Writers who will be entering the public domain in 2015 in many countries

If you disagree with a law, ignore it. If enough people do the same, the burden from enforcing the law becomes too much and it simply stops being enforced or is legislated away due to the societal harm it causes.

An arguable example of this in action is the War On Drugs. This war has been waged for years, and the black market has not only survived, it has thrived in the economy of scarcity that is created and maintained by said war. People and legislators all over the country (the world?) are beginning to see that this war isn't benefiting anyone and have begun legalizing marijuana. Marijuana is one of many drugs, but it's a step in the right direction.

Maybe not just yet, but a 20% price drop is likely only the beginning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/upshot/new-york-taxi-medal...

Now we see the mighty MS open sourcing the server side of .NET. IMO they are forced to do so because of the pressure from awesome platforms like Ruby on Rails, Python, Node.JS etc. that would soon make them irrelevant unless they follow suit.

In 50 years time, the best creative work both art, writing and tech will be available freely on permissive licences, and we won't care if it enters the public domain, even though it probably will anyway.

The great thing is the stuff you need (tools, information) is available this way. The stuff you want but don't need (awful Hollywood films, etc.) is protected by copyright and you have to pay for it.

Also the illegal file sharing has disrupted music massively. We now have so many songs you can listen to on Youtube for free. Imagine telling someone in 1990 you can listen to unlimited free music legally (albeit with ads!).

  *Neither Uber nor Lyft put an end to Taxi medallion system.*

It isn't just abandoned works. All cultural works should eventually be available to build upon.

The old 56-year copyright term used to be split into two 28-year periods. You basically paid a one-time fee: half at the original registration, then half (adjusted for inflation) at renewal. If you didn't renew, then you got to pay half the fee for half the copyright term.

Only 15% of copyrights on books, periodicals, and music were ever renewed. The renewal rates were higher for maps (40%) and motion pictures (50%).

Thus, commercially-significant work was protected. However, the vast majority of work (85% of books!) only had an ephemeral cultural value, so the authors chose to take the fee discount and allow their works to enter the public domain.

Source: Divide 1977 renewals by 1950 registrations for each category. This is off-by-one (27 years instead of 28) because 1949 and 1978 tabulations aren't as easy to access. That's why I give round numbers.

And in countries where they do not have a concept of public domain, simply change the royalty to 0 after that period of time.

Or, simply say, after 10 years, you'll also be permitted to do x, y, z with this work (where x might be redistribution, derivatives, etc).

At least in the US, authors have the right to do this today.

The purpose of copyright is explicitly stated to be "to promote the sciences and useful arts". Copyright's temporary monopoly over works is designed to compensate the author for having written them. Without public domain, there is no advancement, as future authors cannot build upon earlier works.

If I ever reference the sword Excalibur, or the outlaw Robin Hood, or the raising of Lazarus, I am using cultural references. Under the reign of permanent copyright, these references, which can enrich a work considerably, would not be allowed. In 100 years, authors will not be allowed to make reference to Harry Potter, or Frodo, or Luke Skywalker, a great cultural loss.

The natural state of affairs would be that anyone is free to see or listen to (etc) some content, and then make marks on paper, or patterns of bits, or sound waves that are more or less faithful copies of that.

Copyright is unnatural. It's not worth hashing out the arguments for or against it, or for or against any particular length, here. But the onus is clearly on supporters of long copyright terms to show how the benefits offset the downsides of restricting everyone else's freedoms in this way.

Stories are sometimes different, but I imagine that forcing the public at large to always start from scratch (or at least from a largely static landscape of compositions) precludes a lot of good works that we can't predict in advance. e.g. sampling in electronic music either uses really old music or doesn't bother with the law until an act gets big.

At the same time, an author wants to benefit from and maintain creative control over how their work is used. I'm kind of interested in the following question: If copyright expires after the author's death, why do we respect their wishes in life but not in death? Just because they won't be offended when they're dead? Or is it because we regard their ideas as property and dead people can't own things? In which case, why can't it be passed down through the family in perpetuity and thus be restricted as long as the owners wish for all time?

I feel like the right balance is some reasonable fixed term rather than the life of the author since both of those scenarios feel wrong to me.

You expect to profit by selling copies of your work and you task the State with preventing me from doing so, thereby limiting my freedom to do whatever I want with my own physical property (my pen and my paper).

Not true at all. You can do whatever you like with your pen and paper, and it will even be copyright-protected. You don't sell with your pen and paper, you compose and/or copy with them. It's the commercial transfer of intellectual property that copyright laws regulate, not the act of creation as such.

The original analogy is flawed, but so is your counter-argument. The intangibility of authorship doesn't obviate its legal existence - otherwise whole classes of contractual relations would be impossible.

Certainly, this argument suggests that copyright should be strengthened relative to its 18th century form. However, this strengthening should not be in lengthening copyright terms, as the only difference is within the first year, which is covered under either copyright term.

I am not arguing for an elimination of copyright. It is necessary as a starting incentive. However, in its current form, the length is far too long.

If that's an accurate summation, Breyer is describing an effect and asking us to assume it's desirable.

But if you compare it to the stated intention of the copyright clause: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" the opposite conclusion should be drawn. Zero-cost duplication and transmission raises the benefit of works entering the public domain. So that should happen sooner and with less friction.

Of course, my understanding could be completely wrong, and revisions might not constitute a separate work.

For example the case of presenting drafts to publishers could be considered to be a certain class of limited disclosure and the works could be treated as still private and non-public. Then a similar system to patents could be used whereby the publication, the [licensed and purposive] presentation of matter to the public domain, would be the key date.

Such a copyright system would focus on the protection of business interests of producers (i.e. authors, etc.).

In parallel I would maintain moral rights on a similar basis to the current copyright terms. They would start at production, last for life + some-years, and cover at least the right to be named as author of your own works and other similar rights that prevent libellous edits being issued and such.

To pay for the system one could use the Statute of Anne's model of requiring payment for a second equal term. I like the 14+14 model; it still favours the author strongly IMO but allows works to enter the public domain when they are still culturally significant (to allow their effect on cultural development to be maximised). A 28 year term isn't quite a full career and so there is less sense that we're dissuading 'artists' from continued production.

Under my formulation the statute would not protect works that could not fully enter the public domain, those with DRM say. To allow companies to use DRM they would need to submit a free-libre copy of their work which could then be released when the term expires (or put keys on deposit that could decrypt the works, or what have you). Copyright is a bargain with the people, rights holders need to uphold their end of that bargain too.

There's much more that I could flesh out, but I doubt anyone would read it here ...

But the name is only protected in the sense that it is attached to the character. The character has to be distinct and unique, not a trope or stereotype character (except, obviously, the prototype character). And the character has to be integral to a copyrighted story. The courts are far from agreed on this standard, obviously, so that's as much as I can say about it.

And it isn't really even a full trademark. It's more like an artificial "name and likeness" right of publicity. Those rights vary by state. That creates some interesting scenarios.

Say, for instance, that author E.R.R. Fartin kills beloved serial character Guy Trademarked. Some states define personality rights such that they terminate relative to the year of the person's death. Would that be the year of publication, or the year copyright ends, or some other year?

Essentially, no one can correct you, because no one really knows what the law allows yet.