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Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

You could argue that 14 years is a little short, especially for books which can get adaptations that pay more than the book. OTOH preventing adaptations stifles things. Imagine if Tolkein had managed to lock down his orcs and elves like Disney locked down the mouse.

I think 20 or 30 years is fairer. But IIRC it's not about fair, the Constitution says that it should only be to encourage innovation, and long copyright inhibits innovation.

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> 14 years is a little short, especially for books which can get adaptations that pay more than the book

If you want to make an official adapatation, hire the author. If not, it's not official. This takes care of itself for authors who cultivate their fan base.

You could also keep trademarks. So content might not be protected, but you couldn't release remixes under trademarked names.

I think some kind of automatic royalty would be a nice middle ground.

Compulsory licensing seems to have worked OK (though maybe not great) in some areas, such as broadcast retransmission, and recordings of cover versions of songs.

> the Constitution says that it should only be to encourage innovation, and long copyright inhibits innovation.

I concur, but the Supreme Court might not. Plaintiffs in Eldred v. Ashcroft were defeated on "limited times", and I expect that a "promote the progress" argument would have an even harder time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft

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