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I think most lawmakers have lost sight of the fact the original mandate of the entire legal concept of IP in the United States is explicitly to foster creative output for public good. Intellectual property was given legal enforcement as a necessity for adding to the public domain. Nowadays they act as if it were the opposite, the public domain being a "necessary evil" to keep the plebs happy.
I see this as a symptom of the stranglehold that money has on policymaking. Creative output is seen not as good because of the positive effects that creative expression has on people (both makers and consumers), but because it is a method to make money. The balance then turns towards the "creatives" that have money (Disney), rather than the not-yet-established makers that could re-mix or create derived works based on public domain content.
Policy making determines who makes money. As such, it will ALWAYS attract those looking to profit by influencing the process, aka regulatory capture. aka corruption.
This is inescapable so long there are regulators and so long it involves humans. Any system that does not heavily accept and model itself against the potential for corruption is naive. If its not trustless, decentralized and emergent from the bottom up it doomed to eventual capture.
How does decentralization enable accountability? What prevents a corrupt party from conspiring towards and achieving a 51% attack on a "decentralized", "trustless" blockchain? Or other attempts to "beat the system" even if blockchains aren't involved.
>Policy making determines who makes money. As such, it will ALWAYS attract those looking to profit by influencing the process, aka regulatory capture. aka corruption.
I agree wit this part.
>This is inescapable so long there are regulators and so long it involves humans.
I don't agree with this part. Our nation has gone through periods of more corruption and less corruption. It's pretty simple to get back to a period of less corruption: keep voting out the incumbents. Will the people who replace them be corrupt? It's certainly possible, but we know the ones currently holding office are corrupt. Furthermore, when we have fresh politicians, because they are new to office, they won't have such intrenched interests. We will never get another TR, FDR or LBJ when someone corrupt is holding their seat of power.
You canât vote out the corruption, because much of it is enmeshed in bureaucratic appointments and institutions. The government as a whole needs to be flushed out, from top to bottom, but these parasites are dug in too good to remove without killing parts of the host. Personally, I am completely okay with that scenario: defund the government.
The people currently in office certainly won't defund themselves. We'd still have to replace them by voting out the incumbents for there ever to be a chance of shrinking these massive bureaucracies (think TSA, DHS, FBI, etc). Also there is an institutional culture of corruption in congress that can only be removed by clearing house. Think of it as citizen imposed congressional term limits. That should be the default as opposed to incumbent winning 90+% of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_stagnation_in_th...
Iâm curious why you list LBJ alongside FDR. I see the former as guiding the US further into a pointless cold war which JFK seemed to want to put to bed.
LBJ's domestic programs were overshadowed by the Vietnam War. Vietnam would unfortunately come to dominate his legacy. Some of his big domestic successes were: Medicare, Medicaid, War on Poverty, and the Civil Rights Act. I would argue he was the last "common man" Democrat. He also grew up dirt poor.
https://millercenter.org/president/lbjohnson/domestic-affair...
Historians are doubtful that had JFK lived, the US involvement in Vietnam would be much different. It's interesting that history gives him a pass since he also escalated the war as well.
https://bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vi...
LBJ recorded most of his phone conversations for historical record. They are pretty interesting.
https://www.discoverlbj.org/exhibits/show/loh/telecon
Kind of ironic that Disney leveraged so much public domain material to build its empire. A bit of pulling the ladder up after themselves.
I think there's an element of national economy to it...
When country A public domains some IP, then country B might use it to earn money.
Whereas if Country A allows company A within the country to keep a license to that IP, total revenue might be lower, but at least it occurred within country A.
Licenses are just paper. Country A has very little recourse if Country B decides not to honor the intellectual property laws of Country A. The most that can be done is an embargo/sanction, which may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff for country B, depending on the IP in question.
USA IP laws are stuck to in most of the developed world. There are a lot of trade deals that have the enforcement of IP laws globally as a condition.
If I am in the US and someone in a foreign country infringes my IP I almost definitely cannot sue them for copyright infringement in the US.
You can usually sue them in their country though, which normally will enforce US copyright.
You can also prevent them bringing any of their product into the USA through US courts.
This only applies to IP owned by megacorps with armies of lobbyists.
> Country A has very little recourse if Country B decides not to honor the intellectual property laws of Country A. The most that can be done is an embargo/sanction, which may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff for country B, depending on the IP in question.
Embargo/sanctions are... quite a big deal? They will absolutely never be a worthwhile tradeoff for country B.
Not always true. For country B = China, which has has plenty of trading power of its own, embargoes/sanctions can hurt the US, so that stick must be used sparingly. For country B = Cuba/Iran/North Korea/Venezuela, they are already under heavy embargoes/sanctions by the US, so why should they care about US intellectual property laws?
Greed, plain and simple.
It surely is and always was to protect a return on investment?
I think that's getting things backwards. The goal in the Constitution is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" so IMO the goal has always been the advancement of culture and sciences by allowing a brief period of protected money making followed by releasing the idea to be used by other people.
Imagine how much slower we would advance if patents were given the same Life + 70 years. No invention that comes out in your lifetime would be accessible to be iterated on without paying the inventor in your or your kids lifetimes! That's where we are with copyrights and there were decades where no new works entered the public domain because of how long extensions were granted. 1925 works are just now entering the public domain.
> [The Congress shall have power] âTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.â
Yes, but that return on investment was simply a mechanism, not a goal in itself.
It also was limited. The continuum between self-interest and greed was marked off quite differently then.
It was surely to design a system of continual innovation that ensures the public domain received its due benefit from providing the environment in which the idea was created, while guaranteeing sufficient incentive to innovate by providing a reasonable but modest term for individuals to profit from their ideas.
Selecting a subset of its mechanisms and declaring that it is the goal misses the entire point of the policy.
Why did things go so off the rails after WWII? I do not think Disney did this alone.
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously"
Benjamin Franklin.
Nowadays thatâs called âsocialismâ and highly denigrated.
Peasants were an investment back when peoole were poperty
This perpetual copyright extension fails to take into account the public's investment and contribution to keeping characters such as Mickey Mouse relevant. It really should be public property by now.
Another example although, thankfully sanity eventually prevailed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
> the public's investment and contribution to keeping characters such as Mickey Mouse relevant
Such as?
Fandom, ensuring the works stay in the public consciousness. If it weren't for the fans who have enjoyed Mickey Mouse over the years, he wouldn't be relevant _at all_. Imagine if Mickey had been a total flop. We'd be lucky if any Mickey Mouse stuff survived. This is not hyperbole, there are tons of lost media franchises _today_ because they weren't popular and nobody cared to preserve them.
Why is this greyed out? Itâs a fair question and not clear to me either what the OP is referring to
I think it is unreasonable to ask for iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, who still see regular content, to fall into public domain because they've become more analogous to a trademark (Mickey Mouse might even be trademarked?). However original media like the 1920s Mickey Mouse cartoon "Steamboat Willie", absolutely should.
I look at like how a song might be in public domain but that doesn't mean the singers voice is. Likewise for actors vs TV shows.
edit: getting downvoted but no explanation why people disagree. I'd love to hear why
edit 2: there seems to be some confusion about my statement above. I don't like nor agree with how Disney 'steal' public domain stories. I don't like nor agree with how Disney extend copyright. However there is a difference between published works (like the 1920s cartoon exampled above) and a mascot that is a trademark and still in common use (like Mickey Mouse). And that is the only point I'm arguing. You can just assume I'd agree to all the other points about how "Disney is evil" etc because I've made those exact same points myself in other conversations in the past (eg
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26805071
)
Honestly I care less about Mickey and more about nearly everything else Disney has made where they took stories from the Public Domain, remixed them and then lock them down and sue anyone else whose remixes are too close to theirs. There should be extra limitations for those things that have originally come from the public domain perhaps, or a block on extensions at least.
I agree it is immoral how they've done that but in fairness we are still free to use those public domain stories as well. We just cannot use characters in the same likeness as those created by Disney. Which would be fair if it wasn't for the problem that Disney have managed to become the default version for those stories and how aggressively they defend their IPs.
I've often commented that Disney are hugely hypocritical pushing for lengthened copyright periods and buying up intellectual property when they've built their fortune off public domain works. But such comments are usually replied with "companies don't care about hypocrisy" or something equally trite.
>I look at like how a song might be in public domain but that doesn't mean the singers voice is. Likewise for actors vs TV shows.
There is a crucial difference between a voice and a character here. Characters (any creative work) are not created in a cultural vacuum.
It's actually especially egregious with Disney too, since their business model to no small degree is grabbing a piece of popular culture and transforming it into a Disney product, the company we know today wouldn't be anywhere near what it is without public domain to begin with. Disney got content from it, it profited from it, and now it must , in my opinion, give back.
There is hubris in the term "creator". Nobody is culturally a creator, merely a transformer.
> _There is a crucial difference between a voice and a character here._
Oh there will be loads of subtle differences. I wasn't claiming it to be a perfect comparison but rather than illustration of how IP is complicated and how a single piece of work might have multiple different strands of IP against it.
> _Characters (any creative work) are not created in a cultural vacuum._
Nothing we create is done so in a cultural vacuum. So I agree with your statement but not really sure how it applies (or even adds anything) to the discussion.
> _It's actually especially egregious with Disney too, since their business model to no small degree is grabbing a piece of popular culture and transforming it into a Disney product, the company we know today wouldn't be anywhere near what it is without public domain to begin with._
I made that same point too
> _Disney got content from it, it profited from it, and now it must , in my opinion, give back._
Here is my issue. We cannot and should not make specific exceptions for specific companies because we do not like them. I fully agree there needs to be a copyright reform that works for consumers, but it should be applied equally for everyone and not have some rules for one company but Disney has a different set of rules "because they're bad".
> _There is hubris in the term "creator". Nobody is culturally a creator, merely a transformer._
This is a philosophical point and one that would be fun to debate in the pub over a pint. However it doesn't add anything to this particular discussion.
Mickey Mouse already is a trademark. So even in public domain you already can't make a cartoon mouse and call him Mickey Mouse.
> I think it is unreasonable to ask for iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, who still see regular content
Why not? Maybe it will encourage creativity and corporations will be forced to create new things. Copyright's only base for existence is encouraging creating creative works after all.
Note that you can't use elements still under copyright, e.g. his modern appearance won't be public domain once Steamboat Willie enters it.
> _Why not? Maybe it will encourage creativity and corporations will be forced to create new things._
Because Mickey Mouse is an icon, a mascot, a trademark, and one that is in active use in new media. So there is some sense in companies protecting that asset. Which is what is happening if these types of characters are covered under trademark law (I wasn't sure if that was the case when I made my earlier post).
I might dislike Disney as an org but I also don't think it's fair to say it's "creative" for other people to use that asset but not "creative" for Disney to reuse it. You're setting different standards for different people.
> _Copyright's only base for existence is encouraging creating creative works after all._
Copyright is an English invention and the purpose of it has evolved multiple times over the years. Originally it was intended to prevent scandalous pamphlets rather than promoting creative works. Later it was used like patents where authors could recover the costs of publishing before those stories became free for the masses. It wasn't created to encourage creating creative works because people used to do that long before the printing press, eg by passing stories down by word of mouth.
> _Note that you can't use elements still under copyright, e.g. his modern appearance won't be public domain once Steamboat Willie enters it._
Indeed. But I was responding to the OPs point about how they believed copyright _should_ behave rather than how it currently does.
Patents last 20 years. Mickey Mouse has been copyrighted for nearly a century - more than most human lifetimes - how long is âfairâ for a government granted monopoly to one of the worlds richest corporations? Especially one busily buying up IP after IP that it did not originally create?
The natural conclusion of your principle here is eternal corporate copyright. When would you be comfortable with Mickey Mouse (or anything else) going public domain? 200 years? 300? Should it ever?
> _Patents last 20 years. Mickey Mouse has been copyrighted for nearly a century - more than most human lifetimes_
My point is that Mickey Mouse is a trademark. An Apple patent expiring doesn't allow people to using Apple logos. Likewise a Disney copyright expiring shouldn't allow people to use Mickey Mouse.
The cartoons themselves and any characters that aren't still in regular use is fair game.
> _how long is âfairâ for a government granted monopoly to one of the worlds richest corporations? Especially one busily buying up IP after IP that it did not originally create?_
I agree it sucks, but this is why we need to make sure we understand the difference between content and trademarks. eg anyone can make a movie about Thor since that folk story is public domain. And I agree the copyright on content like the Marvel Universe movies shouldn't be around 100 years (I forget the exact duration, but it's always being extended anyway -- which I also disagree with by the way).
> _The natural conclusion of your principle here is eternal corporate copyright._
No, that's literally the exact opposite of what I'm saying!! I'm saying that the character "Mickey Mouse" should have different rules applied _because_ he is more than just a creative figure. Because he is a trademark. And thus trademark rules should apply to him in addition to copyright rules. However any content with Mickey Mouse in should be public domain after a reasonable period and that period currently is not reasonable.
Music has similar distinctions. A song will have different copyrights on it, for the performance, for the writing, possibly any artwork (eg album cover).
> _When would you be comfortable with Mickey Mouse (or anything else) going public domain? 200 years? 300? Should it ever?_
Personally I think 20 years is reasonable for the cartoons. For the mascot, he should be trademarked (and is), so as long as Disney are using his likeness.
How does it work for "Sherlock Holmes"? He is in that boat already. The last novel was published in 1927 so still copyrighted, but most of it is public domain. Considering you can still buy the novels you would think his name and appearance would be trademarkable, but shows and movies are in the clear as long as they stick to the public domain part of the lore.
If the author had succesfully registered Sherlock Holmes as a trademark back in 1875, and kept efforts at protecting and re-reggistering that trademark continuously, then yes it should be a trademark, just like Bass is. A trademark isn't just the name "Bass" though, but clearly if someone else created a beer called Bass they'd have a job on to explain how it's not the same Bass that Bass trademarked.
Trademarks protect the consumer as much as the buyer. The only reason someone would want to put two "golden arches" on their burger joint is to make people think it's mcdonalds. That's bad for mcdonalds the company sure, but it's also bad for the customer who thinks they're getting a certain "standard", and do not deserve a counterfeit good.
If the concern is the protection of the consumer then why not just grant an enforceable "Authentic" badge? The consumer can see then what is and isn't legitimate. Companies will certainly capitalise and make said badge prominent and bring to court those that falsely use it.
The consumer is protected, the company has recognisable authority and the concept exists within public space.
That's what a trademark is
That's a really interesting point :)
I guess the biggest distinction between Sherlock Holmes and Mickey Mouse (aside the estates that own them) is that Mickey is a design as much as a character. The 3 circled motif is iconic enough that there is an ongoing spat between Disney and Deadmau5 -- though I do side with Deadmau5 on that, if just as a middle finger to Disney :D
I'm not suggesting law should stipulate that fictional characters need a design before they can be trademarked nor that Mickey Mouse shouldn't be trademarkable. Just that there is definitely an unclear grey area and I don't really know the answer to your question. But it is a very good question that gave me pause for thought.
I should be able to use Mickey to promote a car dealership. Anything that's not a competing media organization, really.
Why should you? Why should copyright by applied differently for car dealerships vs Disney?
What you're describing is most closely described as trademarks but even there, you couldn't use Apple's name and logo to promote something in a non-competing sector. The best you could do is have a name or logo that was similar but which couldn't be confused with Apple, as well as being in a non-competing sector. Using Mickey Mouse wouldn't to promote new or used cars wouldn't even fly under trademark laws because you're using _the_ trademark rather than a similar but unrelated one.
"Because Mickey Mouse is an icon, a mascot, a trademark, and one that is in active use in new media. So there is some sense in companies protecting that asset. Which is what is happening if these types of characters are covered under trademark law (I wasn't sure if that was the case when I made my earlier post)."
So they can still protect it under Trademark... what does that have to do with their copyrights?
> _So they can still protect it under Trademark... what does that have to do with their copyrights?_
Nothing. The point was about Mickey Mouse being public domain. If something is trademarked then it is not.
I just expressed that point very badly thus leading to discussions conflating copyright and trademark.
It is in the public domain. You can play the cartoons in your bar, you can sample the recordings, etc, etc. You cannot violate the trademark which is different than violating the copyright which you still do not seem to understand. To violate a trademark you have to TRADE under the MARK. If you aren't purporting to be Disney or to use the Mickey Mouse trademark to confuse customers into thinking you are Disney, then you aren't violating a trademark. It might behoove you to do some minor research on the law if you are going to type pages about it here.
> _It is in the public domain._
Not by the accepted definition of "public domain":
"The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply." -- Wikipedia
Trademarks are specifically listed as a form of intellectual property that does apply within that article as well.
> _You can play the cartoons in your bar, you can sample the recordings, etc, etc. You cannot violate the trademark which is different than violating the copyright which you still do not seem to understand._
I do understand that actually; but we weren't discussing the technicalities of _how_ you violate IP. I was discussing _why_ Mickey Mouse shouldn't be in the public domain.
> _If you aren't purporting to be Disney or to use the Mickey Mouse trademark to confuse customers into thinking you are Disney, then you aren't violating a trademark._
In theory, yes. But companies have successfully upheld trademark disputes where one could reasonably say no confusion exists. Plus the threat of legal action from Disney (even if it wouldn't be upheld) is enough to bend people to their will. So in practice it's not so simple.
> _It might behoove you to do some minor research on the law if you are going to type pages about it here._
That's ironic given your points are more factually inaccurate than mine!
Also there's no need for that tone in your post. We are all peers.
"I do understand that actually; but we weren't discussing the technicalities of how you violate IP. I was discussing why Mickey Mouse shouldn't be in the public domain."
That's not violating a trademark. You can research what violating a trademark entails if you are confused.
Did you actually read their comment before replying or are you just here to troll? Because your comment here is even more nonsensical than your previous one.
It's not nonsensical. That guy is conflating violating a copyright with violating a trademark. There are many things you cannot do now because of the copyright that would not be violating the trademark, I even gave examples. Rather than acknowledge this, he doesn't.
> It's not nonsensical.
It had nothing to do with the passage you were quoting. So yes it was nonsensical.
> That guy is conflating violating a copyright with violating a trademark
You keep saying that but Iâve not seen anyone discuss IP violations apart from you.
They didnât even mention copyright, the OP was discussing trademark preventing Mickey Mouse from being public domain. Ok they lacked eloquence but at least they werenât making bullshit up like you were.
> I even gave examples. Rather than acknowledge this, he doesn't.
They literally replied to it. Which is more than you deserved given it was a stupid straw man argument.
By the way, what makes you so sure they identify themselves as âheâ? Another of many assumptions youâve made about them today.
That must be a new record for the number of straw man arguments in a single reply!
Public domain typically does centre around copyright but itâs not exclusive to copyright. So in a way youâre right. But in a more correct way youâre not.
As for the rest of your reply, sure. Itâs a tangent but at least youâre semi-accurate.
"edit: getting downvoted but no explanation why people disagree. I'd love to hear why"
Here's one reason:
"I look at like how a song might be in public domain but that doesn't mean the singers voice is. Likewise for actors vs TV shows."
Singers voices aren't copyrightable. They could be trademarked. You simply just mistake trademarks for copyrights.
> > _"I look at like how a song might be in public domain but that doesn't mean the singers voice is. Likewise for actors vs TV shows."_
> _Singers voices aren't copyrightable. They could be trademarked._
That's my point ;)
> _You simply just mistake trademarks for copyrights._
No, I'm not. I was talking about the public domain not copyright in that quote. You're the one conflating two things: If something is trademarked but not under copyright then it still isn't in the public domain.
Though I will accept some blame because I could have made my post clearer.
You can have simultaneous copyrights and trademarks, they protect different aspects.
This is your 5th comment making the same accusation and the 5th time I've said I know there is a difference and wasn't trying to conflate copyright with trademarks. It's also the 5th time you've got muddled over what public domain means (since that was the actual language I used) and thus the 5th time that you've gotten confused over the topic. And worst of all, it's 5th time you've proceeded to lecture me about something that wasn't even in contention to begin with.
I do acknowledge my opening post was pretty poorly written. It was rushed so I didn't really compose it properly, more just brain-farted some words into HN. Had I expected the conversation it would then generate I'd have spent more time on it. However that doesn't excuse the barrage patronising strawman arguments you've attacked me with. There's 2 or 3 replies from you just to my OP, never mind deeper in the thread.
I think it might me interesting to ask the HN crowd: if you were to fix copyright, how long would it last and why?
I like a fixed term of around 50 years. That's long enough for a creator to monetize a work over a majority of their adult lifetime, but short enough that people would have the unrestricted opportunity to remix works they enjoyed in their youth later in life.
I have a proposal that allows for indefinite copyright, but also with a tax regime that would require someone to pay for this right handsomely.
1. 14 years automatic copyright (enough time for anyone to file registration paperwork)
2. Free 14 year renewal, to 28 years on formal registration.
3. After that, taxing it like regular property - a valuation must be created on which it is taxed like other real property at a reasonable rate, and with the caveat that anyone can buy the rights for that valuation, and then either keep paying tax or let it lapse into public domain. This is like the government buying a piece of land at assessed value if they need to build a public work.
4. Tax in 4 goes up over time, starting at say 1% of valuation yearly up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years.
Don't pay the tax, copyright lapses and enters public domain. Value too low, someone buys your copyright out. The end result would be that most normal copyrights last 28 years, before the tax comes into effect.
Also, Mickey Mouse can be held in copyright for perpetuity, but Disney has to pay a lot for this right and continually increase the valuation/tax if someone wants to buy it from them.
I agree with point 1 and point 2 should really be to the end of the original author's lifetime, or 40 years if it's the work of a corporation i.e. a work for hire.
Additionally, the renewal should cost (2 * i)^n dollars for each year beyond that, where i is the inflation adjustment and n is the number of years. You want to preserve your copyright for 10 years? Fine, it'll only cost you ~$2k. You want to extend it for 30 years? That'll be a billion dollars, please. The original author no longer cares, and their offspring have had their chance to profit from it and start to create something new. Having an idea first shouldn't grant you and your bloodline (or shareholders) exclusive right to it forever.
That's an interesting way to do it. When you write "up to 10% of valuation yearly after 100 years", do you mean there should be a cap?
I like the idea of no cap, and a fairly aggressive schedule that would make keeping a copyright longer than a human lifetime almost universally unprofitable.
Even without an escalating charge it's interesting - as if you put the value too high you're paying more than you want, put it low and a competitor will buy you out.
Take the entire Star Wars canon for example, say they put the value at $10b, netflix could buy it relatively easily, but a 1% tax would mean Disney have to pay $1b a decade just to keep it registered. Bump that to $50b though and it will cost $5b a decade to register. Drop it to $100m and some individuals might buy it just for shits and giggles.
If the tax is 10% of value, wonât it always be worth renewing as when it gets less valuable the tax goes down towards 0?
Add in a minimum processing fee of $20, or a minimum valuation.
The point is to make the cost of retaining a copyright over time non-zero and subject to tax, so people aren't incentivized to retain copyright on everything for no cost.
Maybe, but it seems like these kind of things mutate into protection rackets for the big guys to get all benefit out of the system. By requiring a minimum for protection.
Works at first then they shift the laws and make it legally complicated and require scale.
To amend this a bit:
* In order to sue for any copyright violation it must be both registered and the current owner kept up-to-date in a publicly-accessible registry. That way if you want to know who owns the copyright to any given thing you can do a quick search. Incorrect ownership records should result in the forfeit of the copyright.
* Provide a central notification system for all copyright claims. So to file the equivalent of a DMCA takedown notice a copyright holder would have to file the claim in the government-run system (i.e. not some unregulated 3rd party system). This would require that they keep their ownership records up to date.
* Penalties for false claims and should be severe. Akin to tax fraud.
* The sale of any and all copyrights must be recorded in the system and the sale price should be recorded for tax purposes. No different than filing the sale of a home with your state/local authorities. Note: This isn't the same as selling licenses to said copyrights.
We also need serious reform of statutory values for copyright violations. Copying a file (say, a song) is most definitely _not_ worthy of a $750 punishment let alone $30,000 (the current statutory values for _registered_ copyright violations). These values should also not compound based on the number of works that were copied. A single individual could copy (aka "distribute") 1000 books in a few seconds but there's no way that this is worth $750,000 (minimum) of damages to the owner of those copyrights.
Agreed - I think using copyright fees to pay for these goals would be idea.
Additionally, making sure that archival copies are kept when a copyright is registered, so we don't lose works over time would be a great idea.
The US patent system previously required a working model and diagrams to be submitted to prevent knowledge loss - this would extend that to cultural works.
I'd like to see a way out of the chilling-effect that current copyright law has. Maybe a strong safe-harbor provision for individuals acting as individuals?
One problem with a tax (morally speaking, as the world continues to globalize) is that it mostly benefits citizens of the copyright holder's country of origin, whereas the value of the public domain is global (assuming copyright treaties).
Also, buying out copyright against the valuation seems like a good market incentive to have an accurate valuation, but I'd argue that the original creator should at least retain some license (e.g. to create derived works).
> I'd argue that the original creator should at least retain some licenseâŠ
I'd argue that the buyout should always be for the public domain. The buyer gets the right to use it (as a member of the public) but not exclusivity.
Then again, I'd also argue that copyright should not be granted in the first placeâŠ
It is important to note that buyout terms like this do not necessarily result in accurate valuations. Consider the chaos that would ensue if anyone could buy your home simply by paying the going rate for similar homes in your areaâit may be just another house to them, but to you it's _your_ home and an unplanned move would be a major inconvenience and expense, not to mention the emotional cost. People would naturally tend to set a buyout price well above the market price on their primary residence to avoid having their home bought out from under them, and to an extent the same would apply to other items such as copyright privileges. The end result is that 10% of the buyout price will generally be much more than 10% of the price the item would be likely to sell for on the open market, and may even exceed the market price of the good. You can compensate for that somewhat by lowering the tax rate, but since the degree of attachment varies from one individual to another it would be difficult to set a uniform rate that would be considered fair for everyone.
There are good reasons why eminent domain is not an option available to just anyone, and in most cases is only used where there is an overriding public interest in that specific property such as being in the path of a road or other infrastructure project which cannot simply be diverted elsewhere. Even then I would disagree with it as applied to regular property where there are natural rights involved. Copyright is a different matter, however, as an artificial creation of government. They can revoke those privileges at any time, without giving any justification or compensation. The buyout option allows them to continue using copyright as an incentive while reducing the impact to the publicâhopefully as a first step toward phasing it out altogether.
Your analogy fails because copyright going to public domain doesn't deprive the original owner of it's uses, only from the monopoly on rent-seeking.
Much more like "You have to pay 1% of the price of your house per year to prevent others from using the _same blueprint to make an identical house_" - you still can use your house, but others can utilize that information as well without your ability to stop that productivity.
Perhaps you meant to respond to another comment, but I don't see any connection between your objection to my analogy and the original point. I did refer to housing but only as an example of a good where the market price for similar goods is not a perfect substitute for the original item from the owner's point of view, creating an incentive for the owner to set a higher buyout price. Losing the copyright doesn't mean losing access to the work, trueânothing like needing to find alternate shelter on short noticeâbut it does mean losing _control_ and that would most likely lead many copyright holders to set a higher buyout price than the going market rate. This aspect is similar to the emotional investment in a home which makes it worth more to an owner (with no plans to sell) than it would be worth to a stranger evaluating it on purely financial grounds.
Judging from your phrases "monopoly on rent-seeking" and "ability to stop that productivity", I suspect we're approaching this from similar mindsets. As I said before, if it were up to me I would not grant copyright in the first place. Requiring payment for copyright privileges and creating an option for the public to buy out the copyright holder are steps in the right direction. However, I wouldn't want to see the same eminent domain model applied to true property, such as real estate, under the mistaken assumption that it results in an accurate valuation for tax purposes.
The valuation idea was to make implementation simple.
Another option would be a revenue-based approach where any money earned through copyright ownership would be subject to a licensing tax.
This could be more easily spread around to multiple countries taxing within their jurisdiction, but would also get into hairy issues when multiple copyright applied to a single piece of media - how would a movie or game full of 3rd party characters like Kingdom Hearts, Wreck it Ralph, or Ready Player One split the value of each individual IP works within it for tax purposes?
Isn't any money flowing from a valuable IP already taxed? Also, your system is absurd if a copyright owner is forced to sell to the highest bidder when they didn't put anything up for sale.
> Also, Mickey Mouse can be held in copyright for perpetuity, but Disney has to pay a lot for this right and continually increase the valuation/tax if someone wants to buy it from them.
A quick reminder that the copyright in Mickey Mouse isn't worth much, even to Disney. Steamboat Willy MM looks nothing like his modern incarnation. And Disney would still have the registered trademark to Mickey Mouse, renewable at minimal cost in perpetuity.
I think a much shorter time would be better, maybe at most 20 years? That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain), and plenty of time for an author to profit; but, it's also short enough that it could still be relevant by the time other artists can start adding to it and improving.
> That's enough time that it won't cause perverse incentives (publishers/studios sitting on a work of art until it goes into the public domain),
Twenty years is absolutely short enough for that to happen.
The way companies chase short term profit, twenty years is almost certainly an eternity.
I like this solution we came up with a few years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16163984
Ten years of free protection, then costing $10 Ă 1.5 âż â» Âč for each subsequent year. Year 10 costs $0, year 20 about $380, year 30 about $22,000, year 40 about $1,300,000, year 50 almost $75,000,000âand few fifty-year-old things will be worth $75,000,000 per year and growing to retain copyright to.
Doesn't seem nearly aggressive enough.
I don't like these copyrights persisting forever just so that the extended family of the original creator can collect money for doing nothing.
I think an interesting side effect of copyright reform could be that original creators get a boost of street cred when they create new works even if the original is now public domain. They might even like some of the remixed ideas that new artists would be free to tinker with.
I'm a big believer in the mostly free market so I tend to side with whatever allows more competition. Copyright, as it stands right now, stifles innovation and competition and only benefits entities like Disney.
> I don't like these copyrights persisting forever just so that the extended family of the original creator can collect money for doing nothing.
That's inheritance.
If your father builds a house before he dies, you will inherit the house even though you did nothing, it won't become public property.
If your father writes a book before he dies, you will inherit the copyrights even though you did nothing, it won't become public domain.
You may not like the idea of inheritance, or long copyright terms, but extending copyright way past the original creator life is a logical conclusion when you combine the two.
Property rights don't expire. Copyright does. These are very different systems based on fundamentally different principles. Reasoning about copyrights using analogies based on physical property such as houses is not particularly productive.
If you want copyright to be something that can be inherited or otherwise gifted to someone else, a (short) fixed term like the original 28 year limit makes much more sense than anything based on the author's lifespan. There is no need to extent it "way past the original creator life". _Most_ things that can potentially be inherited don't have longer lifetimes than their original owners. Even houses don't last forever. If they're still around they can be part of the estate; otherwise the heirs can inherit whatever is left of the invested earnings.
>but extending copyright way past the original creator life is a logical conclusion when you combine the two.
Not necessarily, unless you mean that copyright should _always_ be able to be passed down should the holder wish. In your example, the father can double dip: write a (good enough) book, make money through sales (more guaranteed through state-enforced monopoly), buy a house with, maybe part of, that money, then have both the house and copyright inherited by the inheritors.
Under your analogy patents and copyrights would last forever?
Copyright stifles some innovation. But it also spurs others.
Today's copyright benefits the little guy as much as the big guy. But if you moved to a primarily free market only system, the only one that benefits is the big guy.
> street cred
Like âexposureâ, this is something people talk about being a reward to justify arrangements that are materially exploitive.
There are good arguments to be made for limiting copyright, but invoking artists getting street cred undermines rather than reinforces them.
Wrong. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about new works from the original artist getting a boost for being by the original artist and not some random person.
For me the best fix would be to just abolish it entirely.
The next best thing would be a short term automatic copyright (e.g. one year after initial publication) and for extension, registration & increasing tax is required. I would also put some limits on exclusivity. For example, I think non-commercial modding of games should be always legal, even if that includes distributing modified assets and binaries. Ideally after the one-year exclusive period, anyone can sell copies if they pay royalties to copyright holder (royalties inversely proportional to the tax -- so it gets cheaper and cheaper over time). I really hate that right now the main obstacle to making a good movie/game/etc store is the fact that you spend 99% of your effort trying to strike licensing deals and most copyright holders have zero incentive to even respond if you're small time.
> I really hate that right now the main obstacle to making a good movie/game/etc
I do not believe that is the main obstacle even by a far margin. It is at best the main obstacle to do that in an established universe.
The main obstacle, in my opinion, to making a good movie/game/etc. is that most people are not very good at making these.
Making a popular movie/game/etc. on the other hand...
You skipped one word: _store._
Wow, I really completely missed that. Thank you for the hint and sorry for my mistake. (I personally don't see how abolishing copyright goes well with the concept of game/movie stores, though, it would make it easier to set them up for sure.)
Copyright was a reasonable bargain when printing a book involved a large up-front investment of typesetting it and then printing all the copies that would ever be printed from that setup. It didn't affect most people, just printers. And it enabled authors to make a living from writing.
It became fairly dubious in the age of photocopiers, but fortunately was little enforced, except in the USSR. A photocopier was useless without typeset or handwritten text to copy, and the copies degraded every generation, so publishing houses were still needed.
Now every computer is a book-copying machine more powerful than the entire publishing industry a few decades ago: it can transmit a gigabit per second, and for a one-megabyte book, that's 125 copies a second, 10 million copies a day, 3 billion copies a year, so copyright is a constant danger to everyone. Fanfic sites are full of people sharing stories they wrote with no expectation of making money. The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago, not due to xeroxes but due to TV. The best software is free software, as copyright makes proprietary software untrustworthy, creating incentives to stuff it with malware. And, even if Elsevier were paying researchers instead of vice versa, the idea that copyright on research papers could fund research is as ludicrous as the idea that people would stop singing songs and telling stories without monopoly profits.
Apps, videos, and websites constantly disappear due to (often groundless) accusations of copyright violations. Police evade accountability by playing copyrighted music, rendering any recordings of their abuses copyright violations. A friend of mine committed suicide after being prosecuted for copyright violations that might have been fair use; we'll never know.
So, I would set the copyright term at zero years. Legal monopolies on preserving and sharing knowledge are not only useless in today's world, they are harmful, a monstrous menace to the integrity of the historical record and to private communication.
The days of authors and artists making money from their copyrighted works are far from over.
Believe me, there's nothing quite like seeing someone take the book you just spent a year writing, slapping their name on it, and giving it away. Even when I'm giving it away already.
The biggest up-front investment these days is creation. And that is substantial.
I agree the current term is insane, but doing away with it entirely will cause so much pain.
I agree that plagiarism is contemptible and infuriating, but it's not the same problem copyright solves. It would be only barely more forgivable if I were to pass off a forgotten book of Mark Twain's as my own.
And, I agree that creation requires a lot of up-front effort, and that copyright still provides some creators with monopoly profits. It's just that evidently those monopoly profits are no longer needed to stimulate that effort â if they ever were.
The pain from eliminating copyright doesn't hold a candle to the pain of parents cut off from the research about their child's rare disease, or to the pain of losing the recordings of your grandmother's voice to DRM.
> _The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago_
J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin are two well-known counterexamples. You'll likely counter that much of their wealth came from movies and TV, and while that's partly true, they only got those deals due to the success of their books.
I agree that aspects of traditional copyright law don't mesh well with modern technology, and that academic/scientific publishers are parasites, but I'm not convinced the concept has outlived its usefulness.
I don't think that even the few rich authors kicking around nowadays enjoy the same kind of celebrity status that Hemingway did. His memorial monument has a bronze statue of his head on top of a column next to a reflecting pool, and the NYT devoted a 22-paragraph article to the news of his death:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/s...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-hemingway-memorial
Today, 60 years later, people write articles about going to visit it.
I don't think anyone is going to build a monument to George R. R. Martin five years after his death.
My personal idea would be 10 years, but renewable. However, it can only be renewed if new copies of a work are made available in decent quantities. For a book, this would mean a print run of, say, over 1000 copies. Same for reprinting a CD. This means that, while it's still copyrighted, there are copies able to buy and be acquired. And if it's popular enough to still be relevant 10 years later, it should still be being reproduced. This can extend indefinitely to life of creator, _as long as_ it keeps being reprinted or reproduced like this.
Basically, as soon as it becomes difficult to get, you lose copyright if another run isn't made. This works especially great for academic texts, in my opinion, as well as certain types of music etc. And if someone has a big hit, well, it'll get another print run anyway.
I'd give a longer term for artwork and things like that that don't get republished in the same way, with no renewal. Or maybe something like two free renewals for these things after 10 years, to a maximum of 30 years or life of author, whichever is shorter.
I think a scaled cost would be more interesting, although the chances of it being implemented enough to test it anywhere is probably nil. E.g. you get 5 years for free without registration, to get another 5 years you must register and pay a small fee, for another 5 years you must pay 10x the previous fee, etc. Scaled in a way where it is relatively cheap to keep a copyright for 2-3 decades, but keeping one for much longer becomes financially prohibitive
20 years should be plenty to recover value. People should be incentivized to continue to create, not live large off of a single lucky break.
My thinking is 25 years. The main reason for this, at one point on time it was difficult to get a book on Amazon that was 25 years old. I can't find the research that claims this. But 25 years feels like a decent amount of time as well.
Perhaps with an expensive extension for an additional 25 years.
My personal opinion is the current length of the is unconstitutional.
as always gets brought up when this idea is proposed this makes a creator lose out when they become popular late in life.
Aside from all this it should be noted that not every country shares the U.S theory that the purpose of copyright is to 'promote the progress of science and useful arts' as per the framers of the Constitution, so it might be not be possible to get other countries to agree to reduce the length of copyright in the proposed way.
I would not give it a fixed term, especially not 50 years.
I'd start with a short copyright, say 1 year, and extend it based on a few criteria:
1) The current copyright holder is known/reachable. If it is unclear who owns something, it should become public domain. This implies a more or less centralized registry, where you have to re-register your copyright claim every year. This can give you, say, 10 years of copyright at max for just sitting on a property doing nothing.
2) The copyrighted work is still being extended, e.g. like Mickey Mouse still gets new episodes today. If this is the case, older content also gets an extension, say up to 30 years. Active characters can get their copyright extended indefinitely this way, as long as the author sees value in creating new works. So Steamboat Willy is free to consume and remix today, but only Disney can produce new Mickey Mouse content. If Disney stops producing Mickey Mouse for e.g. 10 years, all of it drops back to public domain status. An artist doing live performance might be considered extension, while replaying a record would not be extension.
This means only stuff someone cares enough about to track it will get copyright protection. Only authors that do some minimal effort creating copyright get a long term copyright.
There is a perverse incentive here, in that Disney can go very
low effort, e.g. scribble a new Mickey Mouse episode on a napkin and use it to claim an extension. Pseudo-creation if you will. Another company, say Netflix, should be able to sue for this, to get the content in public domain. They might settle by Disney selling the ownership rights to Netflix, as Netflix clearly values it, and will presumably create usefull new content.
I would go with 10-20 years after last "use". That is to say your copyright is extended as long as you keep producing new derivative works but once it stops being a driver of new work it comes to the public domain fairly quickly.
Copyright owners notoriously work around âuse it or lose itâ clauses (common in rights contracts) already, adding one to the law will just prompt junk works to extend copyright.
A better idea, IMO, is just to have a limited free copyright period (say, 30 years) and beyond tha copyright owners pay an annual _ad valorem_ tax at a rate which increases over time (time holding the copyright past the 30 year mark, specifically, so someone with a 31 year old copyright in 2053 would pay the same rate as someone with a 31 year old copyright in 2075, but the former would be paying more in 2075 than the latter) on the declared value of the copyright, with the caveat that:
(1) the declared value constitutes acceptance of that valuation as fair compensation for purposes of eminent domain, and
(2) a list of all works with such a declaration, and their declared value, will be published, with the work itself available for inspection (deposit requirement being mandatory for extended copyright), and
(3) any person may, by paying the declared value plus a fixed administrative surcharge to the Copyright Office, trigger the government exercise of eminent domain to purchase the work into the public domain.
The tax assures that if it's not driving new work it comes into the public domain, the public domain purchase option and public right of exercise safeguard against underrating the value and provide a way to pull works into the public domain if there is a constituency which sees sufficient value for it.
Copyright isn't just one right. It's a bundle of rights. In the US those are the copying, distribution, derivative work, public performance, and public display rights.
I'd like to see some consideration of setting different terms for these different rights. I don't see any reason for example that the optimal term for copying and the optimal term for derivative works must be the same.
I'd also like some consideration for having the term depend on the nature of the work. I could see a case for example for the derivative work right to have a shorter term for nonfiction than for fiction.
For nonfiction, what the author brings to the table is the work in researching and organizing the underlying facts. Give them long enough exclusive rights to make that monetarily worthwhile so that it gets done and we're good.
For fiction, there is cultural value in having a character developed consistently over the course of several works so I'd support longer rights there for the author.
> For fiction, there is cultural value in having a character developed consistently over the course of several works so I'd support longer rights there for the author.
Authors could still use trademark to denote what is 'canon'. I don't think society is worse off if some books had "Official Star Wars Canon" logos on them, and more books that lacked this logo. Right now we only get the former, which doesn't benefit anyone but the IP owner.
I think there is a risk of over complicating the rules in doing all that you suggest. Baring in mind copyright law affects everyone, having something that is easy to reason with is definitely a feature rather than a problem.
That all said, I do think the concept of different terms for different rights is an interesting idea that deserves more discussion.
As far as I can tell, the article is massively overstating the role of Disney in bringing about the Copyright Act of 1976.
There had long been widespread agreement that the 1909 Act needed significant revision to deal with the large technological developments since then in how copyrightable works were created, copied, distributed, and consumed, and to make US copyright law more compatible with the rest of the world. The copyright term provisions of the 1976 Act are straight out of the Berne Convention, and were included in the act to pave the way for the US to eventually join that and other international copyright agreements.
Disney may have been in favor of the 1976 Act, but it would have come about in substantially the same form if they had said nothing or even lobbied against it. The 1976 Act was one of those "its time has come" things.
Yep.
It's literally nonsense and factually wrong, but gleefully posted here because it agrees with HN's general ideological slant.
From 14 years to what now will be an eternity:
This original provision allowed authors the right to print, re-print or publish their work for 14 years, with the option to renew the copyright for another fourteen years. Today, copyrights can last well over 100 years, with the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extending copyright protection for most works to the life of the creator, plus 70 years.
It's really damn annoying. One of my interests is Celtic Studies/Linguistics and there's a thesis that was written in 1939. It's our one representation of this particular dialect of Irish. I've seen it, it's literally falling apart and the pages are see-through. There's been _no_ digitization of it, and no interest in digitizing it by the University. But I can't check it out for in-library use and make a copy of it myself. When it's lost, it's lost, all because of stupid copyright laws, and won't be in public domain until 2076 in Ireland. It was literally written in 1939 and is our _one_ description of a now extinct part of the language, and will literally be in pieces by then.
Copyright should be no more than 10 years, renewable _if_ there's a sizable re-release (.i. > 1000 copies) to make it constantly accessible at reasonable prices, and only for the original creator's life. That's the only way. If people stop publishing and using stuff, copyright ends.
How much does it cost tax payers to police copyright?
The rent-seeking is ridiculous.
The lawyers do most of the heavy-lifting.
Maybe?
The resources to chase and prosecute Kim Dotcom certainly werenât just lawyers (New Zealand resources, but still).
Also, how many judicial resources are tied up for the cases that arenât on the front page?
All of the lawyers certainly drive up the cost of the ever fragmenting streaming services, which only makes piracy more appealing.
I don't see why IP such as Mickey Mouse should be treated any differently than patented IP. 20 years is a fairly length time to have a monopoly on your creation before it becomes public domain.
I would be curious where the economic costs truly lie. Is Disney rent-seeking? Well, that would depend how many non-Disney entities are deploying Mickey Mouse and paying royalties for so doing (probably not common). Is there Mickey Mouse content sold by Disney that would command lesser prices if a competitor could ALSO generate Mickey Mouse content? Probably (in which case consumers pay higher prices, and competitors lose the opportunity to partake of that money trough).
However, the steel-manned argument for Disney is something like "look, you could always make some other character (e.g. Rowdy Rat), sell tons of them, and compete with us...what's so damned special about OURS apart from the creatives who build a world around him? If this were REALLY harming consumers, wouldn't there be all sorts of derivative works inviting lawsuits to determine what is and is not too close to the original?" The real question is whether Disney is so large and their litigiousness so frightening as to chill even that type of battle?
I think the costs of the chilling effects are several orders of magnitude greater than the costs of royalties.
One of the reasons that I have been boycotting Disney for years. I refuse to give them money. If somebody asks me if I've seen <disney movie> I tell them, "yes, and it was horrible! They've ruined <movie franchise>!"
My meta theory of the new movies is that Snoke was a representation of Mickey Mouse and First Order was Disney. The movies was an analogy of how Lucasfilm would survive a corporate takeover.
Supreme Court decisions on copyright and trademark are shamefully pro-business, and really show how there is shadow money flowing through all American positions of power from business, even in the US Supreme Court.
This is very inspirational, goals
This is a fairly poor article.
I can't take seriously anything that notes US copyright was increased primarily to reach some form of life+70 and then claims that Disney was responsible, not mentioning it's that exact number because the US had already agreed to it in international treaty negotiations because it's was the duration of copyright in Germany.
It's US centrism gone wild.
The Berne Convention was life+50, no? Can you share what treaties specify life+70?