a perennial favorite topic of debate. sound off in the replies.
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.
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!
This sounds perfect
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.
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 – 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.
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.
Long live copyleft
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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.
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 too content with copyleft licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons to ever want to go back to anything more restrictive.
Yes it should exist, or at least it should exist in some form as long as we exist in a capitalist economic system. Without it, if you invest your time and money into a novel new creative work, it becomes possible for a third party to undercut you by just republishing your work at a lower price, since they don’t need to earn back the cost of creating that novel new thing.
Current state of copyright is overkill though, and mostly just benefits massive companies. Personally I think the length of protections should be 50 years max (at least I could see that being passed as legislation in the near future), and ideally something like 20-30 years, which should be more than enough time to get nearly all of the potential profits for your creation, while allowing people to start adapting that creation within their lifetimes.
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.
I prefer a flat time period not in excess of a single lifetime. So, like, 20 years.
Reason being: if an old person invents something (presumably) to benefit his family and immediately dies, I think it’s fair to give the kids time to benefit from it.
Shouldn’t be too long, though, since it shouldn’t have a multigenerational effect. As in, it shouldn’t benefit him during his lifetime AND his kids during theirs.
The Harry Spotter videos proved that copyright should expire after 25 years.
Maybe I’m just naive, but I feel like it doesn’t really make sense particularly in the internet era. I can understand the argument that patents and copyright can allow people to profit off of their ideas and all, and maybe it would actually discourage anybody from making anything otherwise… But I just don’t really buy that? It seems like patents and rights often end up being held by large corporations instead of creators anyway, and they have incentive to iterate anyway? I dunno.
But in some sense copyright and patents only benefit the owner of them and everybody else suffers as a result. Technically speaking it’s better if everybody can have free access to books and knowledge and works of art, and it’s beneficial for everybody in society if anybody can create things based on other designs and works. Like I don’t really benefit at all from E-ink having patents which stifles innovation in the field just so that they can turn a profit for years before anybody else can… Maybe you can argue that they wouldn’t have invented it unless they were incentivized by being able to weaponize the legal system as a result of their patent findings, but I kind of doubt that… They’d still have a good product that people would want anyway? Maybe I’m just being idealistic, but it seems a huge shame that we can’t imagine that humans would want to create and better the lives of ourselves and others without profit motives, you know? It’d be nice if we could just support each other and work on making cool and better things.
Maybe you can argue that they wouldn’t have invented it unless they were incentivized by being able to weaponize the legal system as a result of their patent findings
I am cool with that, they wouldn’t make it, but some else would. Maybe some years later, but globaly we would benefit much more.
Same like 3D printers, technology is decades old, but started being used after patent expired. F*** them from slowing us down.
Patents and copyright was invented so that invation would happen, but now corporations are ising them to hinder advancement.
Yeah, exactly. Legal protections only really seem to work if you’re already a big enough corporation to afford it, so it doesn’t seem like patents and copyright really support independent creators as much as we would maybe like. It seems more often than not to be weaponized against progress for the sake of personal gains… and that just sucks. The only potential argument for these protections is that people wouldn’t invent or create things without them… Because all things being equal they benefit a select few people (rights holders), and otherwise serve no benefit to anybody else, often leading to stifled innovation and less competition.
Copyright is odd, if I make a hammer then the person who buys it can hammer away making things they can sell for profit, modify the hammer, make another similar one or give it away or rent it out without any restriction. But I might have patent on the design and I might have copyright on the logo.
If I make a film of me making the hammer then copyright applies and even if they buy the film from me they can’t do with it what they want and probably have to pay me more to show it.
What I’m saying is that I think we need to rethink and simplify copyright. It’s simply not right that children couldnt (up to 2015) sing Happy Birthday at a party without paying the rights holder for the tune.
It’s simply not right that children couldnt (up to 2015) sing Happy Birthday at a party without paying the rights holder for the tune.
what ??!?
That statement isn’t true, copyright doesn’t work that way.
However, someone was trying to claim they owned the copyright to that song and finally in 2015 someone refused to settle with them when they sued. They went through the full court battle and the courts decided that person did not own the copyright to that song.
I don’t remember enough of the details of their claim to explain their reasoning, but the claim was good enough (and court battles are expensive enough) that everyone would just settle.
Anyway, copyright doesn’t work that way, you can sing any damn song you want.
Thanks for explaining.
However, someone was trying to claim they owned the copyright to that song
Whoa, that’s insane to me as a non-American. I mean, the song is even sung all around the world in different languages. Did they claim the rights to the melody, lyrics, or… 😭?
What they attempted to claim was rights to it being performed on television (and similar). If I’m sitting at home, I can sing whatever song I want. I can sing the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and no one would care (except maybe my roommates and neighbors). It becomes an issue of copyright when someone tries to then use that creative work, whether that include lyrics or melody (often called the composition) or any part of the recording (called the master). The composition and the master could be owned by the same person/group, or it could not. It depends on the contract set up for the song.
Note: Obligatory IANAL, I’m just an independent musician who at least vaguely needs to know about this stuff for my creative work.
If I’m sitting at home, I can sing whatever song I want.
Yeah, I think if that wasn’t the case, we’d have bigger issues to discuss in this thread.
Thanks for the insight though. Really interesting to learn as someone who consumes and enjoys tons of music.
