What this is all coming down to is the pant-on-head idea that somehow "art" is of less value than any other talent. Like, if you can make money off of your novel or play or song or whatever, you shouldn't be able to make as much as you can because fuck you, get a real job.
And that strikes me as really fucking stupid.
Are you defining 'as much as you can' as in perpetuity throughout your hereditary family's existence? Because if not (and given your previous posts I know you don't) then we're arguing over days not first principles.
I think that an individual is. I would set copyright for the life of the author, or a set period of time about that long (60 or 70 years).
But I stand against this silly idea that artists should just suck it up and make something new. Say what you will about the "right's holders" (and I'll probably agree with you), but the internet and p2p has made us as consumers super entitled.
We value (in an economic sense, and slightly in a cultural one) art much less than we perhaps did or should.
There is also an undercurrent here of suggesting that anyone that wants to make anything creative needs to have a publishing and marketing plan all figured out and ready to go first or else they don't deserve to make money from it, which I'm not sure I'm happy with.
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
I think Tube's point is that there seems little reason to speed up the putting of works in public domain unless you begrudge original artists for making money of one thing for their entire life (instead of a short period of it). Particularly because when things go into public domain is just means big corporations are making money on the work instead of the original artist.
In what other profession can I do one thing and make money off it for the rest of my life? I don't begrudge them their money, just their failing to let something go into the public domain (granted, it's a little tricky to separate the two). Also, public domain does not only help large companies. To pick a nice, easy, contemporary example: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies walks the sort of line between parody and infringement that is simply not possible without the base work being public domain. Given that I don't think it particularly comments on the original work, it would really just be infringing. So what if he wanted to write Lord of the Rings and Zombies? It's not public domain, and won't be for a while, so that's not happening (under life of the author, it would be available). How about Star Wars and Zombies? Definitely out, life of the author or not.
What this is all coming down to is the pant-on-head idea that somehow "art" is of less value than any other talent. Like, if you can make money off of your novel or play or song or whatever, you shouldn't be able to make as much as you can because fuck you, get a real job.
And that strikes me as really fucking stupid.
I don't think that viewpoint is implied by a 10-year copyright. I would say even for the most valuable and meaningful jobs, you usually only get paid while you continue to do the job and create new value. It doesn't seem unreasonable to apply the same standard to creators.
Respecting creators and creative works doesn't imply that we should lionize generations of pointless rent-seeking, much of which comes at the expense of actually creating new things.
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
What this is all coming down to is the pant-on-head idea that somehow "art" is of less value than any other talent. Like, if you can make money off of your novel or play or song or whatever, you shouldn't be able to make as much as you can because fuck you, get a real job.
And that strikes me as really fucking stupid.
I don't think that viewpoint is implied by a 10-year copyright. I would say even for the most valuable and meaningful jobs, you usually only get paid while you continue to do the job and create new value. It doesn't seem unreasonable to apply the same standard to creators.
Respecting creators and creative works doesn't imply that we should lionize generations of pointless rent-seeking, much of which comes at the expense of actually creating new things.
It is unreasonable because you're trying to fit art into some weird box to fit in with other jobs. It doesn't. As Japan said, you might not make much money off your first novel until you hit it big.
And by your logic, the Dean Koontz, Stephen Kings, Terry Pratchetts, and Neil Gaimans of the world have only ever written one novel and have no drive to make another.
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
I think a lot of people focus on the role of copyright in preventing a starving artist from up and stealing disney's shit without considering that copyright is the only thing preventing disney from up and stealing some starving artist's shit.
Again, speaking from the perspective of print publishing (I know things are much more complicated in, say, art, and presumably music):
Why do I give a shit if you use my characters / plot / whatever after I've already sold my manuscript to, say, Penguin Books or whomever? I've already been paid, so I'm not exactly a 'starving artist' at that point (well, I might still be, depending on how big the deal was - but then I can always go ahead and write a new manuscript. If my old one sells well enough, Penguin might even offer me an advance).
You're certainly not denying me anything by using my characters / story. I'm sure Penguin might be pissed that someone else is now making money off of the work they publicized, but there you go.
Even if you outright plagiarize, my manuscript, word for word, and sell it to another publisher after I've already made my deal with Penguin, how am I being hurt? Obviously Penguin would get hurt, because now the market is being split, but the author (in theory) shouldn't really give two fucks from a financial perspective (I'd still be furious anyway, of course, because it's just unethical to do that).
It turns out that's not how creativity works. You seriously want a world where Harper Lee had to write To Kill A Mockingbird 2 to pay the bills? Is the point of copyright to force artists to do what you want them to because you believe in some bizarre moral imperative for them to create?
...Yes, I would like a world, assuming we're forced to live in a capitalistic environment, where Harper Lee 'has to' write & sell more than one single manuscript his entire lifetime in or to be considered a professional author (well, I'd prefer one where he's just subsidized to a basic standard of living, but that's off topic). No author should be expecting their first works to be published for enough money to sit on for a lifetime.
I mean, this idea that writing a manuscript is a horrible chore that an author must endure is kind of ridiculous. Writers write, whether or not it'll sell, and while it's certainly not easy to put together a good novel I've never personally thought of it as some weight I've got to lift.
EDIT:
The idea that there's some kind of moral failing in an artist doing one thing and then living off it is an absurd one. If an artist only has one good idea in their whole life and it's good enough for them to live off forever, more power to them. Harper Lee doesn't ever need to pick up a typewriter again, because To Kill A Mockingbird was the absolute tits. This is not a bug, this is Working As Intended.
Here's another hypothetical example: Bob Titfuck writes a brilliant novel about the human condition called A Tale Of Shitting Cocks. It isn't a mega hit, but because of lifetime copyright he makes enough off it to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Same example under a 10 year copyright expiration: Bob Titfuck writes a brilliant novel about the human condition called A Tale Of Shitting Cocks. He makes enough money to live off of it for ten years, at which point his copyright expires and Disney use their massive marketing clout to make a billion dollars off it without paying him a penny. He can't even keep selling the book, because any independent publishing attempt he makes is going to be completely crowded out. Is the good guy winning in this scenario? Is that what we want?
I partly agree with this (which is why I really want the old guard to move forward; Lee is an excellent example of someone who needed negotiation partners, marketing & editing help), but the bolded part is absurd. Disney is going to pick-up a decade old property that had a lukewarm reception, presumably picked at random from a Barnes & Nobles shelf? Really?
I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that Disney's agents spend their time fingering through mediocre stories while shaking their fists at those damnable copyright laws that prevent them from republishing such works.
There is also an undercurrent here of suggesting that anyone that wants to make anything creative needs to have a publishing and marketing plan all figured out and ready to go first or else they don't deserve to make money from it, which I'm not sure I'm happy with.
I haven't seen anyone suggest a minimum time period less than 10 years with optional extensions. Most of the suggestions seem to be closer to 20 years. If that requires getting your marketing sorted out first, I must have missed something about how long that takes to make happen.
Specifically on the subject of Pratchett, every list I can find has The Colour of Magic being his first book in 1983. 10 years with an optional extension gets him at least to 1993, or Lords and Ladies / Small Gods if you prefer to go by books. 20 years gets you through Night Watch. I'd say he was clearly successful and had made decent money off of Colour by that point.
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
What this is all coming down to is the pant-on-head idea that somehow "art" is of less value than any other talent. Like, if you can make money off of your novel or play or song or whatever, you shouldn't be able to make as much as you can because fuck you, get a real job.
And that strikes me as really fucking stupid.
I don't think that viewpoint is implied by a 10-year copyright. I would say even for the most valuable and meaningful jobs, you usually only get paid while you continue to do the job and create new value. It doesn't seem unreasonable to apply the same standard to creators.
Respecting creators and creative works doesn't imply that we should lionize generations of pointless rent-seeking, much of which comes at the expense of actually creating new things.
It is unreasonable because you're trying to fit art into some weird box to fit in with other jobs. It doesn't. As Japan said, you might not make much money off your first novel until you hit it big.
And by your logic, the Dean Koontz, Stephen Kings, Terry Pratchetts, and Neil Gaimans of the world have only ever written one novel and have no drive to make another.
And by yours their first decade of each novel did not see a substantial amount of income just from that novel for those guys. Somehow, I suspect you're finding bad examples.
Also, you're straw manning his argument. He's not suggesting that the current system gives them no incentive to create. He's suggesting that they don't need the incentive of a lifetime of income from one work to create, and that maybe some lesser incentive is sufficient.
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Got an example or two of someone who made a decent amount of money off some work more than a decade after they created it? That question has come up at least 4 times that I know of so far in this thread. It has yet to be answered. If you can't, then you would appear to be protecting something that doesn't exist.
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Got an example or two of someone who made a decent amount of money off some work more than a decade after they created it? That question has come up at least 4 times that I know of so far in this thread. It has yet to be answered. If you can't, then you would appear to be protecting something that doesn't exist.
Terry Pratchett.
Herman Melville, who technically didn't make any money off of his books until after he died.
Strictly speaking Stephen King, who rereleased short stories first published in magazines after becoming a famous novelist and which make bank.
So maybe, just maybe, you guys don't really know what you're talking about?
hmm.
+1
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
What this is all coming down to is the pant-on-head idea that somehow "art" is of less value than any other talent. Like, if you can make money off of your novel or play or song or whatever, you shouldn't be able to make as much as you can because fuck you, get a real job.
And that strikes me as really fucking stupid.
I don't think that viewpoint is implied by a 10-year copyright. I would say even for the most valuable and meaningful jobs, you usually only get paid while you continue to do the job and create new value. It doesn't seem unreasonable to apply the same standard to creators.
Respecting creators and creative works doesn't imply that we should lionize generations of pointless rent-seeking, much of which comes at the expense of actually creating new things.
It is unreasonable because you're trying to fit art into some weird box to fit in with other jobs. It doesn't. As Japan said, you might not make much money off your first novel until you hit it big.
And by your logic, the Dean Koontz, Stephen Kings, Terry Pratchetts, and Neil Gaimans of the world have only ever written one novel and have no drive to make another.
And by yours their first decade of each novel did not see a substantial amount of income just from that novel for those guys. Somehow, I suspect you're finding bad examples.
Also, you're straw manning his argument. He's not suggesting that the current system gives them no incentive to create. He's suggesting that they don't need the incentive of a lifetime of income from one work to create, and that maybe some lesser incentive is sufficient.
You don't need an incentive of a lifetime of income to create. In fact, authors have written book after book and never made much money at all!
What I am suggesting is that the idea that authors need pressure of "ten years and you're done" to create is stupid.
Because it is.
And I'm not arguing that they WILL NOT make money in the first ten years, I'm saying they MIGHT NOT and why shouldn't they be able to profit off of their work later, when people want it, rather than shucking that money into the firsts of publishers and Disney/Asylum types?
+1
Options
JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
In what other profession can I do one thing and make money off it for the rest of my life?
Right. So what? Write a book if you want in on that shit.
I don't begrudge them their money, just their failing to let something go into the public domain (granted, it's a little tricky to separate the two). Also, public domain does not only help large companies. To pick a nice, easy, contemporary example: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies walks the sort of line between parody and infringement that is simply not possible without the base work being public domain. Given that I don't think it particularly comments on the original work, it would really just be infringing. So what if he wanted to write Lord of the Rings and Zombies? It's not public domain, and won't be for a while, so that's not happening (under life of the author, it would be available). How about Star Wars and Zombies? Definitely out, life of the author or not.
But public domain, especially when shit gets put in public domain a mere 10 years after creation, does help large companies a lot. I'm not going to comment on the worth of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but what you're essentially saying is that you'd rather have Disney make a lot of money and have P&P&Z than having the original artist make that money.
Strata and Dark Side of the Sun are the other pre-discworld works, not counting short stories. I thought the Nome trilogy was in there too, but they're later than I thought.
The colour of magic was the first Discworld novel. Pratchett wrote the carpet people in 1971.
If I'm reading what I can find on that book correctly, it was re-written and republished in 1992. That would generate a new copy right on it, as it is now a new work. What I can't seem to find is any information on how well the first version of the book did. Any idea on that?
The idea that a great work of art isn't still producing value years after its creation is also questionable.
Harper Lee may not have written another book, but the idea that she's not still contributing to society through Mockingbird is absurd.
There is a rather nice house down the street from me that I would say produces value for the neighborhood. I'd also guess that the architect who built the house has had to build other things since then if he wanted to continue working as an architect.
Rent-seeking is always easier and less risky than producing new value, whether you're talking about property or creative work. In either case, I believe that we should try to encourage and incentivize people to create value instead of endlessly seeking rents.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Even King didn't really knock it out of the park on one go; he'd been writing articles in papers & submitting short stories to magazines for years before he wrote Carrie (but then, King also freely admits that he was 'inspired by' H.P. Lovecraft. I'm kind of curious where people want to draw the line between 'inspiration' and 'stealing intellectual property').
With Love and Courage
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
The idea that a great work of art isn't still producing value years after its creation is also questionable.
Harper Lee may not have written another book, but the idea that she's not still contributing to society through Mockingbird is absurd.
There is a rather nice house down the street from me that I would say produces value for the neighborhood. I'd also guess that the architect who built the house has had to build other things since then if he wanted to continue working as an architect.
Rent-seeking is always easier and less risky than producing new value, whether you're talking about property or creative work. In either case, I believe that we should try to encourage and incentivize people to create value instead of endlessly seeking rents.
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Got an example or two of someone who made a decent amount of money off some work more than a decade after they created it? That question has come up at least 4 times that I know of so far in this thread. It has yet to be answered. If you can't, then you would appear to be protecting something that doesn't exist.
A Song of Ice and Fire sales (unsurprisingly) rocketed astronomically after the HBO series kicked off. A Game of Thrones was first published in 1996. So that's fifteen years after initial release.
The colour of magic was the first Discworld novel. Pratchett wrote the carpet people in 1971.
If I'm reading what I can find on that book correctly, it was re-written and republished in 1992. That would generate a new copy right on it, as it is now a new work. What I can't seem to find is any information on how well the first version of the book did. Any idea on that?
I can't find my copy at the moment, but the foreword basically says it sold out a short run after a couple of years and wasn't republished.
Basically I can't see why, given the likes of Rotax can licence designs for fifty plus years, authors get ten years then it's "fuck you it's public domain now".
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Even King didn't really knock it out of the park on one go; he'd been writing articles in papers & submitting short stories to magazines for years before he wrote Carrie (but then, King also freely admits that he was 'inspired by' H.P. Lovecraft. I'm kind of curious where people want to draw the line between 'inspiration' and 'stealing intellectual property').
Probably somewhere a few decades after the IP creator's death
Yes, a physical building is absolutely comparable to a novel.
If an architect devises a new way of maximizing a building's energy efficiency, then that's more like what we're talking about here. Not identical, but similar. In such a case, the architect absolutely should benefit from his creation for the rest of his life.
The idea that a great work of art isn't still producing value years after its creation is also questionable.
Harper Lee may not have written another book, but the idea that she's not still contributing to society through Mockingbird is absurd.
There is a rather nice house down the street from me that I would say produces value for the neighborhood. I'd also guess that the architect who built the house has had to build other things since then if he wanted to continue working as an architect.
Rent-seeking is always easier and less risky than producing new value, whether you're talking about property or creative work. In either case, I believe that we should try to encourage and incentivize people to create value instead of endlessly seeking rents.
Man what
Architects routinely sell the same designs for decades, as do boat builders, machine tool makers, race car designers and other such IP based occupations.
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Got an example or two of someone who made a decent amount of money off some work more than a decade after they created it? That question has come up at least 4 times that I know of so far in this thread. It has yet to be answered. If you can't, then you would appear to be protecting something that doesn't exist.
Herman Melville, who technically didn't make any money off of his books until after he died.
So, not covered under what you propose.
Strictly speaking Stephen King, who rereleased short stories first published in magazines after becoming a famous novelist and which make bank.
He do any editting of those works? Maybe add a little bit to them? If so, new work, new copyright.
So maybe, just maybe, you guys don't really know what you're talking about?
hmm.
Or possibly we're simply not hidebound dinosaurs stuck in an earlier century. Lets hold off on the ad hominems shall we? Otherwise we'll simply get into a war of declaring credentials that no one in this forum can win because no one in this forum has done anything like enough research to be declared an expert.
But, since there do appear to be at least a few authors who have in fact created one thing, gotten famous on another thing at least a decade later, and then made some money off that first thing lets talk about that situation. As it turns out, that author (by definition) got famous and likely made some money off their other works. If their first work wasn't successful, but they didn't stop writing, I'm kind of not bothered. The worst case under the 10 year copyright with extension theory is that they get to make a decade of money off the famous book and whatever advance they got on the first. They can even re-release that first work now that they're a better writer and get a new copyright on it if they find substantial changes to make to their old, and likely bad, writing. If they don't and someone else wants to give society a better version of that first work, then I'm all for paying them for it (since the author apparently doesn't want to update it, I'm fine with not paying them). If no one wants to update it, but someone else would like to compete with our now semi-famous author on publishing some book that is only seeing popularity by proxy ... I kinda of don't care.
I don't see what entitles the author to any more than credit after he's had a chance to make some money of his work. I also don't see how reducing that window will convince people not to write.
But public domain, especially when shit gets put in public domain a mere 10 years after creation, does help large companies a lot. I'm not going to comment on the worth of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but what you're essentially saying is that you'd rather have Disney make a lot of money and have P&P&Z than having the original artist make that money.
I'm honestly not following you on this one. Explain to me how Disney could be making any money on P&P&Z right now without creating it before 2009? The soonest they could be making money on it under the 10 year policy would be 6 years from now. Under a 20 year policy, it's less than a quarter of its way through the protected period.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I don't understand why we are fetishizing the starving artist so much. I don't care if you are a billionaire or a multibillion dollar company. If its your work or you own the work, you should have control over it as far as I am concerned.
In what other profession can I do one thing and make money off it for the rest of my life?
Lottery ticket buying? :P
Being an author, most of the time, is not a lucrative profession.
I don't begrudge them their money, just their failing to let something go into the public domain (granted, it's a little tricky to separate the two). Also, public domain does not only help large companies. To pick a nice, easy, contemporary example: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies walks the sort of line between parody and infringement that is simply not possible without the base work being public domain. Given that I don't think it particularly comments on the original work, it would really just be infringing. So what if he wanted to write Lord of the Rings and Zombies? It's not public domain, and won't be for a while, so that's not happening (under life of the author, it would be available). How about Star Wars and Zombies? Definitely out, life of the author or not.
There are separate protections for creative works that are parodies of existing works. The lines do get blurry, sure, but that system does currently do it's job.
Public Domain is also, mostly, working as intended. Classics are preserved & cherished, and authors still have more than ample opportunity to collect royalties until their deaths, and have their estate collect royalties for another 50~ years. That can be very important for the author's children / spouse. Having Public Domain kick into action in a decade would essentially force every professional author to become a Dean Koontz or John Grisham, which isn't something that really appeals to me,
Otherwise we'll simply get into a war of declaring credentials that no one in this forum can win because no one in this forum has done anything like enough research to be declared an expert..
I studied copyright and contract law related to it at a degree level. Just because you don't know what you're talking about, doesn't mean that no one else does.
I don't see why the limitation should be "Someone still made money after this amount of time." Robert Iger is still making money on Mickey Mouse, or they wouldn't keep moving the copyright date up. What's relevant to me isn't whether someone made money on Game of Thrones 15 years after the fact, it's on whether a shorter copyright time would have stopped Game of Thrones from being written in the first place.
But I am approaching this from a pragmatic standpoint and not an idealist standpoint. I don't think copyright is some higher ethical ideal, I think it is a set of rules that we construct in society in order to incentivize people to produce things of value. I do not see is it being very likely that a 10-year limit on copyright is going to stop anyone from producing anything: simply put, neither people nor businesses tend to plan that far ahead. Is there a serious suggestion here that artists will choose not to create something now because they're worried about losing the rights to that creation 10 years in the future? I would think most artists would be ecstatic to have ten years of income from a project, and well they should be - ten years of income represents incredible artistic success, and should be all the time and leisure they need to produce something else if they want to continue making a living off of their work after that 10-year period.
I don't understand why we are fetishizing the starving artist so much. I don't care if you are a billionaire or a multibillion dollar company. If its your work or you own the work, you should have control over it as far as I am concerned.
Why do you keep utilizing the distinction of either
1) it's your work
2) you own the work
given that, for you, it ultimately comes down to ownership? Your position doesn't actually give a shit about who created / produced the work. You only care about the right of ownership, as you've said multiple times: If Player-A created a character, and Player-B buys the rights to the character, then Player-B's position of ownership of the character trumps Player-A's having created the character.
I don't understand why we are fetishizing the starving artist so much. I don't care if you are a billionaire or a multibillion dollar company. If its your work or you own the work, you should have control over it as far as I am concerned.
Because a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation already has de facto protections offered by it's size and influence. It doesn't need state protection at all.
Starving artists do.
With Love and Courage
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I don't understand why we are fetishizing the starving artist so much. I don't care if you are a billionaire or a multibillion dollar company. If its your work or you own the work, you should have control over it as far as I am concerned.
Why do you keep utilizing the distinction of either
1) it's your work
2) you own the work
given that, for you, it ultimately comes down to ownership? Your position doesn't actually give a shit about who created / produced the work. You only care about the right of ownership, as you've said multiple times: If Player-A created a character, and Player-B buys the rights to the character, then Player-B's position of ownership of the character trumps Player-A's having created the character.
Because not all creators sell the rights to their creations. But yes, I only care about ownership.
The colour of magic was the first Discworld novel. Pratchett wrote the carpet people in 1971.
If I'm reading what I can find on that book correctly, it was re-written and republished in 1992. That would generate a new copy right on it, as it is now a new work. What I can't seem to find is any information on how well the first version of the book did. Any idea on that?
I can't find my copy at the moment, but the foreword basically says it sold out a short run after a couple of years and wasn't republished.
Basically I can't see why, given the likes of Rotax can licence designs for fifty plus years, authors get ten years then it's "fuck you it's public domain now".
How is Rotax doing that? Patents? The system I suggested, back in the post I originally suggested it in, was very nearly exactly the US patent system. Complete with reupping your rights to it.
As far as Pratchett goes, that would suggest that most of the money he made off it was made off the redone work. In which case, how does someone getting to publish the bad version matter?
I wonder at one point everyone "officially" decided at 10-years as the argument point. Just enough above zero that you're not looking like you want to abolish copyright, just low enough to be able to make extreme examples of being fucked over by not having extensive copyright length?
Hmm, a win for both sides...at least, by way of making their argument. Probably not so much for convincing anyone on the other side.
+1
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
People making money from older works is fairly common.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Got an example or two of someone who made a decent amount of money off some work more than a decade after they created it? That question has come up at least 4 times that I know of so far in this thread. It has yet to be answered. If you can't, then you would appear to be protecting something that doesn't exist.
Herman Melville, who technically didn't make any money off of his books until after he died.
So, not covered under what you propose.
Strictly speaking Stephen King, who rereleased short stories first published in magazines after becoming a famous novelist and which make bank.
He do any editting of those works? Maybe add a little bit to them? If so, new work, new copyright.
And that's about where I stopped reading and decided to follow Tube's lead and bid you all a good night.
Posts
I think that an individual is. I would set copyright for the life of the author, or a set period of time about that long (60 or 70 years).
But I stand against this silly idea that artists should just suck it up and make something new. Say what you will about the "right's holders" (and I'll probably agree with you), but the internet and p2p has made us as consumers super entitled.
We value (in an economic sense, and slightly in a cultural one) art much less than we perhaps did or should.
For example, terry pratchett didn't make much off his first few books until The Colour of Magic brought him popularity and exposure.
Similarly it's not unusual for a band to have a couple of albums behind them before they hit mainstream success.
Very short copyright periods mean that unless a work is instantly successful it becomes nigh-impossible for the artist to make money from it.
Indeed. But define 'very short'. That's the problem. I mean, if you guys want I'll try and go track down the various journal articles I read (and violate their copyright to post excerpts here) to justify my view of it lasting a generation (~25 years) rather than longer. It'll probably take awhile with work and all that, so I'll still continue to just assert things between now and then because I'm lazy.
I don't think that viewpoint is implied by a 10-year copyright. I would say even for the most valuable and meaningful jobs, you usually only get paid while you continue to do the job and create new value. It doesn't seem unreasonable to apply the same standard to creators.
Respecting creators and creative works doesn't imply that we should lionize generations of pointless rent-seeking, much of which comes at the expense of actually creating new things.
It is unreasonable because you're trying to fit art into some weird box to fit in with other jobs. It doesn't. As Japan said, you might not make much money off your first novel until you hit it big.
And by your logic, the Dean Koontz, Stephen Kings, Terry Pratchetts, and Neil Gaimans of the world have only ever written one novel and have no drive to make another.
That ain't how this chicken chuckles.
Someone was talking ten years, which was mostly what I had in mind. it can definitely take longer than that for an author to attract enough attention that something makes big sales.
When they do, people inevitably go looking for their previous work even if it didn't sell well at the time.
Again, speaking from the perspective of print publishing (I know things are much more complicated in, say, art, and presumably music):
Why do I give a shit if you use my characters / plot / whatever after I've already sold my manuscript to, say, Penguin Books or whomever? I've already been paid, so I'm not exactly a 'starving artist' at that point (well, I might still be, depending on how big the deal was - but then I can always go ahead and write a new manuscript. If my old one sells well enough, Penguin might even offer me an advance).
You're certainly not denying me anything by using my characters / story. I'm sure Penguin might be pissed that someone else is now making money off of the work they publicized, but there you go.
Even if you outright plagiarize, my manuscript, word for word, and sell it to another publisher after I've already made my deal with Penguin, how am I being hurt? Obviously Penguin would get hurt, because now the market is being split, but the author (in theory) shouldn't really give two fucks from a financial perspective (I'd still be furious anyway, of course, because it's just unethical to do that).
...Yes, I would like a world, assuming we're forced to live in a capitalistic environment, where Harper Lee 'has to' write & sell more than one single manuscript his entire lifetime in or to be considered a professional author (well, I'd prefer one where he's just subsidized to a basic standard of living, but that's off topic). No author should be expecting their first works to be published for enough money to sit on for a lifetime.
I mean, this idea that writing a manuscript is a horrible chore that an author must endure is kind of ridiculous. Writers write, whether or not it'll sell, and while it's certainly not easy to put together a good novel I've never personally thought of it as some weight I've got to lift.
EDIT:
I partly agree with this (which is why I really want the old guard to move forward; Lee is an excellent example of someone who needed negotiation partners, marketing & editing help), but the bolded part is absurd. Disney is going to pick-up a decade old property that had a lukewarm reception, presumably picked at random from a Barnes & Nobles shelf? Really?
I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that Disney's agents spend their time fingering through mediocre stories while shaking their fists at those damnable copyright laws that prevent them from republishing such works.
Specifically on the subject of Pratchett, every list I can find has The Colour of Magic being his first book in 1983. 10 years with an optional extension gets him at least to 1993, or Lords and Ladies / Small Gods if you prefer to go by books. 20 years gets you through Night Watch. I'd say he was clearly successful and had made decent money off of Colour by that point.
See: Basically every author/artist ever.
Not everyone is Stephen King or The Beatles and knock it out of the park on the first go.
Also, you're straw manning his argument. He's not suggesting that the current system gives them no incentive to create. He's suggesting that they don't need the incentive of a lifetime of income from one work to create, and that maybe some lesser incentive is sufficient.
Harper Lee may not have written another book, but the idea that she's not still contributing to society through Mockingbird is absurd.
Terry Pratchett.
Herman Melville, who technically didn't make any money off of his books until after he died.
Strictly speaking Stephen King, who rereleased short stories first published in magazines after becoming a famous novelist and which make bank.
So maybe, just maybe, you guys don't really know what you're talking about?
hmm.
You don't need an incentive of a lifetime of income to create. In fact, authors have written book after book and never made much money at all!
What I am suggesting is that the idea that authors need pressure of "ten years and you're done" to create is stupid.
Because it is.
And I'm not arguing that they WILL NOT make money in the first ten years, I'm saying they MIGHT NOT and why shouldn't they be able to profit off of their work later, when people want it, rather than shucking that money into the firsts of publishers and Disney/Asylum types?
Right. So what? Write a book if you want in on that shit.
But public domain, especially when shit gets put in public domain a mere 10 years after creation, does help large companies a lot. I'm not going to comment on the worth of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but what you're essentially saying is that you'd rather have Disney make a lot of money and have P&P&Z than having the original artist make that money.
There is a rather nice house down the street from me that I would say produces value for the neighborhood. I'd also guess that the architect who built the house has had to build other things since then if he wanted to continue working as an architect.
Rent-seeking is always easier and less risky than producing new value, whether you're talking about property or creative work. In either case, I believe that we should try to encourage and incentivize people to create value instead of endlessly seeking rents.
Even King didn't really knock it out of the park on one go; he'd been writing articles in papers & submitting short stories to magazines for years before he wrote Carrie (but then, King also freely admits that he was 'inspired by' H.P. Lovecraft. I'm kind of curious where people want to draw the line between 'inspiration' and 'stealing intellectual property').
Yes, those oranges sure seem appley, don't they?
I just had to say, bad example.
(Although it most certainly was an actual licensed thing that he was authorized to make, in this case.)
A Song of Ice and Fire sales (unsurprisingly) rocketed astronomically after the HBO series kicked off. A Game of Thrones was first published in 1996. So that's fifteen years after initial release.
Next?
I can't find my copy at the moment, but the foreword basically says it sold out a short run after a couple of years and wasn't republished.
Basically I can't see why, given the likes of Rotax can licence designs for fifty plus years, authors get ten years then it's "fuck you it's public domain now".
Probably somewhere a few decades after the IP creator's death
If an architect devises a new way of maximizing a building's energy efficiency, then that's more like what we're talking about here. Not identical, but similar. In such a case, the architect absolutely should benefit from his creation for the rest of his life.
Man what
Architects routinely sell the same designs for decades, as do boat builders, machine tool makers, race car designers and other such IP based occupations.
Are you saying you object to that, too?
Or possibly we're simply not hidebound dinosaurs stuck in an earlier century. Lets hold off on the ad hominems shall we? Otherwise we'll simply get into a war of declaring credentials that no one in this forum can win because no one in this forum has done anything like enough research to be declared an expert.
But, since there do appear to be at least a few authors who have in fact created one thing, gotten famous on another thing at least a decade later, and then made some money off that first thing lets talk about that situation. As it turns out, that author (by definition) got famous and likely made some money off their other works. If their first work wasn't successful, but they didn't stop writing, I'm kind of not bothered. The worst case under the 10 year copyright with extension theory is that they get to make a decade of money off the famous book and whatever advance they got on the first. They can even re-release that first work now that they're a better writer and get a new copyright on it if they find substantial changes to make to their old, and likely bad, writing. If they don't and someone else wants to give society a better version of that first work, then I'm all for paying them for it (since the author apparently doesn't want to update it, I'm fine with not paying them). If no one wants to update it, but someone else would like to compete with our now semi-famous author on publishing some book that is only seeing popularity by proxy ... I kinda of don't care.
I don't see what entitles the author to any more than credit after he's had a chance to make some money of his work. I also don't see how reducing that window will convince people not to write.
I'm honestly not following you on this one. Explain to me how Disney could be making any money on P&P&Z right now without creating it before 2009? The soonest they could be making money on it under the 10 year policy would be 6 years from now. Under a 20 year policy, it's less than a quarter of its way through the protected period.
Lottery ticket buying? :P
Being an author, most of the time, is not a lucrative profession.
There are separate protections for creative works that are parodies of existing works. The lines do get blurry, sure, but that system does currently do it's job.
Public Domain is also, mostly, working as intended. Classics are preserved & cherished, and authors still have more than ample opportunity to collect royalties until their deaths, and have their estate collect royalties for another 50~ years. That can be very important for the author's children / spouse. Having Public Domain kick into action in a decade would essentially force every professional author to become a Dean Koontz or John Grisham, which isn't something that really appeals to me,
I studied copyright and contract law related to it at a degree level. Just because you don't know what you're talking about, doesn't mean that no one else does.
But I am approaching this from a pragmatic standpoint and not an idealist standpoint. I don't think copyright is some higher ethical ideal, I think it is a set of rules that we construct in society in order to incentivize people to produce things of value. I do not see is it being very likely that a 10-year limit on copyright is going to stop anyone from producing anything: simply put, neither people nor businesses tend to plan that far ahead. Is there a serious suggestion here that artists will choose not to create something now because they're worried about losing the rights to that creation 10 years in the future? I would think most artists would be ecstatic to have ten years of income from a project, and well they should be - ten years of income represents incredible artistic success, and should be all the time and leisure they need to produce something else if they want to continue making a living off of their work after that 10-year period.
Why do you keep utilizing the distinction of either
1) it's your work
2) you own the work
given that, for you, it ultimately comes down to ownership? Your position doesn't actually give a shit about who created / produced the work. You only care about the right of ownership, as you've said multiple times: If Player-A created a character, and Player-B buys the rights to the character, then Player-B's position of ownership of the character trumps Player-A's having created the character.
Because a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation already has de facto protections offered by it's size and influence. It doesn't need state protection at all.
Starving artists do.
Because not all creators sell the rights to their creations. But yes, I only care about ownership.
As far as Pratchett goes, that would suggest that most of the money he made off it was made off the redone work. In which case, how does someone getting to publish the bad version matter?
Hmm, a win for both sides...at least, by way of making their argument. Probably not so much for convincing anyone on the other side.
And that's about where I stopped reading and decided to follow Tube's lead and bid you all a good night.
Enjoy missing the entire point, gang.