Hacker News Reader

Comment by BlueTemplar | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing to "retain" once copyright is over (aside from moral rights, which are forever... which I guess becomes questionable after the death of the author ? But moral rights are not transferrable anyway).

Instead for calling to basically blow up the whole legal framework around derivative works, maybe we should focus on bringing copyright terms back to more sane durations (like the original 14 years, renewable once) ?

View on HN

I like the idea of having copyrights renewable indefinitely, but with the holders having to pay exponentially larger sums.

That seems to benefit large corporations at the expense of smaller artists. Either you focus on making money or some large corporation will swoop in the second you can't and exploit your work for their own profit.

"Exponentially" larger is a very large number. They wouldn't be able to afford it either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it can't be sold and then reinstated.

I'm okay with large corporations pouring their money at the government to keep copyrights for useless things alive, even if it means we can't legally copy useless things for a bit longer.

> Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it can't be sold and then reinstated.

Derivative works have their own copyrights. The original book is free for grabs but each movie franchise has it's own copyrights. Likely far more valuable and ones the original artist will never see a cent from.

Wouldn't they then buy it just before expiration ?

Exactly, if the clock is ticking for them to bid on it, to buy it off the small business, it gives the small business power, and should also make it easier for the small business to get decent loans/investments.

Btw, if I'm not mistaken, I first read about this proposal in the book "Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society" by Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra...

doesn't that just favor the 0.1% who can afford it and fk over the 99.9%? I don't see why we don't just put a hard limit on it, they had many years to make a profit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com