7 ms·

The major problem with copyright is it's too long. The vast majority of revenue from copyrighted content is made in the first couple of years, and yet we extend

The major problem with copyright is it's too long. The vast majority of revenue from copyrighted content is made in the first couple of years, and yet we extend copyright 70 years past the author's death! If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe. Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. We need to treat that monopoly power with more respect. We shouldn't be handing out generational monopolies willy-nilly. Copyright is allowed in the Constitution for "limited times" and Congress has ignored that.

jongjong 7d ago
I'm still waiting to get my first revenue from copyright content I created 10 years ago. Not everyone gets instant recognition.
OkayPhysicist 7d ago
IMO, the bigger issue is all the things copyright covers. I don't think there's a particularly damning public interest in being able to publish an author's book without paying them. For art preservation reasons, the copyright limit shouldn't be indefinite, but IMO as long as somebody's around to claim ownership, and offer a legitimate means of obtaining access to a work of art, it's not a big deal for them to have a monopoly on such. But copyright covers a lot more than just the right to produce copies of a specific work. The monopoly on derivative works serves the public significantly less. IMO, this one should taper off pretty rapidly. Maybe 20 years as is, then another 20 where you lose the ability decide who can or can't use your work, but they still owe you royalties. Then there's the clusterfuck that is software. With how rapidly the world around software changes, its protections should be substantially shorter. For derivative works of source code, I'd pitch skipping the complete monopoly step entirely. You get a decade or two where people using your software owe you royalties unless you say otherwise, then nothing.
pbhjpbhj 8d ago
Two years is too short because it won't protect from commercial exploition against a creators wishes.
- modeless 8d ago
  The creator is not the only person to consider here. We don't grant copyrights just to give creators a funny kind of royalty-pension they can pass to their heirs. We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public. Copyright ultimately must be judged on how well it serves the public benefit, not on how much power or wealth it gives to authors directly (at the expense of others).
  - bigstrat2003 8d ago
    > We don't grant copyrights to give authors a kind of royalty-based pension for their old age and their heirs. "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.
    - modeless 8d ago
      How about "We the people", as stated in the Constitution? The Constitution itself defines the purpose of copyright, and it is not the purpose you state.
    - chii 7d ago
      > until the end of the author's life. 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.
t-writescode 8d ago
Original copyright was 14 years + 14 years - then it was changed to 28. I'd love to see it brought back down to that again.
TulliusCicero 8d ago
Just make it 20 years, like patents.
achempion 8d ago
You're free to release your own work with Creative Commons License (or any other license that shorten the copyright). > 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?
- chii 8d ago
  > 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.
  - achempion 7d ago
    Why you want to reduce value of creative work, but not a value of other assets? I think copyright should be as long as ownership of any other asset. 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)
    - Ekaros 7d ago
      >If I spend $20m on building 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.
pmdr 7d ago
Drug patents are much more short-lived and there's arguably more money invested in drug discovery than in, say, writing a fiction novel. IMO copyright should be limited to 20-30 years. Not that LLM labs care anyway.
- mschuster91 7d ago
  > Drug patents are much more short-lived 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)
  - joquarky 7d ago
    > the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions Seems like we are coming up on a limit where if they put that much more money into R&D + marketing, then won't be able to afford the product anyway. So this counterpoint is practically moot for all but the most wealthy people.
  - philipallstar 7d ago
    > 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. I think this is an inversion of cause and effect.
  - po1nt 7d ago
    Issue of pharma development is not that you need a protection from copycats. You need to pass a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy. Most of the medications are easily copyable but would take years to be able to get to the market. See insulin prices difference in europe vs US
tomp 7d ago
Harry Potter copyright is still being heavily utilized (milked?) 30 years after the first book's release.
- OroPla 7d ago
  But why should this be allowed? Fairy tales are still popular, but they don't have copyright either.
- vaylian 7d ago
  That's an outlier. Most works don't see so much public interest after such a long time.
- exitb 7d ago
  It would make sense to make it possible, but increasingly expensive to extend the copyright. It's fine for Disney to keep their successful creations, it just makes no sense to drag all other copyrighted works in existence along for the ride.
  - dns_snek 7d ago
    You want to tip the balance even more in favour of the richest corporations? Really? We're there already, considering the cost of actually enforcing your rights, but it would be bizarre to codify that into law.
- modeless 7d ago
  I'm not sure what your point is. Harry Potter is in the top ten highest grossing media franchises ever. Sure, top 10 franchises make a lot of money, but they're outliers. Is it in the public interest to grant every author in the country a copyright monopoly for life + 70 so that we can ensure JK Rowling's grandchildren continue to make billions from Harry Potter? Clearly not!
- kzrdude 7d ago
  Now you are using the legislators' rationale that money is being made so we need to protect that, forgetting to weigh the cost for the community.
leonidasrup 7d ago
" Since 1990, The Walt Disney Company had lobbied for copyright extension. The legislation delayed the entry into the public domain of the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, leading detractors to the nickname "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act". 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. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- pigpop 7d ago
  An excellent reminder that intelligence isn't a requirement to be a member of congress.
  - littlecorner 7d ago
    The requirement is money and connections
cromka 7d ago
> and yet we extend copyright 70 That's an americocentric view. Copyrights are shorter around the world. In fact, iirc, US has some of the longest ones.
- wallst07 7d ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_... Might want to check your facts mate.
  - cromka 7d ago
    "For some categories of works, the minimum duration is shorter: for example, the minimum term for applied art is 25 years, while movies have a minimum term of 50 years. Most countries have opted for a longer term of protection, as permitted." However, I stand corrected because I was under impression they expired after 50 years in Europe, or less. Turns out the movies I had in mind were intentionally made available to public but this did not come as a result of copyright expiration. My bad.
philipallstar 7d ago
> If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe. 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.
- Patryk27 7d ago
  I’m pretty sure they meant the “post death” copyright, considering the context.
- _davide_ 7d ago
  Unless you were paid during those five years
  - philipallstar 7d ago
    Who's going to pay you to work for five years for a book that has a two-year commercial window, and even for that many people won't buy it until another company that just does printing sells it for half price two years from the first published date?
    - yorwba 7d ago
      Well, if you could somehow guarantee that your book would sell enough copies in that two-year window to make a million dollars profit, it would make sense to pay you a reasonable salary for the five years it takes you to write it. It's not completely implausible that people would pay for something that could be had for cheaper soon, considering that there are grifters selling "new editions" (with a publication date in the future, to game recency-biased search algorithms) of out-of-copyright works that are available for free elsewhere. 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.
aa-jv 7d ago
>Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. 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 ...
- sophrosyne42 7d ago
  Copyright does no such thing. The copyright owner is free to alter or change their material at any time, or to discard it and force it to remain unused until it deteriorates and is destroyed (e.g. video game preservation is mostly done by copyright violators).
  - aa-jv 7d ago
    Of course it does, don't be myopic. 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. A public fingerprinting/attestation service would separate the two functions we care about: 1) letting creators monetise and control commercial exploitation for a limited time, and 2) giving everyone a reliable way to verify that a given copy matches a claimed original. The second does not require a multi-generational monopoly, and I am not advocating for that. I do however believe that some social mechanism for ensuring the materials I care about land on my desk un-altered, is quite important.
grishka 7d ago
Very much this. And another problem is that the US forced most of the world to adopt similar laws through various cartels, oh, sorry, trade agreements. I distinctly remember when suddenly it was no longer okay to openly sell pirated software in Russia "because we're joining WTO". I still have no idea why we joined it.
- Akronymus 7d ago
  reminds me of the DMCA which was essentially forced to be approved https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY
21asdffdsa12 7d ago
One should pay a exponential "upholding" fee doubling every year of copyright. People would be very careful with clinging to rights- when they have a yearly break even.
psychoslave 7d ago
Also the issue is that it’s time capped only instead instead of having also a profit capped threshold.
- stephen_g 7d ago
  Profit cap would be unworkable, Hollywood is already famous for creative accounting… No work would ever reach it on paper (while actually making many times more).
braiamp 7d ago
It wouldn't have mattered how long copyright is if it wasn't expanded beyond the immediate economic desincentives that it is supposed to address for the most insidious problems it causes. It should be been limited exclusively to the combined right to reproduction and distribution. Yes, that means that I could reproduce the protected work without limit, so long as don't distribute it. Also means that I could distribute the protected work so long as I do only the copies I acquired. 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

jongjong 7d ago

I'm still waiting to get my first revenue from copyright content I created 10 years ago. Not everyone gets instant recognition.

OkayPhysicist 7d ago

IMO, the bigger issue is all the things copyright covers. I don't think there's a particularly damning public interest in being able to publish an author's book without paying them. For art preservation reasons, the copyright limit shouldn't be indefinite, but IMO as long as somebody's around to claim ownership, and offer a legitimate means of obtaining access to a work of art, it's not a big deal for them to have a monopoly on such. But copyright covers a lot more than just the right to produce copies of a specific work. The monopoly on derivative works serves the public significantly less. IMO, this one should taper off pretty rapidly. Maybe 20 years as is, then another 20 where you lose the ability decide who can or can't use your work, but they still owe you royalties. Then there's the clusterfuck that is software. With how rapidly the world around software changes, its protections should be substantially shorter. For derivative works of source code, I'd pitch skipping the complete monopoly step entirely. You get a decade or two where people using your software owe you royalties unless you say otherwise, then nothing.

pbhjpbhj 8d ago

Two years is too short because it won't protect from commercial exploition against a creators wishes.

modeless 8d ago
The creator is not the only person to consider here. We don't grant copyrights just to give creators a funny kind of royalty-pension they can pass to their heirs. We grant copyrights to encourage production of new works for the benefit of the public. Copyright ultimately must be judged on how well it serves the public benefit, not on how much power or wealth it gives to authors directly (at the expense of others).
- bigstrat2003 8d ago
  > We don't grant copyrights to give authors a kind of royalty-based pension for their old age and their heirs. "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.
  - modeless 8d ago
    How about "We the people", as stated in the Constitution? The Constitution itself defines the purpose of copyright, and it is not the purpose you state.
  - chii 7d ago
    > until the end of the author's life. 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.

t-writescode 8d ago

Original copyright was 14 years + 14 years - then it was changed to 28. I'd love to see it brought back down to that again.

TulliusCicero 8d ago

Just make it 20 years, like patents.

achempion 8d ago

You're free to release your own work with Creative Commons License (or any other license that shorten the copyright). > 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?

chii 8d ago
> 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.
- achempion 7d ago
  Why you want to reduce value of creative work, but not a value of other assets? I think copyright should be as long as ownership of any other asset. 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)
  - Ekaros 7d ago
    >If I spend $20m on building 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.

pmdr 7d ago

Drug patents are much more short-lived and there's arguably more money invested in drug discovery than in, say, writing a fiction novel. IMO copyright should be limited to 20-30 years. Not that LLM labs care anyway.

mschuster91 7d ago
> Drug patents are much more short-lived 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)
- joquarky 7d ago
  > the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions Seems like we are coming up on a limit where if they put that much more money into R&D + marketing, then won't be able to afford the product anyway. So this counterpoint is practically moot for all but the most wealthy people.
- philipallstar 7d ago
  > 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. I think this is an inversion of cause and effect.
- po1nt 7d ago
  Issue of pharma development is not that you need a protection from copycats. You need to pass a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy. Most of the medications are easily copyable but would take years to be able to get to the market. See insulin prices difference in europe vs US

tomp 7d ago

Harry Potter copyright is still being heavily utilized (milked?) 30 years after the first book's release.

OroPla 7d ago
But why should this be allowed? Fairy tales are still popular, but they don't have copyright either.
vaylian 7d ago
That's an outlier. Most works don't see so much public interest after such a long time.
exitb 7d ago
It would make sense to make it possible, but increasingly expensive to extend the copyright. It's fine for Disney to keep their successful creations, it just makes no sense to drag all other copyrighted works in existence along for the ride.
- dns_snek 7d ago
  You want to tip the balance even more in favour of the richest corporations? Really? We're there already, considering the cost of actually enforcing your rights, but it would be bizarre to codify that into law.
modeless 7d ago
I'm not sure what your point is. Harry Potter is in the top ten highest grossing media franchises ever. Sure, top 10 franchises make a lot of money, but they're outliers. Is it in the public interest to grant every author in the country a copyright monopoly for life + 70 so that we can ensure JK Rowling's grandchildren continue to make billions from Harry Potter? Clearly not!
kzrdude 7d ago
Now you are using the legislators' rationale that money is being made so we need to protect that, forgetting to weigh the cost for the community.

leonidasrup 7d ago

" Since 1990, The Walt Disney Company had lobbied for copyright extension. The legislation delayed the entry into the public domain of the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, leading detractors to the nickname "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act". 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. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

pigpop 7d ago
An excellent reminder that intelligence isn't a requirement to be a member of congress.
- littlecorner 7d ago
  The requirement is money and connections

cromka 7d ago

> and yet we extend copyright 70 That's an americocentric view. Copyrights are shorter around the world. In fact, iirc, US has some of the longest ones.

wallst07 7d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_duration_by_... Might want to check your facts mate.
- cromka 7d ago
  "For some categories of works, the minimum duration is shorter: for example, the minimum term for applied art is 25 years, while movies have a minimum term of 50 years. Most countries have opted for a longer term of protection, as permitted." However, I stand corrected because I was under impression they expired after 50 years in Europe, or less. Turns out the movies I had in mind were intentionally made available to public but this did not come as a result of copyright expiration. My bad.

philipallstar 7d ago

> If copyright lasted two years instead, all the problems with it would be much less severe. 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.

Patryk27 7d ago
I’m pretty sure they meant the “post death” copyright, considering the context.
_davide_ 7d ago
Unless you were paid during those five years
- philipallstar 7d ago
  Who's going to pay you to work for five years for a book that has a two-year commercial window, and even for that many people won't buy it until another company that just does printing sells it for half price two years from the first published date?
  - yorwba 7d ago
    Well, if you could somehow guarantee that your book would sell enough copies in that two-year window to make a million dollars profit, it would make sense to pay you a reasonable salary for the five years it takes you to write it. It's not completely implausible that people would pay for something that could be had for cheaper soon, considering that there are grifters selling "new editions" (with a publication date in the future, to game recency-biased search algorithms) of out-of-copyright works that are available for free elsewhere. 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.

aa-jv 7d ago

>Copyright is a monopoly that the government creates on purpose. 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 ...

sophrosyne42 7d ago
Copyright does no such thing. The copyright owner is free to alter or change their material at any time, or to discard it and force it to remain unused until it deteriorates and is destroyed (e.g. video game preservation is mostly done by copyright violators).
- aa-jv 7d ago
  Of course it does, don't be myopic. 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. A public fingerprinting/attestation service would separate the two functions we care about: 1) letting creators monetise and control commercial exploitation for a limited time, and 2) giving everyone a reliable way to verify that a given copy matches a claimed original. The second does not require a multi-generational monopoly, and I am not advocating for that. I do however believe that some social mechanism for ensuring the materials I care about land on my desk un-altered, is quite important.

grishka 7d ago

Very much this. And another problem is that the US forced most of the world to adopt similar laws through various cartels, oh, sorry, trade agreements. I distinctly remember when suddenly it was no longer okay to openly sell pirated software in Russia "because we're joining WTO". I still have no idea why we joined it.

Akronymus 7d ago
reminds me of the DMCA which was essentially forced to be approved https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY https://youtu.be/O0-j89LJysY

21asdffdsa12 7d ago

One should pay a exponential "upholding" fee doubling every year of copyright. People would be very careful with clinging to rights- when they have a yearly break even.

psychoslave 7d ago

Also the issue is that it’s time capped only instead instead of having also a profit capped threshold.

stephen_g 7d ago
Profit cap would be unworkable, Hollywood is already famous for creative accounting… No work would ever reach it on paper (while actually making many times more).

braiamp 7d ago

It wouldn't have mattered how long copyright is if it wasn't expanded beyond the immediate economic desincentives that it is supposed to address for the most insidious problems it causes. It should be been limited exclusively to the combined right to reproduction and distribution. Yes, that means that I could reproduce the protected work without limit, so long as don't distribute it. Also means that I could distribute the protected work so long as I do only the copies I acquired. 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