a perennial favorite topic of debate. sound off in the replies.
My biggest frustration with copyright is in situations when the item is out of print or rights owned by an entity that has dissolved. There really should be a way to republish such works without waiting many decades for it to be in public domain.
I think somewhere in the ballpark of 10-20 years is probably enough to reward creators. Anything significantly longer than that, and it just incentivizes them to milk their creations forever, and punishes other creators who might otherwise make novel derivative works.
I am also of the belief that intellectual property in general (copyrights and patents) should be subject to eminent domain in the same way that physical private property is, i.e. it should be possible to force the creator to sell it to the public (with fair compensation) in cases where it would be an invaluable public good.
Yes, copyright and should exist, but only for about ten years, which should be enough time to get rich off it. Afterwards you can just come up with new ideas.
Ya copyright that lasts longer than 10 years likely stifles innovation because the people who have experience in the industry and the capital / resources just stick with making the same thing instead of improving it.
Thinking about it in terms of other industries shows some of the issues with copyright. I get that the protection is probably necessary since there is value in the content that’s higher than simply the marginal cost of replicating it. I don’t think a person should be able to do something once and get a lifetimes income from it though, and I’m definitely opposed to things like large producers giving the talent shitty contracts that funnels the profits to the production company and bypassing the actual actors, writers, crew, etc…
10 years probably sounds about right. I’d also like it to be more liberal about exceptions like personal/private use, non-commercial use, educational use, journalistic use, etc… One big issue for some kinds of small media is if they use a clip from a big name bit of content the filters on many media sites will pull it down. While there’s an appeal process to claim it as news media or similar exemption, and get the media content returned the timeframe to process this often means things like news coverage lose out on the monetization because week old news type coverage isn’t very valuable. Similar things can happen with things like a home video where there’s copyright content playing in the background, even if it’s just incidental to the intended content of the video.
I’m also okay with some kind of renewal options. This would be things like if a content producer remasters something like re-releasing a movie in HD, then 4K then HDR, or remastering a video game for a current-gen console, then the clock can start over on the remastered content, while the previous release would still roll-over into public domain.
I’ve mentioned this before here, but my stance is 20 years flat for a work owned by a corporation, and life for works owned by an individual.
I honestly really like this idea. I would’ve been a fan of the model where copyright just outright can’t be transferred from actual creators to a company, but that creates massive problems for collaborative works that don’t have a single one creator. This model of giving individual creators lifelong copyright nicely addresses that problem.
Yeah that seems pretty reasonable to me. Was pissed off when the government here sneakily extended copyright length from 50 to 70 years as part of a trade deal with the UK a year or two ago - even 50 years was far too long IMO!
That’s interesting. Where is here for you? Was that term something pushed by the UK?
Not sure if this person is in the same place but Aotearoa NZ recently extended copyright from 50 to 70 years after death due to a UK trade deal, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK have pushed it. We’ve recently fast-tracked the change due to an EU trade deal, though, so it’s not the UK alone.
Yep that’s the one, turns out I misremembered the exact lengths, cheers for letting me know!
This sounds perfect
Then you just have companies transfer ownership of their IPs to some notable figure in the company and transfers away from them when they die/leave. leading to indefinite ownership of copyrights by a company. This is even longer copyright than what we have today.
So just make it nontransferable.
why lifetime copyright ownership for individuals?
Mostly, I felt it was important to discourage IP ownership by corps by making the individual term much longer. I’m open to making it shorter, but still considerably longer than that of corporations. An individual isn’t going to be able to harm infringers the way that, say, Nintendo can, and does.
As a hobby artist, I think copyright should exist to protect individual artists commercial rights. Whether I sell my work or not, should be up to me. On the other hand, we should not punish people for finding inspiration in other people’s works or using them as wallpapers, and usually we don’t.
It should not be legal for H&M to scrape Artstation or Deviantart for images to print on their T-shirts, not even if 20 years have passed since it was posted. If they want to use an image, they should have to contact the artist and get permission first.
I think works owned by corporations is a different beast. Corporations should also be allowed to profit of their works, but I don’t think they should be able to hold copyrights as a default. Copyright should protect those who make art, not those who commission art.
It was created to protect individual artists commercial rights. But at this point, it’s rent-seeking. Corporations who own copyrighted works long after the death of an artist/writer/musician and the sale of the asset by the heirs benefits nobody but the mega-corps who have the power to brutally enforce them.
Society does not benefit by this.
Surely there has to be a better way to encourage and reward creative people. In truth, how many truly prosper by their works? A handful. It’s much more common to create something in service of a corporation, who then immediately owns the rights to it.
If only artists could hold copyrights to their works, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Corporations are usually not the ones who create art, they just hire people who do. If Disney spends an astronomical amount on money on hiring artists and producing a work, there should be a separate set of laws that protects them from someone sweeping in and stealing the franchise or the product. It shouldn’t be down to copyright-laws, because Disney isn’t an artist.
Copyright also grants the right to opt out of the commercialization of your work. Even if you really like a painting I have done, you should not have the right to demand that I or someone else sell prints of it. If I instead want to just keep it on my Instagram profile, in my attic or hanging on the walls of a gallery, I should be free to do so.
If you make something public people have the right to look at it and to get inspired by it, but I don’t think it’s unfair to ask that the artist retains the commercial rights to it.
Long live copyleft
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I think – copyright should apply to humans only and be non-transferable from the original artist except in cases of death. Grant copyright to individuals or joint copyright with groups with fractional right for 7 years if the work is distributed, 1 year if not. Legal entities cannot own any copyright at all.
Legal entities cannot own any copyright at all
Never hear about this idea until now, but I think this is the most logical. Copyright applys to humans, and original authors, and should not be transferable.
If you wrote the song, or book, it is yours. That’s it, no one else can be owner of it.
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I’m too content with copyleft licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons to ever want to go back to anything more restrictive.
I would say 10-15 years max. If you can’t make a profit within that amount of time you are unlikely to ever make a profit. Hell, even that long is probably too long.
Abandoned IP should automatically end the copyright. If I can’t buy it new from an authorized seller, then I should be able to get it somewhere else without issue.
I think copyright is most valuable as a tool to protect someone’s work from plagiarism. Preventing others from copying your work without attribution is a good thing. Using copyright to block the derivative or transformative work others make is counterproductive. I like the phrase “rising tides lifts all boats”.
I think rules on fair use should be far more forgiving than they currently are. You should be able to protect complete concepts, like a unique character, setting, or story, but you can’t stop others from modifying or being inspired by someone’s ideas.
I also think corporations or private entities should never be able to own copyright. Copyright must be owned by a person or a group of people (the makers/authors). Ownership of copyright shouldn’t be able to be transferable, but you can give permission to use the copyright like a normal license or contract would. That means copyright ends when the last owner does, and the work enters public domain.
Edit corrected with attribution to without attribution
Do you think this would impact R&D for corporations? ie if I’m a successful pharma company, I’m not going to pour money into research just for other companies to use it for “free” afterwards. Essentially it would hurt their incentive to create and invent.
You are thinking of a patent, which protects a process or way of doing something. Copyright protects creative works.
This makes WAY more sense. Thanks for the clarification!
Ignoring the difference between copyright and patents, this is exactly the kind of motivation I’m looking to prevent! The idea that the only driver of invention and creativity is the profit motive is corporate propaganda. Humans have, from our evolution, always been driven to invent and create to make our lives easier.
Using the example of pharma company, if a hypothetical company with infinite funds and resources for their R&D group wants to develop a new drug that cures cancer, despite having infinite input, they will still never produce anything if they don’t have people to do the work of research and development. A media company like Disney, despite their vast wealth, cannot produce movies without writers, animators, voice actors, production crews, etc. This is my reason for people being the only ones able to own a copyright. (Edit to fix a typo)
As a published author, I’m glad copyright existed. Without it, none of my publishers would have been in business and I would have had to find some other income source. But I think the default should be “public domain” rather than “copyright”, and I’m skeptical of allowing corporations to own the copyright to individuals’ works.
Do you think that those publishers would be significantly worse off if the copyright length was, say, 20-40 years rather than the 70 years used by most of the western world nowadays?
Well, most of my work was programming books, so honestly a 5 year copyright term would have been plenty. But the internet put most of those publishers out of business anyhow.
Outside of my own special case, I don’t have really strong opinions on the term.
Copyright and patents: 10-20 years maximum, depending on the industry. Trademarks should be forever, because that kinda defeats the point of a trademark if it expires.
Let me give an example I understand personally: Rubik’s cubes. Rubik’s cubes were invented by Ernő Rubik, and gained widespread popularity in the early 80s. In 1982 there was a speed solving competition, where Minh Thai got the world record fastest solve at 22.95 seconds. After this, the “craze” died out and it lost much popularity. Ideal Toy Corp sold the puzzle and retained a patent on it until 2000, after which was the second cubing craze. Sales doubled between 2001 and 2003, and the speed solving competitions came back. This time, however, solvers were not buying the stiff, clunky, catchy, sandy “Rubik’s Cubes”, they were at first appearing to be buying Chinese “knock-offs”, brands which quickly developed recognition and brand loyalty among speed solvers. They were designed for speed, they had looser springs, less plastic, but “torpedoes” to keep them in place under other pieces, and cut out corners to allow imprecise movement. You can buy a better cube than the Rubik’s Cube for less money than a Rubik’s Cube. You can buy 10 speed cubes for the price of one Rubik’s Brand speed cube, their failed attempt at capitalizing on the market. Rubik’s Brand has spent the entire time up until very recently not interacting with the rest of the community, trying to sue companies out of selling their products.
Trademarks should be forever, because that kinda defeats the point of a trademark if it expires.
I’d counter this by saying that Trademarks should be for the life of the corporation, and corporate lifespans should be mandated to be somewhere under 50 years.
At a conceptual level, businesses aren’t a static thing that are owned by a single corporation forever. Some businesses start off as family owned small businesses, or grow in exchange for outside investment, etc. When a parent passes on a family business to their child, something about that business has changed, of course. But should the child, or the grandchild, or future generations lose out on the name after 50 years?
Moving up the scale in size/complexity, you’ll have partnerships between multiple owners/partners, who might want to work together temporarily, or for as long as they can, on some kind of joint partnership. A band, for example, wants to release songs under their band name, even as members might change over time.
And for larger corporations, there’s a value in licensing, as well. The local McDonald’s might literally be a family owned business, but franchised under strict rules by which it may use McDonald’s trademarks in exchange for adherence to corporate’s prescribed procedures and policies (and lots of money).
Some kind of expiration date doesn’t really make sense in that situation, either.
Either way, brands and reputation last more than 50 years, and do actually provide value to the consumer. Even from the largest corporations in the world.
Fun topic! Copyrights have their place in society even now. However, I say it should be a fixed 20 to 30 years MAXIMUM. That should be enough time for people to commercialize and profit for the original creator or organization. Anything beyond that just starts getting ridiculous.
I’m clearly not an expert in the matter and perhaps this is just my wishful? thinking.
I feel like any type of scientific knowledge humanity has acquired shouldn’t be “owned” by any individual / entity and subsequently only benefit an -often small- portion of society. For example, it baffles me how some medications take years and years -usually until the patents expire- to become available to the majority of the patients that need them. I get that companies need a return on their investments. But imo that should never come at the cost of any person’s life or health. Like, aside from production costs, the costs of researching a given drug are fixed. So, it’s not like the more people that use it takes money out of their pockets somehow. Logically, it should be the other way around.
Idk, it just doesn’t make sense to me when the knowledge already exists and people aren’t able to make use of it until much later because apparently that’s the only way someone’s able to make a profit in this current system? Maybe copyright sucks?
What do y’all think?
Edit: I was just made aware from reading the other comments that patents / copyright are actually two distinct forms of IP that serve different purposes. So yeah, definitely not an expert. Not deleting bc I still stand by what I said, but my comment doesn’t really answer the question at hand.
I’m begging the holders for asthma medication to release the patent/copyright? So that I won’t have to pay a fortune to breathe. Money is also tight right now so im litteraly rationing what medicine I have left.
this is an interesting (infuriating) one: most asthma meds
arewere generic, but were re-formulated with a different propellant that was less harmful to the atmosphere. Despite the actual medicine not changing, they got their patents renewed and the generics got taken off the marketa total failure of the system
Yeah, I don’t care whose pockets it hurts, but no one should have to worry about not being able to access a life-saving medication that already exits. Sorry you have to go through this
