David Dyer-Bennet writes:
>I have a few rough rules of thumb.
Heh. I have a different set.
>Copyright shouldn't expire during the original creators life, because
>they shouldn't have to watch helplessly while other people rape their
>babies.
I go another way:
Copyright shouldn't extend indefinately, becuase it's important that
everything eventually go in the soup -- the whole justification for
copyright is to encourage creation...but eventually, your baby has to
grow up and move out of the house.
Copyright should have a fixed term, both out of interest of fairness,
and to encourage creators of any age -- a monetarily motivated 90 year
old should expect to provide for their children if they produce a
best-seller just like a younger author might try to provide for their
later years. By the same token, though, anything other than a fixed
term isn't reasonable -- a reductio ad absurdium of this is a work
written by an immortal or virutally immortal creator -- such a thing
will never go out of copyright, and by principle 1, works should be
guarunteed to go out of copyright.
>It's much more important to reward individual human beings who
>actually create things than it is to create valuable "property".
Agreed here.
>Discussions over the years have pointed out some other things -- such
>as that if copyright doesn't extend significantly past death, creators
>who are old will have a difficult time negotiating decent terms on new
>works.
Yup. This is why it should be a fixed term.
Other points:
The big moneymakers for writers (which you don't
particularly want to hit) are residuals and adaption rights.
It may be reasonable to have a longer term for such things
than for straight derivitave or character copyrights. Or not;
you do want a term long enough that most media works
capitalizing on the popularity of a work in one form will
need to be created in the term of the copyright so the creator
has a good chance of reaping their rightful benefits.
I'd -guess- a good number for copyright is somewhere between
30 and 50 years. OTOH, part of me says that the "right"
number is 18: the year your kid's allowed to move out of the
house. :)
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
--^--him...to live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
/\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'