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djoldman ◴[] 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 ◴[] 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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m000 ◴[] No.43579887[source]
> 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.

That would be fine, if the studios didn't want to have it both ways. They want to retain full copyright control over their "asset", but they also use Hollywood Accounting [1] to both avoid paying taxes and cheat contributors that have profit-sharing agreements.

If studios declare that they made a loss on producing and releasing something to get a tax break, the copyright term for that work should be reduced to 10 years tops.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

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1. yencabulator ◴[] No.43587567[source]
Next, they'd switch to from Hollywood Accounting to Oilfield Accounting. Oh that wellhead is actually owned by this other company over there, we just purchased their product at a fair market rate while they were still in business, but now it seems that other company is going bankrupt and cannot do the environmental cleanup to even seal the wellhead, much less remove it.