

Shorten excessive copyright terms - yakiv
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/shorten-excessive-copyright-terms/XMc72zjc

======
tokenadult
It looks like the Hacker News front page is in danger of being taken over by
petitions.whitehouse.gov on this first business day of 2013. The petition
kindly submitted here for comment reads in full:

"Current copyright terms are much longer than necessary for promoting
progress. Excessive copyright terms limit the usefulness of the works they
cover without leading to the creation of more works.

"I ask the government to limit copyright terms to a maximum of 10 years with
no exceptions. Compared to current copyright terms 10 years may sound very
short, but 10 years is a long time; it may still be too long. I also ask that
currently active copyright terms all end within 10 years.

"It is not society's duty to reward authors and artists for their creativity
or hard work. Copyright should only exist as an incentive. The excessive
monopoly terms must end."

This is a typical doofus petition to the White House in that the author has
not even done the elementary research work of looking up the clause in the
federal Constitution about copyright:

"The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8 clause 8

<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92preface.html>

The best way to appeal to Congress (which has the authority on this issue, NOT
the President) to change copyright law is to lean hard on the "limited time"
language from the Constitution as well as point to real-world examples of
places with shorter copyright terms (where?) with beneficial effects for the
national economies of those places. Look for empirical examples when arguing
about public policy.

Note that the United States Supreme Court has already interpreted the "limited
time" language from the Constitution broadly enough to allow the current,

Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 US 186 (2003).

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1214768485224110...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12147684852241107557&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)

long copyright terms in United States law (which was adapted to European law
in this regard during my lifetime). Copyright terms in the United States used
to be relatively short compared to those in most other countries with modern
copyright laws, perhaps because of the constitutional language. But appealing
to the constitutional language would be part of the task of persuading
Congress to change the current law.

------
johnrgrace
Copyright terms need to be reformed, but 10 years is far too short. Right now
almost nothing is entering the Public domain and that's wrong, the
books/music/movies of my parents and grandparents are still under copyright.

Happy Brthday shows the problems with the system. A killer law review article
titled "Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song" traces how a Happy
Birthday to You started out life as Good Morning to All a song with the same
melody but different words, written as a classroom greeting by two teachers in
the 1890's is still under copyright. It's one of the best things I read in
2012 and readable by a non lawyer.
<http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/rbrauneis/happybirthday.htm>

The first copyright law in the english language, the Statute of Anne from 1710
had a term of 14 years renewable for another 14 years. Under those terms
things like StarWars would be entering the public domain, which given where it
is in culture and the profits lucas has seen sound about right.

Going to 10 years would mean that most authors/comic book creators would NEVER
see movie option money and film studios wouldn't

~~~
warfangle
I'm not entirely against long-term copyrights, but I'm not for them either. If
a company/individual still rakes an exorbitant cashflow from a given
copyrighted work, why not let them keep it? Let's make the law smarter.
Initial copyright is free (14 yrs); first renewal is free (+4 yrs); subsequent
renewals (every four years) increase in cost exponentionally (e.g., $2^n where
n is the number of renewals): if a work is still profitable after 20 years,
why not extend it another four? However, for a work to be profitable under
these extension guidelines after sixty or eighty years it would have to be a
monumental work indeed. This also allows less profitable works to fall into
the public domain more quickly.

The other issue with our current copyright law is lost works: works where the
rightsholder can no longer be found or even identified. This should be changed
vis a vis copyright registration - register a work and after the copyright
expires it is published freely online in a digital fashion.

------
betterunix
While we are at it, can we exempt scientific papers from copyright? Copyright
only serves the interests of journal publishers, who are entirely redundant
now that we have the Internet. Rather than ensuring access to scientific work,
copyrights have become a way to restrict access -- even universities cannot
guarantee their students and professors access to all journals. Journal
articles are reviewed by volunteers, and sometimes journals are even edited by
volunteers.

We need to stop this nonsense already. Copyright is not an incentive for
scientists, it is a burden.

~~~
Raphael
Scientists can easily publish free papers online. No change in law needed.

~~~
betterunix
It is not just about where the papers are published. A system needs to be
established that allows peer review to happen in a meaningful way, archives
must be established and maintained, etc. Right now, journals are facilitating
peer review and archiving papers, but that carries the cost of papers being
locked behind paywalls with outrageously high prices that ensure that the
general public has difficulty accessing that work. I would suggest a system in
which university libraries act as archives, providing HTTP links for people
who want a handful of papers or BitTorrent for people who want large batches
and for distributing the archives to other libraries. Peer review would be
facilitated in software, using some threshold signature scheme to assert that
a paper passed review and using some secure computation protocol to protect
the anonymity of authors; people would be invited to review papers by being
given a share of the signing key.

My point is that we have a legal system in place now that protects and
promotes the existence of a publishing system that is grossly out of date, and
that we have a chance to do better (and to abolish the old system).

------
bdimcheff
I've been thinking a lot about copyright terms lately, and this is what I have
come up with: You get 5 years for "free", just like we have now. The next 5
years cost you $10k. The next costs you $100k. Add a zero every 5 years. It's
going to be very difficult to keep a copyright for more than 20 or 25 years,
but if it's really worth that much to you, then by all means...

------
xenos345
If someone could provide further detail as to the benefit of this, I might be
willing to consider signing. I just dont know enough about both arguments to
make a determination.

~~~
tokenizer
Well, considering that White House Petitions don't work. I wouldn't worry
about this one...

To simplify the arguments:

Pro (Current) Copyright: We need to protect artists. We need to protect the
invested parties interests.

Against (Current) Copyright: Internet. It's companies who Copyright protects
not Artists. Copyright actually stifles creativity and application of
invention.

That's my take of this whole thing anyway. I don't care either way to be
honest. It's all high level creation issues, and I've never had a personal run
in to warrant an extreme positioning either way. I'd like is someone could
give a more detailed explanation or correct any of my takeaways.

~~~
betterunix
"Pro (Current) Copyright: We need to protect artists. We need to protect the
invested parties interests."

Eh, I don't think you'll hear much talk about artists when the copyright
lobbyists meet with our elected representatives. More likely, you'll hear
this: copyrights are an important source of revenue for a major part of the US
economy. We need stronger copyrights to protect that revenue stream. The only
time people talk about artists is when they are appealing to the general
public's moral sentiments.

"Against (Current) Copyright: Internet. It's companies who Copyright protects
not Artists. Copyright actually stifles creativity and application of
invention."

It depends on who you ask. People in the anti-copyright crowd (like myself)
are not all united on what should change. RMS has said that copyright can be
good e.g. when applied in the way that the GPL applies it, or that it can be
bad, so the system should be reformed to ensure that GPL-style application is
promoted (or GFDL for written documents, or creative commons, etc.). My view
is that copyright was made obsolete by the development of PCs and global
computer networks, and that a new system must be developed to ensure that
artists are paid, that scientists can publish papers, and that the utility of
PCs and the Internet must be legally protected (e.g. we must ensure that we,
the general public, have access to computers that are not restricted or
designed to fight us, and we must ensure that we continue to have access to a
global communication network that makes no distinction between the nodes
connected to it). There are some who want to create a complete anarchy, where
copying is entirely unregulated -- where no system for ensuring access to
creative works exists.

"It's all high level creation issues"

That is not really true. Copyright is about you, even if you do not personally
do the sort of work that copyrights cover. Copyright is about your ability to
access human knowledge; it is about your right to sing "Happy Birthday;" it is
about your continued access to things like the Internet, and ensuring that the
Internet does not degenerate into a cable TV network (which is a system
designed with copyrights in mind). The combination of PCs and the Internet has
the potential to upend copyrights and completely change the way in which
knowledge and entertainment spread, having an impact as broad and lasting as
the printing press (which was the reason copyright was first created) or as
writing itself (which forever changed the way information was passed from
generation to generation). Human civilization is made possible by
communication, and copyrights are about communication; if you do not care
about copyrights today, you will eventually be forced to care, should
copyright law continue its outrageous expansion (and there is no reason to
think the expansion will stop any time soon).

~~~
tokenizer
Thank you for the insightful elaborations and clarifications.

Regarding the expansion of copyright in the near future, do you think that the
general public of the US will simply allow things to get out of hand before
making concessions like you suggested (GFDL/GPL), or will the internet
(software?) as we know it simply be overtaken, with the only recourse to
simply use another paradigm for open communication and sharing.

My opinion is that, with more and more older people adopting technology, and
younger people being born (obviously, right?), we'll in a general public
sense, shift our priorities to a more logical and open copyright system. I
would give it 20-30 years though...

------
Pezmc
Why this is on the HN home page with only 2 votes I'm not too sure, but it
does raise a valid point!

~~~
tokenizer
My guess is that it's programmed that way.

But seriously, I think HN must have a keyword bump, namely for
U.S./Copyright/Show HN. It also probably has a few elite sites that rank high,
like the Atlantic, and Tech Crunch. That or because it was voted up twice in
new within it's first minute of being posted, which resulted in the front
page, which only exacerbates the process.

------
ry0ohki
I wanted to vote for this, but 10 years seems kind of short. Maybe something
between 10 and the current "life plus 70". I think 28 years seems pretty fair.

~~~
mtgx
5-10 years should be the default. But let's say you could get another 10 years
extension, but you'd have to renew it, but you'd have to pay say
$1,000-$5,000. I mean, if you want to renew it, presumably you're making money
from it, and it's worth investing copyrights for another decade. If it's not
making you money anyway, then it should go into the public domain. I think the
end goal was to "enrich" the whole society indirectly, by the authors a
monopoly just enough time to make their money back, and be a worthy
investment.

