
Infinite Copyright Is Killing Culture - guelo
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/03/30/infinite_copyright_is_killing_culture.html
======
guelo
My explanation of the graph:

When a new book comes out it receives marketing and promotion and will sell
for a few years. Then the book enters the dead zone where it will be slowly
forgotten over a couple decades but it is not able to enter the public domain
anymore because copyright protection continues to be extended to protect
Disney's movies from the 1920s.

Since most of the books in the dead zone are not reprinted by the publishers
they are inaccessible except via rummaging through the used book market.

~~~
elviejo
Completely agree as a friend of mine said: "I wouod rather have a law that
shortens copyright terms to at least the death of the author. and that law has
an exception just for Disney..." (ben litton)

~~~
travisp
Ending the copyright of a work at the death of the author without any minimum
would have significant problems. People who are old or ill would not get book
deals (or at least not good ones) because what publisher would want to take
the risk? And, they might not bother self-publishing either, since their
children could not benefit if they die soon.

~~~
wisty
How about 20 years after publication? That would give Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone another 5 years. I'm sure JKR could live with that. CJR
Tolkien would have to live off the savings of the Tolkien estate, and takings
from his own works (The Silmarillion, which he finished off and published over
20 years ago, and some other more recent publications based on JRR's
unfinished work).

Less popular authors wouldn't make enough, but they don't make enough
regardless. There's very few books which make any real money 20 years after
publication, as the chart shows.

The downside would be the moral rights of authors. Some authors are a bit
tetchy about their characters being used by other authors. JKR is reputedly
pretty cool with fan fiction (she knows her fans will just buy more of her
stuff), but some authors would be a bit offended at their characters being
used in slashfic, or whatever other weird use people could think of.

On the upside, educators could use it. Sure, there's "fair use", but it's too
badly defined to get a definite sense of what "fair" is (for good reasons - a
narrow definition would encourage people to abuse it). Teachers and textbook
publishers are too stingy to hire copyright lawyers or buy rights, so they
just use stuff that's clearly in the public domain. Want to know why textbooks
are boring? The lack of public domain materials is one reason (others are
listed here: <http://www.edutopia.org/textbook-publishing-controversy>)

~~~
warfangle
I saw a comment on a similar thread about a month ago suggesting a recurring
annual cost for renewing copyright. The formula for the cost would be similar
to 2^n-1, where n is the number of years the work has been under copyright.

This would allow popular and profitable works to stay under copyright longer,
while allowing less profitable works to enter the public domain sooner.

~~~
kijin
One problem with requiring people to renew their copyright is that a lot of
people will simply forget. There are people who produce hundreds of little
pieces every year, each of which generates little revenue on its own. Should
they renew their copyright on each and every work at the end of every year?
Currently, their works are automatically copyrighted, even if they don't put
up a copyright notice.

I think you should wait X years (where X is around 10-20) before that formula
kicks in.

~~~
warfangle
I'd be amenable to that.

------
cletus
I actually don't understand why the so-called Mickey Mouse copyright
extensions aren't treated on a case-by-case basis or at least don't require
renewal say every 20 years so truly orphaned works can do what they're meant
to and go into the public domain.

That being said, patents have time limits. Why do copyright holders feel like
they have the right to profit in perpetuity? It seems inconsistent and not in
the public interest but I don't need Mickey Mouse to be in the public domain.
Orphaned works however should become so.

~~~
sliverstorm
_It seems inconsistent and not in the public interest but I don't need Mickey
Mouse to be in the public domain_

Honestly, I agree with you. I suspect it is in part because at this point
Mickey Mouse is practically Disney's logo, and we certainly don't expire
_other_ company's rights to their logos.

~~~
steauengeglase
In that case Mickey Mouse is already protected as a trademark. The real
question isn't if Mickey is protected, but if Steamboat Willie is protected
from now until the end of time.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
Who cares about Steamboat Willie, or Disney for that matter?

I care about that there will be little to no public domain between now and
when I die. And I don't care about X popular work of the hour; I care about
the myriads of media that have been orphaned.

Disney and its ilk can afford archiving services, and do as such. Many
studios, authors, musicians and such may either have a copy or perhaps even
lost it (thinking of Prince of Persia source recently found). Do we just let
all but the most popular die in the annals of recorded-but-forgotten history.

DRM is just another chapter, in which the Twilights, Titanics, and Harry
Potters are recorded unencrypted, but the minor films and media are forgotten.

*edited for grammar

------
jstalin
The original copyright act in the US granted protection for 14 years with an
option for 14 year renewal. I think society would be much better served if we
went back to that.

~~~
roc
If the goal is to ensure creatives can make a living at creating things that
are trivial to copy, 14 years may be too short. And registering for renewals
strikes me as an unnecessary fig leaf to entrenched publishers (who else would
have the money or inclination to register and pay for such?).

25 years seems fair.

~~~
m_eiman
What could you possibly create that will take you more than 14 years to earn
back that would only be protected by copyright?

~~~
roc
The problem is that the copyright clock starts ticking the moment you've fixed
an expression, not from any registration or publishing date. So a creation
that is largely done but is being shopped around to publishers, or sitting in
a drawer collecting small tweaks and edits is losing its monopoly.

And if you erode much off 14 years, it starts to sound unnecessarily short.

Just ask any writer, comedian or musician how long their original creations
were kicking around before they got anyone interested in paying them for it.
Several years is common for their pre-discovery work.

~~~
angersock
Several years would still give you nine or ten under copyright.

Anyways, if you can't move product in a few years, you should be trying
something new.

~~~
Avshalom
Hopefully this will be less of a problem going forward with ebooks but the
internet is full of stories of writers with several profitable books published
who ended up sitting on novels for years when the horror market collapsed,
good well edited books that went on to be profitable when "Urban Fantasy"
started selling.

Or just a case of publishers not wanting to publish more than X books a year
from a given writer, regardless of output.

Those are books of course. Movie scripts are notorious for floating around
Hollywood for years, sometimes decades.

------
nkassis
My proposition(probably not original at all) is that we let Disney(and anyone
else) extend copyright on thing it wants at an ever increasing (exponential)
rate. If they have to pay they will make sure to only keep things under
copyright that are still bringing them value.

Also, we need to move towards a registration based copyright system. This post
doesn't need copyright protection.

~~~
jkn
_Also, we need to move towards a registration based copyright system. This
post doesn't need copyright protection._

This idea seems very wrong to me, for two reasons. First, you might not deem
this particular comment of yours worthy of copyright protection, but people
might find themselves in different situations. Consider for example the
following Reddit comments, don't they deserve copyright protection?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/kkmm4/you_unexpec...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/kkmm4/you_unexpectedly_timetravel_to_1985_you_have_no/c2l1ju0)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_des...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_destroy_the_entire_roman_empire_during/c2giwm4)

Secondly, a registration based system puts unsophisticated creators at a
disadvantage. People who don't have the resources to register all their
creations or lack knowledge of the procedures will be penalized.

I would be happy to live in a copyright-free society[1], as it would not favor
anyone. But a registration based system would shift the balance even more to
the advantage of big corporations and copyright trolls.

[1] As long as some moral rights are preserved, e.g. one cannot take credit
for someone else's work.

~~~
njharman
You must be young, and Not remember. Registration worked fine for majority of
history, pre 1970, I believe thats when sono bono copyright act made copyright
automatic.

In fact auto registration has shifted power towards the fewer.

~~~
jkn
Can you support these claims? Just because "it worked" doesn't mean it was
better than the present system.

The upside of automatic copyright is clear: you don't have to bother
registering every blog post you write if you want to prevent people from copy-
pasting them.

The downside is less convincing: tons of material "unworthy" of copyright are
automatically protected? Well, who cares if I cannot copy some HN comment...

~~~
Joeri
That HN comment may have a historical significance you can't see now, but it
will be lost because of automatic copyright. The most valuable historical
material are the thoughts and experiences of "average people", because that's
how we can truly understand an era. How will people in 500 years understand
this era when it is likely that most of the popular culture and social
commentary will be lost by then?

------
ghaff
I'd really like to see the source of the data and what exactly is being
measured. The implication of the title is that these are new physical books.
If that's the case, I guess I'm a bit skeptical.

I suppose it's possible that there are an outsize number of books published
between about 100 and 150 years ago that get read for school and the like,
which would account for that big spike. But these books are mostly not all
that cheap just because they're in the public domain. And, presumably, the
number of different titles still being read from that era is relatively small.
And the top n% (where n is a small number) most popular titles from any era
are mostly still in print, whether they're out of copyright or not.

Now, on the other hand, if this includes e-books, there's a pretty simple
explanation. Many of the pre-copyright titles are available for free and very
low cost and most of us with Kindles and Kindle apps have downloaded quite a
few even if we haven't gotten around to reading all of them.

(I'm not arguing against shorter copyright terms by the way. But my personal
experience is at odds with the suggestion that there are vast numbers of 20th
century books that people would be reading in droves if only there were in
print.)

~~~
martey
" _I'd really like to see the source of the data and what exactly is being
measured._ "

Following the source link in Yglesias' post [1], the graph seems to come from
a presentation that Paul Heald (a professor at the University of Illinois) [2]
did at the University of Canterbury [3]. A video is available on YouTube; the
graph in question (with a different title) seems to be available at the 12:50
mark: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DpfZcftI00#t12m50s>

[1]:
[http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/copyright-...](http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/copyright-
stagnation.html)

[2]: <http://www.law.illinois.edu/faculty/profile/PaulHeald>

[3]: <http://www.econ.canterbury.ac.nz/research/seminar2012.shtml>

~~~
ghaff
Thanks. I missed the link.

------
known
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." --
Isaac Newton

------
protomyth
I bet a lot of it could be mitigated by allowing works to pass into the public
domain, but allow parties to keep the characters / settings under some type of
trademark for new works.

I would say infinite sequels, reboots, and remakes are killing culture more
than infinite copyright.

------
tripzilch
A very cool short story taking this topic to a strange and dystopian extreme
is _Melancholy Elephants_ :

<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html>

------
vilya
When I stop to think about it, it seems strange to me that ownership of
copyright is transferable at all. I suspect it comes from years of thinking of
intellectual property as if it were physical property.

Just as a thought experiment: could a system where copyright isn't
transferable but lasts until the death of the author work? Assuming a suitable
definition of "death" which covers both individuals and companies, that is.

------
cafard
First, what exactly is the Y axis? Titles stocked or volumes stocked, and what
is the order of magnitude?

Second, what is the effect complained of? That it costs too much to purchase
books, movies, and music, or that one can't "read a version of Good-bye, Mr.
Chips in which he protects his students from the werewolf menace as well as
offering them solace through the Great War."

If the former, among the moderately prosperous of the developed countries, is
this really having a large economic effect? Grabbing at random some non-tech
stuff that happens to be in my office, I find, all in copyright: one novel at
$15.95, one volume of humor ditto, one collection of essays on food at $12.95.

Second, if the cultural effect is the problem, just how grave is that problem?
We do not seem to be thinking of Mozart and da Ponte overhauling Beaumarchais
here.

------
michaelw
Recommended reading on this subject:
<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html>

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FairThought
So, what happened during the 1990's and 2000's?

~~~
drcube
Recent popularity? The graph basically says that copyrighted works older than
10-15 years are simply ignored. Public domain works, however, are almost as
widespread as recent blockbusters.

~~~
floppydisk
I would posit the graph is showing the ephemeral popularity of books that
either represent seminal landmarks in literature, philosophy, or other
categories that lend themselves well to the written word OR republications of
books from the public domain for use in the classroom. For instance, several
courses I took in Uni required books like Plato's Republic and Thomas Paine's
Common Sense. Works that are in the public domain but were republished more
recently.

------
zem
spider robinson's short story "melancholy elephants" is relevant here:
<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html>

