While you may be right, 14 and 28 years (with extension) are currently unrealistic goals due to international obligations [0]. However, I believe returning to the terms of the 1976 act (75 years or life plus 50 years) would be imminently achievable with good political maneuvering.

Thinking this was a hot-button issue on HN, I submitted a post advocating for a coordinated political effort a few weeks ago [1], but it didn't get any traction. However, seeing comments like this gives me hope.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016752

One of the reasons I opposed TPP was the copyright provisions that expanded on the Berne's Convention, however Berne's Convention I do not believe applies to Audio (music) or Books, only Photos and Movies

Further as we have seen recently in other area's it is not really that hard to rip up international treaties, I think we will be fine to just ignore Berne's

One could argue if you made something, you're entitled to the rights.

If a painter makes a painting, he'll be able to pass those down to his children. But if a musician makes a song, it'll end up in the public domain after X years.

The painting itself. But the right to reproduce the painting is covered by copyright, and ends up in the public domain 70 years after the painter's death, same as everything else. (Such a long time! It was originally 14 years with an optional 14 year extension period.)

https://www.arsny.com/copyright-basics/

So a (freelance) painter gets two things: the physical piece of art, and the right to reproduce it. A musician can get concert revenue, plus the rights to reproduce their music. I don't have a good sense about how the values of these things compare.

Why should I have to pay for the state enforcing an artificial monopoly on a recording your (great grand)father made?

The natural state is no such enforcement. Copying the original is essentially zero marginal cost.

P.S. Pro musician here.

The intellectual rights on the painting (can anyone reproduce it, in say, print, without the rightholder's agreement) are quite separate from the property rights on the physical embodiment of the painting.

Literature is closer to music in this aspect, as neither has any physical property. Copyright on both is limited.

And if someone invents a way of creating nominally perfect three dimensional reproductions of paintings, such copies would be legal.

The physical vs non-physical aspect makes it more complex, but I think the situation is ultimately the same..(?) A painter like a musician can keep and pass down a physical representation of the original image (a canvas vs a gold disc/master) but the rights to the image/song itself can enter public domain and be reproduced (a print vs an MP3).

It's kinda interesting to me that in art the physical object is revered above the image itself, whereas I can't imagine there are many people who spend millions on gold discs or masters of culturally significant songs.

But they do pay the original artist to come to their show and play their original hits. Meanwhile other people pay less to see a cover band.

Apples and oranges. You're comparing a physical thing to 'intellectual property'.

No this not about Copy Right it is that the Artist doesn't receive money ONLY the corporate rights owners currently make money on music before 1971. The way the contracts were written back then the artist didn't own their songs the record labels did. Look at Credence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty.

"CCR's catalogue of songs has frequently been used or referenced in popular culture, partly because John Fogerty "long ago signed away legal control of his old recordings to Creedence's record label, Fantasy Records." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival#L...

> But if a musician makes a song, it'll end up in the public domain after X years.

I WISH!!!!! I blame Mickey Mouse for that. Copy Right is different and is in perpetual renewal since 1976. This is why Sherlock Holmes is locked into only the first half of his timeline since the second half is still under copyright protection and owned by the family.

The rights to humanity far exceeds the locking up of works for people to use as leverage to gain money on 0.01% of the works that are of any monetary value. I have always proposed that if you want to extend your copyright you are charged a fee of say $10,000 that way 99.9% of the items become Public Domain.

> If a painter makes a painting, he'll be able to pass those down to his children.

What painter doesn't sell his work? Those painting rarely ever stay in possession of artist.

EDITED for my poor spelling

> Copyright should be for 14 years + a single 14 year extension if the Human Creator is still alive to file for the extension.

Where does this seemingly arbitrary number of 14 years come from?

It was the original copyright term in the United States, from the Copyright Act of 1790: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790

greatest travesties? It's just money.

Money runs your entire life. Good luck living without money

Sure.

But when people say "it's just money", I believe the real objection they have is "it's disproportionally screwing other people for sake of personal gains". I.e. antisocial behaviour.

> The erosion of a vibrant Public Domain catalog is on of the greatest travesties of modern human civilization

Ok, well I was with you until that last point. This is not one of the “greatest” travesties compared to wars, genocides, concentration camps, torture, mass murders, pillage, etc. Some cultures were literally wiped from history, and it puts things in perspective.

We can hopefully fix copyright with future legislation, but it’s not like all the material was destroyed forever.

Some of the more obscure stuff does end up lost entirely. This is more of a problem with digital formats, especially games, where copying is intrinsic to preservation. The arcade machines with self-wiping "DRM" systems are a particularly strong example. Most of the old Doctor Who episodes that have been recovered have been from copies that were not supposed to have existed.

Actually those old Doctor Who episode were recorded perfectly legally. UK Copyright legislation has an exemption for recording off-air broadcasts for personal use for the purpose of timeshifting. It doesn't say how long you are allowed to shift the time.

To clarify, most of the fan-recorded Doctor Who episodes recovered were of the audio only. Home video recording was extremely expensive until roughly the 1980s -- I am not aware of video recovered by home fan enthusiasts. Most of the recovered video episodes have been 16mm telerecordings intended for overseas broadcasting.

Doctor Who is lucky in that there was a nice size fanbase from the get-go. Some not so popular programs from that era are indeed gone forever. (An example I can think of offhand is the 1960s soap opera United! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United! -- reportedly all 147 episodes of that program were wiped.)

As far as this act goes, my initial impression is that standardizing a mechanism for mechanical royalties is probably a good thing overall, same with the added protection for those on the production side. But the CLASSICS act portion strikes me as very rent-seeking in nature, I'm not a fan of infinite copyright economically.

There were a handful of episodes where the color was recovered from NTSC U-Matic off-air recordings, with the luma coming from the existing black and white film.

>> it’s not like all the material was destroyed forever.

Yes some things are, many things in fact have been lost forever.

Popular things where people simply ignore the law are often preserved, but that is not the case with obscure / less popular works or works where the create aggressively fights any archiving or preservation efforts.

>This is not one of the “greatest” travesties compared to

That depends on how you define Modern Civilization, and where you want to cut off the list of "one of". I do however think you down play the significance losing these works can have on our understanding of history, what actually took place, and to be able to study why some of those events occurred. If you do not believe that is a great travesty then I guess we will just have to disagree

> We can hopefully fix copyright with future legislation, but it’s not like all the material was destroyed forever.

You can thank piracy for that, most of the content was saved by individuals not following copyright laws and would be lost otherwise.