6 ms·

The truth is somewhere between your statement and parent's, in my opinion. Copyright is necessary but the laws today are draconian and far too extensive. For w

The truth is somewhere between your statement and parent's, in my opinion. Copyright is necessary but the laws today are draconian and far too extensive. For works since 1978, copyright lasts for the entire length of the author's life, plus an additional 70 years. The "Mickey Mouse" protection act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act) increased this even further for some works. There's a need to allow artists and writers to make money from their creations and not just get their work instantly reproduced by pirates. At the same time, it's in the public interest for their work to become widely available after a short period of protection. I don't know exactly how long that period should be to maximally benefit society, but 15 years sounds a lot more reasonable than life+75 years. It's absolutely absurd that Arthur Conan Doyle's distant ancestors can today be suing people for creating derivatives of Sherlock Holmes, a literary character conceived in 1887. Sherlock Holmes belongs to the public, not some greedy relatives trying to leech a living from him.

cturner 6y ago
"There's a need to allow artists and writers to make money" The current system does not satisfy that standard. Artists and writers don't make money due to far-reaching copyright. Musicians make money by selling tickets to concerts and contract performances. Journalists make money from newspaper pay-walls and advertising.
- bruckie 6y ago
  Your music argument is plausible, but the journalism one doesn't hold water: if there were no copyright, it would only take one paywall subscriber to copy the contents to a paywall-free site (e.g. wsj.com -> freewsjarticles.com), and poof: journalists aren't making money anymore.
  - cturner 6y ago
    I used to work for an education-resources publisher that had a problem with lecturers photocopying their books. We created a portal with value-add features, and put the ordering-user ID on every page of every book. Photocopying all but disappeared once those measures were in place - people valued and used the bundled services. The institutions that were buying the books were slow to ship IT services. But we were fast. The lecturers started asking us for forums and work-submission and marking-workflow features to help them work with their students, and we did. (The software lead had an idea that users should be able to just store and share stuff on the site. She moved to Canada during the project to join a new team, and did the same thing for the game they were running. They noticed that a lot of people were using the feature to share photos. So they focused on that, and that became Flickr.) Newspapers are already well down the road towards this future - as part of subscription you get comments sections, and forums, and dating sites, and wine clubs. Still, I see significant unused potential. Each newspaper should view itself as some mix of bloomberg/twitter/linkedin, and encourage interaction between its members audience.

cturner 6y ago

"There's a need to allow artists and writers to make money" The current system does not satisfy that standard. Artists and writers don't make money due to far-reaching copyright. Musicians make money by selling tickets to concerts and contract performances. Journalists make money from newspaper pay-walls and advertising.

bruckie 6y ago
Your music argument is plausible, but the journalism one doesn't hold water: if there were no copyright, it would only take one paywall subscriber to copy the contents to a paywall-free site (e.g. wsj.com -> freewsjarticles.com), and poof: journalists aren't making money anymore.
- cturner 6y ago
  I used to work for an education-resources publisher that had a problem with lecturers photocopying their books. We created a portal with value-add features, and put the ordering-user ID on every page of every book. Photocopying all but disappeared once those measures were in place - people valued and used the bundled services. The institutions that were buying the books were slow to ship IT services. But we were fast. The lecturers started asking us for forums and work-submission and marking-workflow features to help them work with their students, and we did. (The software lead had an idea that users should be able to just store and share stuff on the site. She moved to Canada during the project to join a new team, and did the same thing for the game they were running. They noticed that a lot of people were using the feature to share photos. So they focused on that, and that became Flickr.) Newspapers are already well down the road towards this future - as part of subscription you get comments sections, and forums, and dating sites, and wine clubs. Still, I see significant unused potential. Each newspaper should view itself as some mix of bloomberg/twitter/linkedin, and encourage interaction between its members audience.