Comment by grellas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grellas | Hacker News Reader

Copyright terms in the U.S. did not always run into the 100+ years category.

Here is a rough summary of how the terms have evolved under U.S. law (the details of which are nicely summarized here: http://ipwatchdog.com/2011/05/27/copyrights-last-for-a-limit...):

1790: maps, charts, and books - 14-year term

1831: 28-year term with option to renew for another 14 years (musical compositions, prints, dramatic compositions, photographs, works of art and music added to list of protected works in 1800s)

1909 (a major act): 28-year term from date of publication, renewable for another 28 years (applied to "published" works only, with state laws governing unpublished works) (motion pictures added to list of protectible works)

1976 (another major act): newly published works (life of author plus 50 years); works copyrighted before 1978 (term increased from 28 to 47 years, for 75 years total with renewal) (applies to all works, whether or not published, once in a fixed medium of expression; state laws preempted and no longer valid; computer programs also protected by the 1980s)

1998 (Copyright Term Extension - "Sonny Bono Act"): works created after 1978 (life of author plus 70 years, with joint works tied to life of longest living author, and with works-for-hire, i.e., corporate authorship, getting the shorter of a 120-year term from date of creation or a 95-year term from date of publication); works created before 1978 (total term increased from 75 to 95 years)

The rough summary above is just that and many nuances exist. If this all makes your head spin, there is a nifty "public domain calculator" to assist you, found here: http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/calculator.html

The trend is pretty obvious: wildly long terms for copyright are in fact a relatively recent phenomenon, as are legislative efforts to go back to early works and give them ex post facto term extensions. It didn't always used to be this way. The focus seems to have moved away from protecting primarily an author's rights to a creative work during his lifetime to protecting a "franchise," often corporate, that lasts well beyond the lives of those around when a work is created. These are policy decisions, of course, albeit (and sadly) much influenced by lobbying today.

What's sickening is that whenever you try to even question the copyright laws now, they turn against you like you just wanted to kill a puppy, with remarks such as "So now Eric Schmidt is above the law?"

Not many seem to sit down and question just how ridiculous these laws have become. Just because it's a law doesn't mean it's a good one, or it should exist in the first place. Just look at how they managed to extend for another 4 years the Patriot Act, even though they had much opposition from the public.

I also do think the Internet is different. There's no scarcity on the Internet, or at least it's insignificant compared to real world. Content can be copied and distributed almost for free. It has also become very cheap to create content, and it's becoming even cheaper. These are natural forces on the Internet that they can't simply shape with some laws.

And is it that ridiculous to wonder if maybe copyright really isn't suited for the Internet, and they need to rethink their business models for the new Internet age? It's not like it's the first time in history when large companies either were forced to dramatically change their business models, or became extinct because of disruption. Why would the Internet be any different?

Besides, it's not like it's a coincidence the Internet helped foster many more disruptive innovations to real world businesses. It's not just music and movies that get disrupted here, it's pretty much everything else, too. And a big part of this disruption is due to the fact that the disruptive businesses that are established on the Internet also tend to offer free services or very cheap ones. That's not a coincidence. It's a fundamental law of the Internet that drives the prices of the products down.

We welcome all the other disruptive innovations that come from the Internet, so what makes the music and movie industries so special? I don't even think the music and movie industries will be affected, it's just the large corporations that are part of it now that will be lose if they don't transform their business models.

Did the phone/smartphone industry die because iPhone and Android phones appeared, and are "killing" the old incumbent companies such as Nokia and RIM? Of course not. The phone industry is actually growing faster than ever. It's just the old companies that are dying or are severely threatened by Apple and Google.

I think artists will do just fine in the Internet age, with or without the labels. The Internet is about empowering the individual and like we're seeing in the book industry, the authors are starting to skip the middle man and self-publish their own books, and give them at a lower price, while still making more money than they did before when they only got 20% at most from the publishers.

Bottomline is copyright is not compatible with the Internet. Rather than try to change the Internet, which is about a lot more than just the music and movie industries, and a lot bigger than any one Government, they should try to change their own business models and adapt like every other business that has moved to the Internet.

And for God's sake, stop trying to protect the past. Have we learned nothing from GM? Trying to "save jobs" in the face of a huge paradigm shift is a dumb thing to do. But like I said, I'm sure those industries and the artists themselves will do fine. It's the current companies that won't.

The Mckinsey report itself at eG8 said that the Internet is actually killing jobs. Yes, the Internet is killing jobs!! But the next part also said it's creating 2.6 jobs in return for every job lost. I remember reading that the Industrial Revolution also killed 25 million jobs. But it created 44 million new ones. What we're experiencing now is the Internet Revolution. The labels should get used to it. This is much bigger than them.

I thought this was worth putting into a chart. Assuming an average author life of 75 years, this is what the extension of maximum copyright terms looks like:

https://skitch.com/swombat/fbhmf/maximum-copyright-terms-us

Basically, it's well approximated as an exponential curve, or maybe a logistic curve (aka S-curve). Unless there's a serious change in the accepted perspective of copyrights, it's not at all unreasonable to assume that within our lifetimes, copyrights may be extended to last effectively forever.

Tragic.

Mary Bono: "Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress."

Similar graphic on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg

That's pretty unrealistic. You seem to be assuming authors who write as infants. Even the most precocious authors usually wait at least until they learn to speak and read before they start publishing.

> much influenced by lobbying today

'Much' seems even to be understating it.

One can ask the question: were any of those increases ever backed with evidence -- actual economic evidence that this deliberate restriction was sound? I do not know, but judging by the abject lack of evidence even now, the answer seems most likely no.

The degree to which there is a lack of evidence is the degree to which the whole thing is just a corrupt gravy-train.

It should be noted that the latest expansion in US copyright term was to bring the US in line with Europe.

It should also be noted that we have a tendency to leapfrog each other on terms, rather than actually bringing them in line.

Some consider this a strategy.

That's the first time I hear such a thing and it sounds very strange to me. Are you just referring to France? Or maybe UK, too? There are over 40 countries in Europe, and most of them have a lot more relaxed copyright laws than USA.

I'm referring to all significant countries in Europe, since they all have the same copyright term, as part of implementing the appropriate EU directives on this matter. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_2006/116/EC

One of the main arguments for the Copyright Term Extension Act in the US was to better align US copyright law with that.

I've argued before that "intellectual property" should pay for its state protection like real estate does - i.e. be subject to property taxes, just for being there.

Fiddling with the numbers, one can make a reasonable tax equivalent to a few decades of (tax-free) protection, with the property reverting to the state/public domain in the end. The current time-span figures (closing on to a century) make the tax risible.

At one time I thought about something similar but the thing that tripped me up was what would the tax rate be based on? How do you propose to handle that?

What are other property taxes based on?

Usually some assessed value of the property that has some relation to the market value of the property. But how would that work with copyrights that are not sold for which there is no market? How would you assess the value of a copyright in that scenario?

I found the calculations I made over a year a ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1252512 . If you don't mind following the link, it answers your question.

There is income tax and sales tax in many states. Should intellectual works be taxed more than other things?

Far be it from me to defend the copyright industry but I do like to point out that in the early 1800's 36 years was actually the average lifetime of an individual (at least here in Europe).

No, 36 was the average life expectancy including child deaths (which disproportionately skewed the figures downwards, since a large number of babies died at or soon after birth, another good chunk didn't make it through their first year, and many more died of childhood diseases before they became adults).

If you made it past 25 as a white male you were quite likely to live to your 60s and beyond. That has been true since antiquity.

Only if you insist on using bad statistical methods. Averaging high infant mortality into the rest of the population leads to misleading claims like that. Do you really think most people dropped dead at 36?

"For example, a Roman Life Expectancy table at the University of Texas shows that at birth the life expectancy was 25 but if one lived to the age of 5 one's life expectancy jumped to 48."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Interpretation_...

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