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A comment on For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter Public Domain. Parent comment

Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by toyg on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @07:50PM (#18721534)
Not a terrible idea, although it obviously penalises individual authors vs big business. I would argue that it should only apply to businesses and inheritors, so that an author could still behest his IP as a worthy inheritance. However, I fear it would result, in practice, in another immediate bonus extension for existing IP (i.e. the Mouse would continue to be owned by Disney for free until 2060). After all, it wouldn't be fair to tell a company they have to find an extra $22b per year from next January.
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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by Nasrudith on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @09:41PM (#18722078)
I think the point of the escalating fees is that it tells them to 'fuck off' once it gets to a ridiculous point and it traps them in their own rhetoric. "Our IP is valuable they say." But they won't pay by hundreds of millions let alone billions for their old stuff...
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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by jacques_chester on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:37AM (#18722746)
> I would argue that it should only apply to businesses and inheritors, so that an author could still behest his IP as a worthy inheritance.

I see that I didn't write clearly what I meant to write, which was 35 years after the original copyright-holder's death.

> After all, it wouldn't be fair to tell a company they have to find an extra $22b per year from next January.

Copyright laws have already been changed with retroactive effect, so it's not as though any troublesome precedent would be set in that area.

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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by scrooched_moose on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @08:05PM (#18721634)
Yeah, the only way it remotely works in theory is if the fee is some percentage of the revenue you earned off the IP in the last year.

Practically it's an unenforceable nightmare that is so prone to "Hollywood accounting" type gimmicks that doesn't work at all.

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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by philwelch on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @11:54PM (#18722603)
Don't make it a percentage of revenue, just make it an exponentially increasing amount, and the copyright holder will bail out when it's no longer profitable for them.
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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by earenndil on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @09:56PM (#18722148)
I don't think making it a % works. If that % is less than 100, then you never have any incentive not to pay it.
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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by Bonooru on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @10:15PM (#18722218)
Revenue != Profit. There are costs associated with making money off of the IP. You'd stop when those costs and the cost of renewing are greater than the revenue taken in.
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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by jacques_chester on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:34AM (#18722733)
Not a percentage. A dollar amount, increasing faster than inflation.
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