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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

In a saner world, copyright either only lasts several years, period, or requires exponentially increasing yearly tax payments to maintain.

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So basically anything you make or design, I should be allowed to copy it as you get punished with higher and higher taxes to own it solely?

Not “as”, it’s “or”

Yes

Yes? The longer something is public for, the less it is “yours”: people start making it their own, whether through remixes and recreations or just stories they want to create. It is good for society to allow ideas that have permeated public consciousness to be built on top of without worrying about legal repercussions.

Sounds good. I'll let you spend all your valuable time creating things. I'll use that same time to do things I want like drinking beer by pool and playing video games. Then when you do all the hard work, I'll come in and use it. You just creating, I'll just keep relaxing and enjoying all your hard work.

This is quite literally not what the OP said. But ok I guess?

What did he say then. He basically said and I’ll say another way so others understand

1) You spend time creating a great idea for a character or story

2) You get a limited amount of time to capitalize on it

3) I have a multimillion dollar corp where I can take the idea and spend loads of money making it popular through new works I can capitalize on

4) Sorry original creator, it’s now in the public domain very shortly after so womp womp

5) Oh and by the way I am a multibillion dollar company and did the math and I can afford those taxes in the “saner world” that the individual cannot for a longer period, so….

Also works the other way where a small corp spends tons of capital to come up with an idea or story and now they just have to give it for free before they can recoup? Talk about stifling innovation

That's how things work now. You think having a copyright on something will matter if the multibillion dollar company fights you and drags out the legal process until you run out of money?

A small creator doesn’t need a lot of money to sue a big corporate entity that infringes their work because (1) the statutory penalties for copyright infringement are intentionally high and (2) lawyers will take cases on a contingent fee basis if there’s a reasonable chance of winning.

Context is important.

We're talking about Disney the multi-trillion-dollar corp holding copyright for countless works for decades after the original creators died.

Yes, in this case, resounding yes: the longer you hold on to something, the more you have to pay (exponentially, if possible).

I doubt anyone is really arguing that a creator shouldn't benefit from their works.

Mickey Mouse is almost 94 years old now. Guess what. Brothers Grimm published the 7th edition of their tales in 1857. The last of Brothers Grimm died in 1863. Walt Disney released Snow White in 1937, Cinderella in 1950, etc. But sure. Do tell us how we are not allowed to do anything about Mickey Mouse

The Brothers Grimm wrote Aschenputtel, whereas Cendrillon was written by Perrault in 1697.

> I'll come in and use it.

Now you are creating too! See how this works?

Or alternatively there is no more incentive to put any significant effort into creating anything new since anyone can just rehash something that someone else made for much cheaper…

And yet, it already happens today. How many US companies invent something, just to be knocked-off 14-times over by various overseas entities within a year? It's not a once-in-a-while occurrence either, with virtually everything from electronics to fashion getting knocked-off very regularly with little/no repercussions.

After a reasonable period, yes. When a design, character, idea, enters public consciousness, it contributes and (hopefully) enlightens the community. While it should be easy and inexpensive for you to introduce that and gain from it early on, it should become more expensive as you gain more from it, and as it gains more value to the community.

So much IP is deeply ingrained in our culture and is owned seemingly indefinitely by corporations. And there are plenty of examples of those corporations abusing their legal ownership to prevent the public from enjoying its adoption of that property.

> So basically anything you make or design, I should be allowed to copy it

Yes. Just like Disney did with its animated movies: many of those are based on old European tales or on works that had entered public domain.

Those characters were HUNDREDS of years old, not within the creator’s lifetime.

Neither Walt Disney, Roy Disney (the other co-founder of Disney) or Ub Iwerks (the other creator of Mickey) were still alive in the past 50 years.

What I'm hearing is that you're interested in a copyright term that expires at the death of the author?

While I don't think that goes far enough, I think it's an improvement over the current state. Let's do it.

Is Walt Disney alive then?

Or JRR Tolkien?

Or A.A. Milne?

Or...

Yes, some were.

But Pinocchio (the 1940 Disney movie) was based on the 1883 Italian children's novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi.

Disney released it just after the copyright expired. (Copyright then was a 28-year initial term with a 28-year renewal = 56 years.)

And "Song of the South" (the 1946 movie) is based the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris published in 1881, so entered the public domain about 8 years before the movie.

I'm perfectly fine with a 56 year limit on 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.

If you making profit induces progress on science and useful arts that's cool, but if it doesn't, society does not care.

You aren't owed a profit from the ideas you have.

Get that silly idea out of your head.

Yup.

Holding a copyright should be affordable for about 20 years. No person or company should still be holding the copyright for something that was made more than a world war ago.

The original American law was 14 years, plus an option for one 14 year renewal.

Seems reasonable!

As a matter of fact, you ARE allowed to copy anything I make or design, because I release all my projects under a public domain license. I despise the idea of copyright this much because of how dysfunctional and abused it is.

That might be arguably true to a degree nowadays. But not having well defined copyright and patent laws stifled innovation for hundreds of years.

And now having them, and them being abused, also stifles innovation.

I don’t see how paying the government more money solves the issue.

I mean giving them money is what got us in to this mess…

It adds a barrier and discourages abuse. You can no longer own millions of copyrights "just in case", like many companies do right now, because maintaining every single one of them costs money each year. Obscene amounts of money if you want to maintain it for a long time. Want your copyright to be 15 years? That'll be ten million dollars per copyrighted work, please.

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