The first book I got published through a small traditional publishing house came out in 2008. The second came out in 2009, and my third in 2010. All three of those works, under the original definition of copyright would be under public domain.
And that would be fine by me. I've continued to write and produce genre fiction over the years, expanding upon worldbuilding fantasy I established back in those first three books and delving more and more into horror.
If those three works had been my only works, I might feel differently, sure. But as I create more, I'm always trying to learn and improve; those earlier works becoming public domain wouldn't hurt me any, as I'm a small-timer.
First, fourteen years is probably too short. I'd argue for something more like the longer of twenty-one years or the life of the author. That's long enough to preserve most of the monetary incentives that copyright is supposed to provide, but it really does limit them to the creators themselves. Quasi-immortal publishing empires and literary estates would be a thing of the past.
But second, and more importantly, copyright isn't just about financial incentives. It's also about preserving the integrity of the relationship between creator and audience. For fictional works, this is arguably not that big of a deal. But for non-fiction works (and especially for things like software) it's actually enormously important. Lack of meaningful copyright protection is why Wikipedia is an inherently unreliable (and, indeed, manipulable) source of information. There's no easy, robust way of telling who has written what, and whether the material you're reading is, in fact, what any given author actually wrote.
Concrete example: No small part of the trouble Galileo had convincing people about the validity of his lunar observations because Siderius Nuncius was so widely--and badly!--pirated. The text was, for the most part, more-or-less accurate. But the most critical part was his engravings of his observations of the moon, which unscrupulous/unskilled pirate printers did not accurately reproduce (which was, it must be said, a very difficult technical challenge in the sixteenth century). The resulting images (sometimes upside-down and/or backwards!) were obviously different from the actual moon. The resulting this discrepancy cast doubt on the accuracy of the entire book.
Unfortunately, it was only possible to tell a genuine copy from a pirated one if one possessed a verifiably genuine copy to begin with. Given the basic lack of any copyright enforcement regime at the time, this meant having one delivered personally be Galileo himself.
These days, reproducing text and images is trivially easy. If anything, that makes the problem worse. Think of copyright laws as legally binding version control. In the absence of such, there's really no way to determine basic authorship information, let alone accuracy and authenticity, about any written work.
Thank you!!!! Moron republican don’t push this…I believe 50% of streaming on the services is old movies…if you were to end copyright after 10-18 years they’d be free to watch and no need to fund new woke projects everyone watches.
The length of copyright protections should be shortened considerably, maybe 20 years or until the author dies, whichever occurs first. Another serious cultural threat is posed by immortal "charitable foundations, trusts, endowments & etc." . . . the incredible mischief that those entities create is staggering. The aforementioned entities should expire after a time, all assets which have not been given away after 50 years, forfeit to the treasury. And finally, public for profit corporations should be prohibited from ever donating anything of value.
50 years is probably more reasonable. No life of the author provision, however. Collect while you can.
Or, better yet, you get the first 25 years for free, and then you pay a tax based on your stated value. This tax rate goes up as the copyright ages. If someone pays twice your stated value, they get to own the copyright. if they pay the stated value they can put it into the public domain.
Oh, and you have to provide an archival copy in order to extend the copyright past 25 years. No suppression through destruction. (Rather relevant for films.)
Some times I think about Bill Cody and Sitting Bull's wild west traveling circus. Sitting Bull would lead a procession of his veterans into the arena and mount up for a gallop to fall off their horses. After the show the tent stakes were packed up for the train headed tor the next town to do the show again, again and again.
Looking around, one would begin to wonder what the heck is going on?
I have a library of Golden Age classical records (late 50's to late 70s) on vinyl. The original media are magnetic tapes stored in the corporate library.
The copyright owners will sometimes license the tapes to re-issuers to make new vinyl records that can meet or exceed the original issues in sonic quality. Whether the original content by such musicians like Bernstein, von Karajan, Heifitz, the Julliard string quartet, etc is better than current recording artists is an open question, it is culturally beneficial to be able to hear the differences in interpretation and evolution of style.
In Europe, the copyright duration is shorter so a number of record labels now just rip off the music from a CD or an old vinyl records by digitizing it and repressing on new vinyl, seldom of the same sonic quality.
In this case, a long copyright period is advantageous to the music consumer as those magnetic tape storage facilities are an expense that needs to be paid for from the licensing rights.
I certainly see your arguments but would like to point out that there are perhaps hidden angles to the issue.
I’m sorry that you got pushed off of twitter. It is a bad thing, and I disagree with that. We have to be able to talk to each other, even when we don’t agree.
And it is churlish to do this when twitter is irreplaceable for a creative or a media person. Again, I’m sorry that this happened to you. Hang in there. I hope you can project your voice here on Substack
Copyright is all very well. But ultimately, these products need to sell. A “purple haired girl boss” needs to find consumers willing to consume that content. If the original media property needs to be fragmented to appeal to a wider audience, then this is a business decision, and I don’t think it’s a cultural
The first book I got published through a small traditional publishing house came out in 2008. The second came out in 2009, and my third in 2010. All three of those works, under the original definition of copyright would be under public domain.
And that would be fine by me. I've continued to write and produce genre fiction over the years, expanding upon worldbuilding fantasy I established back in those first three books and delving more and more into horror.
If those three works had been my only works, I might feel differently, sure. But as I create more, I'm always trying to learn and improve; those earlier works becoming public domain wouldn't hurt me any, as I'm a small-timer.
I'm rambling, sorry.
No this is my attitude as well. I think a book should be allowed to make money for a time. If it "goes viral" afterward, well, that's marketing.
I wrote about copyright when I was a law student.
Two observations.
First, fourteen years is probably too short. I'd argue for something more like the longer of twenty-one years or the life of the author. That's long enough to preserve most of the monetary incentives that copyright is supposed to provide, but it really does limit them to the creators themselves. Quasi-immortal publishing empires and literary estates would be a thing of the past.
But second, and more importantly, copyright isn't just about financial incentives. It's also about preserving the integrity of the relationship between creator and audience. For fictional works, this is arguably not that big of a deal. But for non-fiction works (and especially for things like software) it's actually enormously important. Lack of meaningful copyright protection is why Wikipedia is an inherently unreliable (and, indeed, manipulable) source of information. There's no easy, robust way of telling who has written what, and whether the material you're reading is, in fact, what any given author actually wrote.
Concrete example: No small part of the trouble Galileo had convincing people about the validity of his lunar observations because Siderius Nuncius was so widely--and badly!--pirated. The text was, for the most part, more-or-less accurate. But the most critical part was his engravings of his observations of the moon, which unscrupulous/unskilled pirate printers did not accurately reproduce (which was, it must be said, a very difficult technical challenge in the sixteenth century). The resulting images (sometimes upside-down and/or backwards!) were obviously different from the actual moon. The resulting this discrepancy cast doubt on the accuracy of the entire book.
Unfortunately, it was only possible to tell a genuine copy from a pirated one if one possessed a verifiably genuine copy to begin with. Given the basic lack of any copyright enforcement regime at the time, this meant having one delivered personally be Galileo himself.
These days, reproducing text and images is trivially easy. If anything, that makes the problem worse. Think of copyright laws as legally binding version control. In the absence of such, there's really no way to determine basic authorship information, let alone accuracy and authenticity, about any written work.
Thank you!!!! Moron republican don’t push this…I believe 50% of streaming on the services is old movies…if you were to end copyright after 10-18 years they’d be free to watch and no need to fund new woke projects everyone watches.
Exactly
The length of copyright protections should be shortened considerably, maybe 20 years or until the author dies, whichever occurs first. Another serious cultural threat is posed by immortal "charitable foundations, trusts, endowments & etc." . . . the incredible mischief that those entities create is staggering. The aforementioned entities should expire after a time, all assets which have not been given away after 50 years, forfeit to the treasury. And finally, public for profit corporations should be prohibited from ever donating anything of value.
Yes 501c3's are a huge problem. They weild tax free political power
I was going to comment "yesh buuut akshually, life copyright is better bicous blah blah blah" than i revert to a simpler: bravo!
Based!
political warfare. cultural warfare. the acme of skill….without fighting.
50 years is probably more reasonable. No life of the author provision, however. Collect while you can.
Or, better yet, you get the first 25 years for free, and then you pay a tax based on your stated value. This tax rate goes up as the copyright ages. If someone pays twice your stated value, they get to own the copyright. if they pay the stated value they can put it into the public domain.
Oh, and you have to provide an archival copy in order to extend the copyright past 25 years. No suppression through destruction. (Rather relevant for films.)
Some times I think about Bill Cody and Sitting Bull's wild west traveling circus. Sitting Bull would lead a procession of his veterans into the arena and mount up for a gallop to fall off their horses. After the show the tent stakes were packed up for the train headed tor the next town to do the show again, again and again.
Looking around, one would begin to wonder what the heck is going on?
Any discussion of this topic that doesn't mention Stephan Kinsella
https://mises.org/library/book/against-intellectual-property
And Nina Paley
https://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/12/07/make-art-not-law-2/
Is incomplete
I have a library of Golden Age classical records (late 50's to late 70s) on vinyl. The original media are magnetic tapes stored in the corporate library.
The copyright owners will sometimes license the tapes to re-issuers to make new vinyl records that can meet or exceed the original issues in sonic quality. Whether the original content by such musicians like Bernstein, von Karajan, Heifitz, the Julliard string quartet, etc is better than current recording artists is an open question, it is culturally beneficial to be able to hear the differences in interpretation and evolution of style.
In Europe, the copyright duration is shorter so a number of record labels now just rip off the music from a CD or an old vinyl records by digitizing it and repressing on new vinyl, seldom of the same sonic quality.
In this case, a long copyright period is advantageous to the music consumer as those magnetic tape storage facilities are an expense that needs to be paid for from the licensing rights.
I certainly see your arguments but would like to point out that there are perhaps hidden angles to the issue.
I’m sorry that you got pushed off of twitter. It is a bad thing, and I disagree with that. We have to be able to talk to each other, even when we don’t agree.
And it is churlish to do this when twitter is irreplaceable for a creative or a media person. Again, I’m sorry that this happened to you. Hang in there. I hope you can project your voice here on Substack
30 years
Make it an even 14. If it goes viral after that point then that is marketing!
Copyright is all very well. But ultimately, these products need to sell. A “purple haired girl boss” needs to find consumers willing to consume that content. If the original media property needs to be fragmented to appeal to a wider audience, then this is a business decision, and I don’t think it’s a cultural
One.
Having a multi billion dollar platform launch your work is a huge market advantage.