At what point do we, as a society, say you should probably create new works in order to feed yourself, your partner, and your cats?
Copyright, like patents, is an economic policy. By guaranteeing a limited-term exclusivity you encourage the creation of new works. This cuts both ways: if the term is too short creators are disincentivized, as anything they create will shortly be copied before they can make substantial money from it; if the term is too long you can just coast forever without creating more work.
There's a balancing point here. I don't think there's anything intrinsically justifying that you should be able to make a living off a work you wrote 30+ years ago.
I don't think there's anything intrinsically justifying that you should be able to make a living off a work you wrote 30+ years ago
Throwing away the whole publishing model for a second, why not? If someone's willing to buy X and X came out in the 80's, shouldn't the creator of X get a share?
Otherwise, I'd imagine we end up with the same planned obsolescence that plagues the textbook industry: swap chapters six and eight, add a few new problems, call it a new edition and charge another $20.
> "If someone's willing to buy X and X came out in the 80's, shouldn't the creator of X get a share?"
Maybe? For what reason?
I get where you're coming from - but the whole notion that the "creator should get a share" comes only because of our current understanding of IP ownership. It hasn't always been this way, and odds are it won't always be this way. It may be the norm now, but is there an objectively good reason why it ought to remain the norm?
If I wrote a smash hit song when I was 20, should I get "a share" every time someone plays it 30 years from now? 50? Should my children get a share? There certainly isn't any notion of morality, in our society and most others, that this should be the case.
Which leaves copyright as economic policy. At that point the notion of whether or not we "should" do something is entirely based on the economic benefits it generates for society. Would I create more work for the public to enjoy if the copyright term was 10 years? 20? 30?
To take this example in a different direction - should the artist of a painting get a cut when you sell the painting to someone else? They did create it after all. People are still deriving value off of it, and even willing to pay for it, so why should the creator not get a share? The notion of whether or not someone should get a cut of anything is incredibly subjective, and is more related to the mores and standards of the time rather than any objective (or even subjective) notions of fairness/justice.
I think my ideal interpretation of how IP ownership should work would be that if you -- the creator -- own the IP, you deserve a share of value derived from it. But if you no longer own it (so, if you sell the painting, so to speak), then you aren't.
The notion of whether or not someone should get a cut of anything is incredibly subjective, and is more related to the mores and standards of the time rather than any objective (or even subjective) notions of fairness/justice.
I agree. I probably should have phrased my question better than using a vague word like should, since I meant it in more of a economic sense of incentivizing valuable work than a moral sense.
> "But if you no longer own it (so, if you sell the painting, so to speak), then you aren't."
But that isn't IP. That's the creation of physical objects - and our understanding of it fairly nuanced and not very controversial. IP by definition cannot be "lost" by the creator, since it's about ideas and knowledge rather than their physical manifestations of said ideas.
A painter may "lose" a painting when they sell it, that's not the point under contention. The contention is, for example, if the painter should be compensated if the new owner replicates it and beings selling copies.
IP ownership cannot go by a "you no longer own it, it's fair game" state, because IP by definition cannot be meaningfully removed from one person and given to another.
See: music. I give you CD with my music on it - should I be compensated if you distribute copies of this music? Should I be compensated if you perform this composition on your own (i.e. a cover)? Who "owns" the music?
> IP by definition cannot be "lost" by the creator
Yes, it can. "Property" is the right to control, not the subject of the rights. IP is lost in the same way that physical property rights are lost -- I can sell physical property and retain possession of the physical object that is the subject of property rights, but still have lost the property as such.
> Calling it property is considered a misnomer by many
Yes, and those people don't understand property.(The problem isn't their understanding of IP -- most of what they say about the nature of IP is correct; the problem is that they don't understand real property, tangible personal property, and intangible personal property other than IP, because if they did, they would understand that the contrasts they attempt to draw are specious.)
Should we reward the creation of the type of music that people will still be listening to in 30 years time more than the type of music people won't be listening to in 30 years time?
Do musicians have any control whatsoever in the longevity of their work? More specifically, will giving musicians a longer copyright term result in more music being listened to for longer?
I think that'd be a pretty specious claim. Did Jimi Hendrix set out to create multi-decade hits, did he know how to create multi-decade hits? It seems to me the longevity of particular genres of music is fairly arbitrary and hard to predict, in which case no incentives will result in their deliberate creation.
Hell, is there a particular social benefit to why a creative work - a snippet of culture from a particular time and place - needs to remain culturally relevant for decades at a time? Would that not encourage creation of work that appeals only to the lowest common denominator and avoid specific contexts that are only relevant to the creator's contemporary era?
To put into a specific example: would this cause people to create documentaries about war, instead of, say, the Iraq War? Do we not lose out if we elevate "relevant to the mass-market over 50 years" to a virtue?
Your latter point applies. Now. Copyright doesn't factor into the planned obsolescence textbook industry to avoid used copies. Interestingly, that imitatates the game industries attempts to circumvent used games sales.
That highlights a deeper problem, there is a psychological divide between the IP and the plastic discs or dead tree they are placed upon. The authors wouldn't care if you shared their book if whenever anyone but you (the purchaser of a license to the work) saw blank pages, but you can redistribute their information via traditional economic goods exchange and they don't like that because in modern times copyright lets them lockdown distribution (for most people) all the time.
To answer your first question, here is the opposite perspective:
Throwing away copyright, why not let people freely exchange the information they have? You answer with "the creator needs incentives to create and a means to eat" but you could just switch to the patreon model - have per-work payments by your consumers directly. Then release your work, and let anyone else redistribute as if it were public domain.
Because inherently copyright says you don't have rights to do what you want with the things you possess, if the thing is information, be it encoded in neurons in your brain, etched upon dead tree, engraved in a plastic platter, or stored in a large transistor grid. The codification that some intangible concept that can transcend medium is not yours to do what you want with - for every single copyrighted IP concept or work - is a limiter on the possessor for the benefit of the rights holder.
It is also important to differentiate the rights holder from the creator - since the vast majority of IP created today is not under the license of its creator but under the license of their employer. Which is why the life of author + 70 mess comes in, because huge corporations want never ending money for some work they spent finite time and effort making.
I'm a copyright abolitionist - I think the world would all around be a much better place if content creators pursued their own fans to pay their bills so they can create more. Given a sufficiently good earpiece to get the word out about new creators, and an easy way to discover them, it would be effectively a meritocracy of creative talent.
I'm not advocating theft - and it is important to remember what copyright means - this isn't taking something from a content creator and passing it around nonchalantly. It is that when a content creator voluntarily gives you a copy of their work, that you can do whatever you want with it, including redistribute it yourself. If you break into someones house and steal their work in progress book they never finished, that is robbery. You are stealing their physical property containing their IP, and since that wasn't a voluntary exchange of the initial information that is theft.
Abstract: "The optimal term of copyright has been a matter for extensive debate over the last decade. Based on a novel approach we derive an explicit formula which characterises the optimal term as a function of a few key and, most importantly, empirically-estimable parameters. Using existing data on recordings and books we obtain a point estimate of around 15 years for optimal copyright term with a 99% confidence interval extending up to 38 years. This is substantially shorter than any current copyright term and implies that existing terms are too long."
I think the '80s are a bad example, for that reason, as a relatively recent decade. The '30s are much more problematic: the material is mostly still in copyright, but the original authors are rarely alive, and in many cases even close heirs (like their children) are no longer alive. It's common for works from that era end up being either orphan works with the copyright holder unfindable, or else owned by someone very distantly related to the person who wrote the book.
The 1980s example is mostly interesting for seeing just how quickly almost everything drops out of print.
The vast majority of them are not receiving royalties even remotely sufficient for them to feed even their cat.
If the goal is that the top 1% (or less) of authors that can still live off 30 year old works are to be able to keep feeding their families from those works, then it'd be vastly more beneficial for society to simply pay them a stipend.
