Under 10 sounds just as insane as a century.

There are countless artists and authors who go undiscovered for years before having a breakthrough and becoming popular. There's a lot of non-fiction books that are slow but steady sellers for years. Some of that non-fiction needed years of research.

Drop copyright to say 5 years and you hurt all of those creators, potentially quite badly. The Disney's, George Martin's and JK Rowling's of the world would be hurt vastly less as so many of their sales are right around release.

If I had to throw a number out I'd go with something like 20 years, and upto 5 or 10 years beyond death - to cover those writing an autobiography or creating something in their final years.

Agree with these ideas of limits, but I'd also add limits to transfer. It seems where we get into trouble is artists transferring the rights to corporations--which seems okay--but then the corporation can use substantial political power to fight for them forever, long after the artist has expired. You might want something like "until artist dies, or if sold to another party, 10 years for that party."

We see the same sort of thing with patent trolls - if all you do is buy up IP and then sue someone, that's not a model that furthers humanity or IP creators.

> You might want something like "until artist dies, or if sold to another party, 10 years for that party."

Any law like like that would be circumvented through creative “leasing” of royalties.

It would still only last until the artist dies in that scenario...

the artist would use his baby daughter's name .

Only the person who created a work should get copyright. It shouldn't be transferable at all. Something like:

Individual copyright: 25 years or date of death + 10 years.

Corporate copyright: 25 years.

If it's non-transferrable...

a) That +10 years after holder death no longer makes sense

b) Corporations would be unable to posses copyright.

I think intent is pretty clear and legal types could fairly easily turn it into precise enough legislation and find ways to prevent creative evasion.

a) Is a clear and simple exception, that permits inheritors to receive proceeds of a work for a limited time. It would prevent the abusive control some estates have over copyright decades after the creator's death.

b) Intent seems rather like the clauses for code copyright many of us have had in contracts of employment. IANAL but I'm sure something could be drafted that limits transfers but still allows design companies assigning copyright of the customer's new logo. Perhaps the only transfer can be limited to the first three months after creation or something.

I'd actually prefer a use-it-or-lose-it system for copyright. Like paying a yearly fee of maybe $100 to keep it copyrighted after a particular time has passed. Let Disney keep all the shit they want but other works that aren't being monetized are free for the taking (and other monetization).

Ironically this "use or lose it" system ends up creating a lot of crap just to keep a hold of the rights. For example, the movie rights to Fantastic Four.

Yeah, I think it should be more of a pay system than a use system. If after 10 years the work isn't worth a $100 or $1000 fee -- or there is no entity left to pay it -- then perhaps it should be public domain.

I’ve written a number of blog posts. Some are under CC-BYSA. Others GFDL. Others under all rights reserved.

Should I have to pay to avoid having those posts become public domain within my lifetime and I lose control of what I’ve written?

There is an even greater cardinality of countless artists and authors who produce amazing content or research to spend their lives with at least a nagging background thought of regret in not pursuing something more profitable than holding on to a vapid dream of equivalent exchange between creative effort and financial or social success.

A reward system for content creation by definition has to be a pyramid scheme, due to the need for the general public to have examples of normalized contrasting quality in anchoring supposed worth as well as the need for the governance structures to have a well diversified orchard of luscious fruit ripe and especially bountiful enough to cherrypick which works are most applicable for promotion at any given time on the carousel wheel of policy.

It isn't really. Copyright laws took into account the difficulty of creating & distributing copies. In the past 30 years that has been condensed, what, 1 million times? One can very well make the case that it's difficult nowadays to find copyrights that take more than 10 years to be monetized . Even the books that you mention took less than 10 years to reach a massive audience. And perhaps if the authors felt the pressure they 'd have produced even better works.

I have photographs that I took 10 years ago that I occasionally sell prints of. I don't try selling prints, but they're out there.

Removing copyright protections from them would be very disconcerting. I don't want to find my photographs as postcards sold somewhere without any licensing fees paid to me just because they're old.

Consider also that the GPL and all software licenses use the power of copyright protection as the legal force behind how they work. If copyright protection was 10 years, one would be able to take any 10 year old code and close source it (and sell it) with no legal repercussions.

If copyright only lasted 10 years would you take those prints down before expiration? There wouldn't be sufficient value in building name recognition?

Note that if copyright only lasted 10 years you could take them down but somebody else could simply republish them. The real question is, with only a 10 year copyright would you take and publish fewer photographs overall?

As a not professional photographer, I wouldn’t even put them up in the first place. I do photography for myself for my enjoyment.

If the copyright protection expired in 10 years, releasing them at all would be allowing someone else to monetize them in a few years.

> If copyright protection was 10 years, one would be able to take any 10 year old code and close source it (and sell it) with no legal repercussions.

So? 10 years is eternity in the world of software. If some company wants to fork, say, gcc as it was 10 years ago, and try making money selling that... well, people have the right to ruin their business.

gcc would be difficult to make into a commercial product.

How about 10 year old Linux and not having to jump through any hoops or legal problems of TiVoizing it?

Or 10 year old iText from when it switched to AGPL? Now you can completely ignore that.

I can point to people running even older iText- they would love to update it to something more recent with no copyright protection at all under a 10 year limit.

Sure, why not? Keep in mind that all these would be competing against up-to-date versions of the same software.