New Bill to Limit Copyright to 56 Years, Would be Retroactive

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
So, the argument is that long copyright protection serves to limit creativity. Creatively, what is different about being able to use the ideas and themes, but not the Big Red S itself? Darned little. What is different isn't about the writer's creativity - it is about the marketing of the resulting piece.
In the ten-ish (?) years since (much of) Lovecraft's material became public domain there's been an explosion of material based on all things Cthulhu, an explosion that's only just now finally starting to die down some.

If creativity wasn't being limited while that material was still under copyright, that explosion would have - if it happened at all - been much smaller.
 

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dragoner

KosmicRPG.com
Stuff can still be licensed as well, so part of the discussion seems to be wanting to use others IP for free. Circling this back on RPG's, I remember people saying around 2010 or so that Traveller should be taken away from Marc Miller, you know, the guy that retired an insurance salesman, partially because why did he deserve to have a kickstarter that did $300k.
 

Staffan

Legend
So, the argument is that long copyright protection serves to limit creativity. Creatively, what is different about being able to use the ideas and themes, but not the Big Red S itself? Darned little. What is different isn't about the writer's creativity - it is about the marketing of the resulting piece.

I would argue that neither The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen nor the more recent TV series Penny Dreadful would have been as successful had they not been able to use the actual characters of Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray, or Victor Frankenstein but instead had to use knockoffs. The stories in those comics/that show continue on from the published stories about those characters, and they are stronger for it.

By more modern standards, I think there's value in being able to write a book featuring Popeye, Batgirl, Sailor Moon, Spider-Man, Buffy, and Valerian teaming up against the Homelander. Ideally narrated by Blackadder.
 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
Great. Does the difference in exact number actually inform the discussion in some way?
Duration varies between human creators of copyright and business entities. Had Superman’s creators published him for themselves as opposed as in the scope of their employment, Superman’s entry into the public domain would be even further in the future.
This bears on what can be transferred, for how much, and when.

If someone created and self-published a great piece of IP, but it languished in obscurity until after the creator’s death, the duration of copyright would be a major factor on whether or not his estate (and successors in interest- family, friends, charities, etc.) could capitalize on that IP at all. The longer copyright endures, the better they will be able to get something of value for that IP. Shorter copyright durations means a corporation need only play a waiting game until they can use it without compensating those the IP creator cared about.

And as I pointed out, copyrighted material CAN have cyclical fluctuations in value…but they DO decrease over time in general. So to me, 20 years after a creator dies is WAY too short.
Yes you keep pointing it out, but it’s not compelling. Superman isn’t owned by his creators, so I have absolutely no regard for any supposed rights to exclusive ownership.
There’s not real distinctions in the copyright bundle of rights beyond duration, which favors human creators over business entities.

But the shorter copyright endures, the less value it has to its creators and any successors in interest. Even corporate-owned works for hire would decrease in value. If you’re a corporation paying people to create IP, you’ve got to assess whether or not expanding your use of it will give you a good ROI. Superman didn’t make the jump to movies until 13 years after his creation; TV at 14 years. Those shows and that movie might never have been made by Supes’s owners if their copyright was soon to expire.
The freedom to create new works using old elements is a fundamental part of the human experience. It is one of the oldest pursuits known to man.
It is, and as noted, a great many creative processes begin with being inspired by the creative works of others.

But also noted is the fact that copyright does not stop one from creating something based on something else, just 1:1 copies and some other things deemed too similar to it.

Prokofiev created Peter & The Wolf in 1936. Just 30 years later, Jimmy Smith created a jazz version of it that is highly respected and sought out. You can hear elements of Prokofiev’s original music in Jimmy Smith‘s interpretation- enough to identify the characters- but it’s clearly also different; it is it’s own thing,

Prokofiev’s copyright didn’t stifle Smith’s creativity.
Yes, it does. Copyright is a subversion of human nature that only serves the good when it is very limited in scope.
Clearly, I disagree.

Particularly, the transfer of ownership to non-individual entities to enrich the already wealthy at little to no benefit to the actual creator is a detriment to society.
You speak as if the corporation is the only one benefitting.

Corporations buying the rights to extant IP have to pay fair market value to the creators.

If they’re paying for works-for-hire, how much the corp pays them in wages will be at least partially dependent on their ROI calculations- the more valuable the IP, the more they can afford to compensate the creators. Record contracts illustrate this very clearly. Recording artists with record deals agree to produce a certain number of albums over the duration of a contract, with the companies holding the copyrights in the albums. The more albums you move, though, the higher royalty rates you can get; the bigger chunk you get from other income streams, like concerts & merch.

And remember, megastars who manage to hold onto their earnings often try to buy their copyrights back. Even though he lost the Beatles catalog bidding war to Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney was prepared to shell out a major chunk of his wealth based on the continuing commercial value of that music. It’s possible but less likely he- or MJ- would have bid on that music about to become public domain because it was owned by corporate holders. That saga took another turn in 2020, when McCartney finally got ownership of his music after 50 years of trying.

Last I checked, Sir Paul is still an individual…

If corporate copyright were shorter, he wouldn’t be reaping the full benefits of his (and his bandmates’) work.
 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
The music industry, however, is generally more permissive in allowing licensing.
Yep. You give credit; you pay a fee. Job done.

There’s even websites that ID samples by who created them and who used them. So if you suspect a certain drum sequence was a sample, you could look it up and know for sure.
Yes, you can do a fair amount with similar characters, as was being discussed, but it's not the same thing. Just like imitating the drum sound from When the Levy Breaks is not the same thing as actually sampling the song.
Ice-T did exactly that in a killer track, “Midnight”, pairing Bonham’s epic drumming with Tony Iommi’s guitar riff from Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” It’s one of my favorites by him for so many reasons, but some of the lyrics are not “Grandma Friendly”.
 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
I would argue that neither The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen nor the more recent TV series Penny Dreadful would have been as successful had they not been able to use the actual characters of Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray, or Victor Frankenstein but instead had to use knockoffs.
That’s what licensing agreements are for.

Licensing agreements made the movie Heavy Metal possible.
 


Staffan

Legend
But the shorter copyright endures, the less value it has to its creators and any successors in interest.
See, you're coming at this from the perspective of "What brings the most money to creators and/or owners?". I don't. I'm coming at this from the perspective of "What gets the most creative stuff done?"

People generally don't write* things with the expectation that they'll make it big when someone makes a movie of it 30 years from now. The decision to write and publish a book is made in the here and now: will this book make enough to recoup the advance we're paying the author as well as other expenses like editing, overhead, etc? Should Hollywood decide to make a movie from it, that's bonus money.

And since people generally don't have 30-, 50-, or 100-year perspectives on what to create and publish, having a copyright term that long doesn't help getting more things created. And therefore, the copyright term shouldn't be that long. If the problem is "But how do aging creators eat?", that can be solved in other ways.

* or paint, or compose, or whatever their creative endeavor is.
Last I checked, Sir Paul is still an individual…

If corporate copyright were shorter, he wouldn’t be reaping the full benefits of his (and his bandmates’) work.
McCartney appears to have been amply compensated when those records were released in the 60s and 70s, and for quite some time afterwards. Does he really need to keep being compensated? I mean, I go to work every day, and get paid at the end of the month, but no-one's paying me for the work I did a year ago. I need to keep working. Why should creative work be different?
 


doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
You speak as if the corporation is the only one benefitting.
No, I don’t.

I speak as though I’m proposing that the greatest need to shorten copyright lies with corporations, and it is entirely possible to do so without screwing over small creators.

Nothing you’ve said makes me any less inclined to believe the above.
 

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