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.
Limit copyright to 5 years.
Abolish patents entirely.
Greed and selfishness are unacceptable foundations for any society.
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.
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?
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.
I am in favour of that.
Headline from the past: Sadly, our beloved Walt Disney died yesterday after apparent suicide by 20 knife stabs to the back.
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.
Copyright is only here because of capitalism, omce we get rid of this toxic system, copyright is simply bot required to better humanity
I very much agree that copyright is a tool to protect the wealth of the rich.
But I think the idea of restricting access to knowledge in order to benefit a select few predates capitalism. The ancient Chinese state iron and salt monopoly is the first example that comes to mind, some Greek mystery cults probably count too, even if we don’t think of that knowledge as beneficial now.
I’d guess it’s a common feature of strongly elite-dominated societies, of which capitalism is just the current model.
Anything to shorten it sounds good to me.
My idea has been that copyright shouldn’t be automatic. It needs to be registered, and renewed every 2 to 5 years. And each renewal costs twice what the last one did. Start off super cheep maybe even free. Then $5 for the first renewal, doubling each time. Eventually it becomes too expensive to bother; Even for billion dollar franchises.
So a system that removes all the power from individual authors and puts it firmly in the hands of big corporations with deepest pockets? Nah.
How’s it do that?
Because authors will run out of renewal money much quicker than conglomerates.
Not when they’re profiting off the copyrighted work.
Regardless of being owned by a person or corp. A specific copyright will reach a point where it’s not bringing in enough money to justify the expense of renewal. Corps aren’t in the habit of holding onto things that aren’t profitable. People tend to do so longer than corps.
