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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 Matumio on Thursday December 20, 2018 @08:00AM (#18724512)
Copyright law is not supposed to create fairness.

It is supposed to benefit society as a whole. If protection is too long, limited access to (and reuse of) existing work reduces the benefits of having a law. If protection is too short, some works may not get created due to the lack of incentives.

Someone attempted to calculate an optimal duration, and concluded it was about 15 years: https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf (Related article: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intelle...)

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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by trampypizza on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:40AM (#18726387)
I would recommend reading James Boyle's 'The Public Domain'. It's available free from his site on a creative commons license[1]. He makes a great argument about the development of IP laws, similar to the points you have made.

[1] http://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf

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Re:For First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works W... by Nursie on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:55PM (#18727196)
15 years sounds fine.

I guess I was talking about just a couple.

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