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

[Lanefan]

Personally, I disagree with your opinion.

Excluding own creations from the discussion, most of my copyright clients have been solidly middle class or lower. Several were below the poverty line. And those creations didn’t spring from a vacuum- they almost all had some kind of financial support in their endeavors from family.

If it so happened that one of the songs or poems found a new audience and gained commercial value 30, 40 years down the road, IMHO, their survivors deserve to see some return on that loyalty, even if the artist has passed on.

That's what the plus-twenty is for. There has to be a hard limit somewhere. One could even extend that to "life of (creator or spouse) plus twenty" to be fair to the spouses; but extending it to cover descendants is too much.

How often does it happen?

Old songs find new life all the time. Old poems and stories get set to music. Or film. Or TV.

Stranger Things has Kate Bush’s 80’s hit “Running Up That Hill” hitting #1 on iTunes.

Kate Bush is still alive and likely will be for a while yet, so she should be fully benefitting from this renewal of interests in what IMO is an excellent song.

“Dancing with myself” has inspired a game show. I hear old music in commercials all the damn time, like Billy Cobham “Stratus”, ”Fractal Zoom by Brian Eno, Biggie Smalls’ “Hypnotize”, Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight”, etc. (I know several of those were major hits; not all.)

And if those people are still alive they should be getting royalties from those uses. We're not disagreeing on this I don't think.

Where we disagree is over what happens after the creator dies. For example Ronnie James Dio died in 2010; I could get behind keeping his rights going until twenty years after Wendy (his widow) dies or remarries, but that's it. After that, public domain.

The Verve famously ripped off a lesser tune by The Rolling Stones to make “Bittersweet Symphony”- incorporating segments without crediting them to avoid payi mechanical royalties.

And as the songwriting people within the Rolling Stones are (somehow!) still alive they'd be able to sue over that, one would think.

Actually, abandoning copyright is recognized in American law. There just isn’t a clear codification of how to do it. Abandonment notices are recorded by the Copyright Office, but there’s no response given that it is effective.

The law of abandonment, such as it is, is hidden in court decisions, not legal codes. The methodology the courts provide: the copyright owner must intend to abandon the copyright, and must perform an overt act to manifest that intent, That’s it.

https://www.lawcatalog.com/media/productattach/l/j/ljp_694publicdomain.pdf

This is very interesting; and completely goes against what I was told by some IP lawyers at their GenCon seminar a few years back when I raised the same question. (their presentation was around gaming-related content e.g. adventures and rules; I posed the question as related to music and-or lyrics, which is what I do, and was told then that I couldn't surrender copyright even if I wanted to).

 

[billd91]

This is a horrible idea. There’s a reason why some lawyers in a given field can justify higher fees. It’s not a 1:1 relationship, but in many ways, you get what you pay for.

Do you really want to trust your copyright case- potentially your livelihood- on a ping pong ball in a hopper? Tangentially: would you rather hire a criminal defense attorney or use the public defender’s office.

Attorneys aren’t interchangeable. There are different levels of competence. There are different levels of resources.

Throwing myself under the bus, I had a band come to me looking for help on a piracy case (mid-1990s). They had a record label deal with a small company, and their first single was doing OK. It was also being pirated 3x more than it was being legitimately sold, mostly on Russian websites. The best I could do was ask the CC companies to stop processing that site’s charges- basically, slow, ineffective whack-a-mole. Anything truly effective would have required someone with more resources and connections than I had then.

That's still pretty much an indictment of the system that leaves richer defendants with higher (or even any) competence compared to poorer ones who can't afford the expensive lawyers. Access to justice isn't equitable.

 

[werecorpse]

That’s the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But it is wholly absurd that a corporation with no relation to the creator of, say, Wonder Woman, can legally hold onto that copyright, and frankly it’s beyond ridiculous that Superman, a century old character, can still be copyright protected!

Superman isn’t 100 yet. Superman first appeared in 1938, and is slated to hit the public domain pretty soon, along with Batman and Wonder Woman.

As for absurdity? One of the bundle of rights in what we call copyright is the power to sell it outright. You can’t sell something devoid of value. (Well, besides NFTs.)

Besides, as pointed out numerous times, Supes has dozens of non-DC knockoffs despite being under copyright…and a fairly valuable and well defended one at that. I find it absurd that people utterly unconnected to the creation of a piece of IP feel a need to assert a right to using the EXACT copyrighted form is something as opposed to an homage after the mere passage of time.

With other forms of property, that doesn’t really happen.

How does that serve the public good?

How does using the original IP of something serve the public good when alternate versions are perfectly legal?

And there is a difference between works like Law and Order CI, and works like Elementary. Both have a great deal of value.

Certainly there are differences. But they’re not so great that it somehow justifies the shortening of copyright durations,

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's what the plus-twenty is for. There has to be a hard limit somewhere.

I agree. We just disagree on how long that period should be.

Copyright law- like all law- is an arbitrary thing created by humans. This is all consensus-based stuff. We had tens of thousands of years of human civilization before copyright was created, and did OK.

Kate Bush is still alive and likely will be for a while yet, so she should be fully benefitting from this renewal of interests in what IMO is an excellent song.

The point was that old IP can find new value decades after it was created. Bush’s song and the others- famous and obscure- were chosen as exemplars.

I posed the question as related to music and-or lyrics, which is what I do, and was told then that I couldn't surrender copyright even if I wanted to).

It’s not a well known issue.

I’d been in practice for more than a decade before I found out, and I only found out because of random chance. None of my professors ever MENTIONED abandonment of copyright, presumably because it’s such a rare thing. And the guy who taught the class on Entertainment Law had been in practice for decades in Hollywood & Broadway. He taught using redacted contracts from his own career and those of his associates.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's still pretty much an indictment of the system that leaves richer defendants with higher (or even any) competence compared to poorer ones who can't afford the expensive lawyers. Access to justice isn't equitable.

I won’t say you’re wrong.

But it’s hard to level a playing field that depends so much on the skills of individual practitioners. There’s an old joke told in law schools- and probably medical schools as well- that just by the rules of statistics, someone out there is the worst lawyer in the country…and his waiting room is full on Monday morning,

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Superman isn’t 100 yet. Superman first appeared in 1938, and is slated to hit the public domain pretty soon, along with Batman and Wonder Woman.

Great. Does the difference in exact number actually inform the discussion in some way?

As for absurdity? One of the bundle of rights in what we call copyright is the power to sell it outright. You can’t sell something devoid of value. (Well, besides NFTs.)

Okay?

Besides, as pointed out numerous times, Supes has dozens of non-DC knockoffs despite being under copyright…and a fairly valuable and well defended one at that. I find it absurd that people utterly unconnected to the creation of a piece of IP feel a need to assert a right to using the EXACT copyrighted form is something as opposed to an homage after the mere passage of time.

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.

With other forms of property, that doesn’t really happen.

Inheritance is a whole bag of too-political worms. We likely disagree quite a bit on that too.

How does using the original IP of something serve the public good when alternate versions are perfectly legal?

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.

Certainly there are differences. But they’re not so great that it somehow justifies the shortening of copyright durations,

Yes, it does. Copyright is a subversion of human nature that only serves the good when it is very limited in scope. 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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

but extending it to cover descendants is too much.

Far too much. Inheriting land is one thing. Inheriting the right to hoard the use of creative work beyond the lifespan of any individual person is right out.

Only the creator and their partner should ever get full copyright protection. Anyone else should get, at most, 20 years of copyright.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Don't get me wrong, I think copyright reform is needed. I just don't think that a bill that specifically is designed to be a punitive measure against a specific company for the reasons behind this one is the way to go.

Best Mythos story I ever read was by Neil Gaiman. Hell, it used the Mythos and Sherlock Holmes. It’s a hell of a story.

The fact is, if copyright was very limited or only protected your right to be credited for your work, etc, exclusivity just wouldn’t be how creators make a living. They’d still make content and make a living.

But we needn’t go so far. We could simply make copyright nontransferable except to living relatives and documented heirs/via will.

And tbh, I don’t even really believe that society needs to allow relatives to hold exclusive rights to works created by their dad or whatever.

 

[Ryujin]

Besides, as pointed out numerous times, Supes has dozens of non-DC knockoffs despite being under copyright…and a fairly valuable and well defended one at that. I find it absurd that people utterly unconnected to the creation of a piece of IP feel a need to assert a right to using the EXACT copyrighted form is something as opposed to an homage after the mere passage of time.

Well there's getting something that's subjectively good (Axanar), rather than something that's subjectively trash (Discovery), but that doesn't rise to a legal right