"Something" sure. But I can't make something set in Middle Earth (I can't even say the word hobbit, ask D&D how that went), I can't write and sell my own Spiderman comics, I'd have a hard time writing my own Cinderella story without Disney breathing down my neck.
This is a very different reality from the "We’ve been building on top of each other’s work in the open-source software ecosystem and in science this entire time".
You are trying to pass off some arbitrary thing for “building on top of”.
I can use all the benefits of Linux to deliver a SaaS (like 99% of us do), I just can’t call my SaaS “Linux Something”.
You can use all the ideas Tolkien used in your own creative work. You just can’t call them things he called them for now.
> I can't make something set in Middle Earth (I can't even say the word hobbit, ask D&D how that went), I can't write and sell my own Spiderman comics, I'd have a hard time writing my own Cinderella story without Disney breathing down my neck
There is no creative reason to do those things. The only reason is to commercially profit by piggying back off the big names. Copyright works as intended.
for now, the last 80 years, and until easily 2040.
> I can use all the benefits of Linux to deliver a SaaS
> You can use all the ideas Tolkien used in your own creative work. You just can’t call them things he called
That's quite a bait and switch. You don't have to rewrite a linux kernel, or gcc, or whatever language you wish to use in order to make your SaaS. You aren't limited to using the "idea" of a linked-list, a hashmap, or HTTP, and have to reimplement it yourself from scratch. But that's exactly what you're proposing for literature.
I can't build on the idea of Spiderman by making ArachnidMan, a crimefighting superhero who got pinched by a electromagnectic spider without wondering "Is today the day Marvel sues me into the ground". And I absolutely cannot write my own Spiderman comics.
> There is no creative reason to do those things. The only reason is to commercially profit by piggying back off the big names. Copyright works as intended.
In the US at least, copyright comes from a clause which states that laws can be passed "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The only thing the current system is promoting is the concentration of copyright into large corporations (see music labels) and locking people out of the cultural artifacts that define their life (Disney gets to take public domain stories, but a slight twist, and copyright them for 100+ years).
What there is no creative reason is the way that the system is currently set up. All that exist as blatant money and power-grab reasons.
> for now, the last 80 years, and until easily 2040.
Let it be until the end of the universe, please. What kind of creative are you anyway if you don’t want to do your own world-building?
> You don't have to rewrite a linux kernel, or gcc, or whatever language you wish to use in order to make your SaaS. You aren't limited to using the "idea" of a linked-list, a hashmap, or HTTP, and have to reimplement it yourself from scratch.
That was exactly to show you how copyright doesn’t prevent us from building on top of things, but instead fuels innovation. IP protections is how one guy can say “you must always provide your source if you use my work” and have it quickly grow into a massive ecosystem on which most of today’s Internet runs to this day.
Open-source licensing can only exist thanks to copyright and the idea of derivative works in particular.
1. In order to license something, you have to be able to enforce it legally, and for that you have to be the author, which is what copyright means.
2. In order to encourage others to use your library but also ensure they contribute back if they make changes, you need to talk about the concept of a work that is based on your work, and that is—drumroll—a derivative work.
> "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
If you are saying that allowing any writer to be able to take the world someone else built and profit off its fame with minimal modifications is somehow promoting progress of the arts, then I don’t know what to say to you.
> What kind of creative are you anyway if you don’t want to do your own world-building?
A no true creative.
What kind of creative needs lifetime + 70 years of monopoly on an idea?
> If you are saying that allowing any writer to be able to take the world someone else built and profit off its fame with minimal modifications is somehow promoting progress of the arts, then I don’t know what to say to you.
I am not. I am saying that the current way it's implemented is broken. Tolkein has earned more than enough money off of LOTR, it's far past the time for it to enter the public domain and join the stories that he build his work on.
Many of Disney's earlier movies are retelling of folktales. Tolkein in addition to creating parts of his world build on top of existing folktales. Neither would be where they are now if someone was able to impose the kind of restrictions on them that they themselves now impose on us.
I don’t know whether Tolkien’s estate should or should not keep profiting from his work, but I don’t see why this should be forbidden. If anything, we probably have so much great work coming out because people want to repeat the success of great masters and achieve fame and wealth that are possible thanks to IP protections.
Make a cool world and license its use semi-openly, be the change you want to see? Just keep in mind that if your world is openly licensed, it will quickly go out of your control and likely in a direction you (or your family, when you’re dead) may find repulsive. Also, I think you would have to be comfortable that if the next guy writes something based on your hard work and gets a Netflix deal tomorrow you may find it difficult to do something about it.
> Many of Disney's earlier movies are retelling of folktales. Tolkein in addition to creating parts of his world build on top of existing folktales. Neither would be where they are now if someone was able to impose the kind of restrictions on them that they themselves now impose on us.
Anything you say, write, do, etc., is technically based on everything done before you. So now we should eschew the idea of intellectual property and the progress it brought. Got it!
> I don’t know whether Tolkien’s estate should or should not keep profiting from his work, but I don’t see why this should be forbidden.
Because you and I are arguing, or at least I am arguing, about the duration over which they should keep profiting off of it. I claim that it's self evidence that a copyright that never expires and is transferable is self evidently bad (companies will end up having monopoly rights to every idea, see their concentration of money).
And I further argue that the current length for copyright also problematic. the current life of author + 70 years is ridiculously long time for a monopoly. It's gotten to that length not because starving artists need it, but precisely because unimaginative large corporations found it easier to extend the copyright on their existing IP than to image something news.
> Make a cool world and license its use semi-openly, be the change you want to see?
But even if you choose not to because you wish to monetize your work, that's fine by me. But lifetime + 70 years is too long of a time.
My thought is that we should have it be non-transferable, no more having authors and musicians sign their copyright away for a pittance. At it should be capped at something like 30 years or 20 million dollars, whichever comes first.
Gives people time to monetize their idea, and if 30 years wasn't enough time, no amount of time will be enough because nobody's looking at your work. And the amount of works that earn over 20 million dollars is a rounding error; you get to be rich, and then the rest of us get to remix your work.
> Just keep in mind that if your world is openly licensed, it will quickly go out of your control and likely in a direction you (or your family, when you’re dead) may find repulsive. Also, I think you would have to be comfortable that if the next guy writes something based on your hard work and gets a Netflix deal tomorrow you may find it difficult to do something about it.
Both of these I find acceptable. Firstly it's my work only in the sense that I was the one who made it, not it the sense that it belongs to me. Copyright doesn't mean that I own the idea, it only gives me a monopoly on monetizing and distributing the idea.
Secondly, this is exactly how open source projects work. The parallel you drew earlier to open source work comes back here. You have no control over what people make or do with your open source licensed project, all you enforce is what requirements they have to share the code (this quickly becomes a semantic discussion).
The GPLv3 and APGLv3 licenses, which people derogatorily label as "viral", does not even attempt to limit you from making money off the code, all it does is require you to allow everyone else to access the changes you make to it and code you built off it.
The profit cap is an interesting idea in theory, maybe it would discourage some people who go into it hoping to make infinite money but maybe that is for the better.
Regarding software, true, we can’t limit what people build with it if you open-source it, we sort of do not think about it (I wonder for how many people it is an issue secretly).
I think it is similar in art, however. Fanfics are generally tolerated, unless you do something the author specifically dislikes or try to compete with the original. In Japan I think it is also legal to sell them (see dōjinshi) unless the copyright holder specifically complains (which they do not tend to). But using Middle Earth in a commercial ad for a car, for example, is insta-lawsuit.
> maybe it would discourage some people who go into it hoping to make infinite money
That's totally fine by me, the point of copyright should be to advances the arts and science, not to help concentrate wealth.
> I wonder for how many people it is an issue secretly
I think quiet a few. See for example ElasticSearch and Amazon. If you want a truly open-source license then you have to accept that. Otherwise there's a whole spectrum of "source available" licenses, or something like CC BY-NC-SA.
Though that's another difference between works of art and source code. Releasing my book doesn't produce a maintenance burned on me, an open source project usually does.
> using Middle Earth in a commercial ad for a car
You don't even have to go as far as a car, see [0]. They didn't get sued, but it's safe to say that they would the moment they try selling it.
As for the other aspect of fanfic, I think the copyright's holders desires should be weighed less. I personally disliked many of the star wars movies, particularly the latest trilogy, and I'm not alone in this.
A) I know for a fact that better star wars movies would be possible if Disney did not hold a death grip around the IP by the simple fact that other good movies can be made, there's nothing intrinsic to star wars.
And B) just as copyright holders won't stand by if you try to do a fanfic that they don't like, I shouldn't have to be forced to stand by and watch them butcher (yet again) the stories that I grew up on AND be told that that's the only version available.
This is a very different reality from the "We’ve been building on top of each other’s work in the open-source software ecosystem and in science this entire time".