> The work of dead artists should be in the public domain.
“Murder of popular musicians and artists up 1000% this year… news at 11”
Joking aside, if I am the artist, shouldn’t I be able to give those rights to my children to provide for them after I’m gone? I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying but I think a reasonable threshold after death is appropriate (20 years maybe instead of 70?)
No, a reasonable threshold is 10 years after creation.
The question is to what time threshold does society need to pay for police/courts/lawyers to enforce copyright law such that people are sufficiently incentivized to create whatever.
For example, if copyright law were 10 years from date of creation, would we see too little in the way of creativity? Would singers still sing and writers still write and artists still paint/draw/whatever?
I can see a viewpoint proposing 10, 15, even 20 years, but 100+ years is beyond the pale. That is just a handout from taxpayers to people that own the copyrights.
I saw an interesting suggestion that copyright should just be for a given period at a given cost of registration... say first 10 years as-is, but if you want it longer, you pay X for N years, and it doubles each time you pay. I mean if Disney wants to pay $1B+ every few years to keep "Steamboat Willie" under copyright, let them. Eventually it will be cost prohibitive and enter the public domain.
Any such scheme immeasurably benefits large corporations over individual creatives. Disney's lawyers have no issues dealing with copyright frictions. Individual authors do.
I agree - basing it off creation could make sense but then I’d argue for maybe more like 50 years. Plenty of works take decades in and of themselves. George RR Martin started Game of thrones 27 years ago. Should HBO just have been able to take his work and make millions without paying him a dime? It would just turn into corporations exploiting popular public domain works.
Yes, that is what public domain is. What reason is there for society to give RR Martin more than 10 years of copyright protection? He is free to shop around his story to movie makers in that time. And if it is so good, someone will jump on it.
After that, it is not “exploitation”, it is using something in the public domain.
No they will just wait for the timer to tick away and monopolize on a community that someone else spent years building. Just because you change the law in your thought experiment for it to be legal doesn’t make it not exploitative. If we legalize slavery you can’t just say, “well its no longer exploitative, its the law”
People do not “own” communities that they have a right to profit from indefinitely.
And yes, if it is good, people will jump on it. Evidence being that HBO did not wait 170 years to start making game of thrones. They saw a story they could sell, so they paid the author to make it. If they did not, another media maker could and would have. Warner brothers did not wait until Harry Potter copyrights expire. I am sure other media makers were bidding for Harry Potter rights too.
Of course, Martin and Rowling have been paid less if copyright was 10 years. But would they have written the stories if they earned $10M instead of $100M or $1B or whatever they earned? I would err on the side of yes.
“Murder of popular musicians and artists up 1000% this year… news at 11”
Joking aside, if I am the artist, shouldn’t I be able to give those rights to my children to provide for them after I’m gone? I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying but I think a reasonable threshold after death is appropriate (20 years maybe instead of 70?)