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An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

(theaiunderwriter.substack.com)
1503 points participant3 | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 17:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.99s | source
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djoldman ◴[04 Apr 25 01:28 UTC] No.43577414[source]▶
I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws.

That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for their creation and they'll never create.

Even in the case where the above is assumed true, the length of time that a protection should be afforded should be no more than the length of time necessary to ensure that creators create.

There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for 1 year past death.

For that matter, this argument extends to other criminal penalties, but that's a whole other subject.

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jl6 ◴[04 Apr 25 07:02 UTC] No.43579150[source]▶
> There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years.

I’m sure you’re right for individual authors who are driven by a creative spark, but for, say, movies made by large studios, the length of copyright is directly tied to the value of the movie as an asset.

If that asset generates revenue for 120 years, then it’s slightly more valuable than an asset that generates revenue for 119 years, and considerably more valuable than an asset that generates revenue for 20 years.

The value of the asset is in turn directly linked to how much the studio is willing to pay for that asset. They will invest more money in a film they can milk for 120 years than one that goes public domain after 20.

Would studios be willing to invest $200m+ in movie projects if their revenue was curtailed by a shorter copyright term? I don’t know. Probably yes, if we were talking about 120->70. But 120->20? Maybe not.

A dramatic shortening of copyright terms is something of a referendum on whether we want big-budget IP to exist.

In a world of 20 year copyright, we would probably still have the LOTR books, but we probably wouldn’t have the LOTR movies.

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1. dragonwriter ◴[04 Apr 25 15:52 UTC] No.43584185[source]▶
IIRC, of works that bring in any money to their creators, the vast majority is returned, for almost all works, in the first handful of years after creation. Sure. the big names you know have value longer, but those are a miniscule fraction of works.

Make copyright last for a fixed term of 25 years with optional 10-year renewals up to 95 years on an escalating fee schedule (say, $100k for the first decade and doubling every subsequent decade) and people—and studios—would have essentially the same incentive to create as they do now, and most works would get into the public domain far sooner.

Probably be fewer entirely lost works, as well, if you had firmer deposit requirements for works with extended copyrights (using the revenue from the extensions to fund preservation) with other works entering the public domain soon enough that they were less likely to be lost before that happened.