keep personal items, but wealth should not be transferred
I don’t know what is your understanding of wealth but money is not wealth and never should be treated as one. Wealth are material things. Profit sharing is not wealth transfer it’s just paycheck.
Wealth are audio records, movie records, books. Those are now inherited and monetized by corporations. What is benefit for you by living in country that had many famous musicians ? If you live in country that have oil you benefit from it.
Are you having a stroke?
Hmm. Interesting idea.
It’s not idea, it’s how art worked since ancient times. Artists were always sponsored by kings and noble people and this art is now in museums, somehow along the way we put art in hands of corporations, and money in hands of idiots and leave countries with nothing. We have countries with ministry of culture that posses no culture. We pay taxes and get nothing back.
We pay taxes and get nothing back.
Tbf, this has been the rule, not the exception, for most of recorded history.
