I think this is a bit like the 2A argument.
There's a really happy medium that neither side ever talks about. Just dramatically reduce the legal length of copyrights. One year maybe?
There's a really happy medium that neither side ever talks about. Just dramatically reduce the legal length of copyrights. One year maybe?
I think artists would not be dissuaded from working and would monetize the roughly the same with 20-30 year copyright terms.
The promise of fame and fortune is a product of an industry that is based on physical media being the only way to share information. The bit has liberated music for everyone yet we cling to the past.
Most artists with regular output do not. The problem with a day job is it takes away from what a person can produce. For example, a content creator (i.e. YouTuber) with a day job is lucky to get out one-two videos a week. A full time content creator can produce one to two videos a day, often with better quality since they can focus on the work.
Youtube content creators are a good example of people monetizing art without the need for copyright. Donations and voluntary funding are key parts of the content creator world already. Copyright is not particularly important unless they are getting strikes from a copyright troll.
This already happens today (Linus with his tech tips is only one example); without the ability for creators to fight back, it would only get worse.
EDIT: That this is unpopular doesn't make it wrong. Even beyond the (currently) illegal reposting, there are lots of rights aggregators who pay viral content creators, and re-sell their content to TV channels (Chive TV, anybody?). The "pay creators" part goes away if you take away copyright.
After that much time, it's a crime keeping the copyright monopoly: it's either exhausted all possible profit, so there's no point, or it's been around long enough that everything after it is influenced by it, like season 4 and earlier of The Simpsons, and the original Star Wars movies.
In other words, that seems like a decent cut-off point to say that if you still want to hold copyright on them, then you're rent-seeking off of stuff that has kinda become "cultural identity" stuff, specifically because it's what people grew up watching and influenced by.
No, that's not correct. 14 years was the original term set by law not the Constitution, and the difference is important. Copyright and patents do not formally exist in the US Constitution, because IP was a contentious issue even then. Instead there is a clause that empowers Congress to decide to do so if they wish, but there is no requirement. Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8 says Congress shall have the 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."
But there is nothing specific set out in the Constitution. If there was, it'd be near impossible to change at this point, for better or worse. On the one hand that might mean we'd have much shorter terms then now. On the other hand, it would also mean that if the courts had gone similarly badly in deciding stuff like software patents it'd be near totally hopeless, rather than merely very difficult, to reform. But since it's all down to "merely" legislation Congress could completely change things around on a dime through normal law if there was the political will for it. Though note another complexity is that the US has signed treaties around certain parts of IP as well, including minimum terms. While those too can be renegotiated, or revoked by Congress, it's a higher domestic political and geopolitical bar.
There are lots of interesting reform proposals, within various bounds of feasibility. Hopefully one of them can take off at some point and momentum can slowly start building to go in the other direction then the maximalist positions taken for the last few decades.