> allowing everyone to copy everything freely makes the world a better place

Yes, this is the actual reason that copyrights aren’t infinite. It just seems hand-wavy, full of assumptions, and rather vague as a justification from the creator’s point of view.

What I’m hoping for is the kind of clarity and specificity behind “makes the world a better place” that could actually be used to guide thinking about how long copyrights should last. Right now, the article and this entire comment section feels more like an argument over personal opinions and assumptions, and lacking enough evidence, enough historical understanding of copyright, and enough philosophical rigor to justify a specific number of years.

BTW, I completely disagree with the article’s framing of “first order” and “second order”. They are reversed, as a persuasive tactic, but incorrectly so. The first order effect is the money and content value that changes hands as part of the transaction on offer by a creator. Letting the public at large benefit from free copies is both an economic and a temporal second order effect that doesn’t have tangible value, and comes with some economic harm that requires balancing.

> BTW, I completely disagree with the article’s framing of “first order” and “second order”. They are reversed, as a persuasive tactic, but incorrectly so.

The article is not speaking about the first order benefit of the work being created originally… it is talking about from the perspective of piracy… piracy advocates always make the argument “well the creator doesn’t lose any money when I download the movie, and I get to watch a movie… I win and no one loses, how can that be bad?”

The article is trying to point out that the counterpoint to that is that yes, for the particular work you are downloading that might be true (no one loses and you gain), the second order effect of piracy might be a reduction in creative works being produced.

So what is first order vs second depends on what you are talking about… the creation of the work or the copying. I think it is useful to frame it this way because piracy advocates always start their argument from the work already existing.

I am talking about the 1st/2nd order effects of the work being created, which I feel like has to be the assumption if we’re going to talk about making the world a better place. Assuming the work is already created and starting from the question of piracy kind-of undermines the idea of making the world a better place, doesn’t it?

I mentioned somewhere else, but Copyright Law already specifically rejects the claim that copying without permission is not hurting the creator. That claim doesn’t hold water when the pirate is enjoying the value of the work, and is ignoring the costs of it’s creation including time. Piracy advocates need to address the history and philosophy of copyright that’s already been debated and decided if the argument is to be taken seriously.

Short of piracy, I’m still left wondering how to decide copyright terms.

I'll give it a go:

It's a bit like a startup. That is: creating the thing isn't the only part - getting people to want it, i.e., finding a market for your product, is intrinsical.

Case in point: Van Gogh. He only became greatly appreciated after his death.

What does that mean for copyright? In this line of reasoning, copyright during life of the creator is reasonable. A work may become a cultural touchstone for ever (Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Bach/Mozart/Beethoven), for one or two generations (Elvis Presley/Cliff Richards[1]), or maybe it becomes simply widely known without being considered an indispensable part of culture (Venga Boys - Boom Boom Boom). During life of the creator, the creator's efforts should be protected and she/he should be allowed time to get her/his creation ingrained in general consciousness. Post-life, the heirs could be allowed some time to reap what was sown - e.g. 10 years, extendible once for 10 years for payment.

As the OP, I'm not saying this is my view on copyright. I am wondering why society should think it owns something I created. "Because others benefit" is insufficient in my opinion: if you're posting on HN, you're in the wealthy half of the world population. Others would benefit if society took half of what you own and distributed its value to those significantly less well off.

I'm in favour of the concept of ownership myself, but I don't see why creative works should be exempt from that.

[1] at one point in time, there was an Elvis vs. Cliff vibe. Possibly strength depending on where you lived (more apparent for UK/EU folks?).

i think the argument goes that all human culture is remixed from human culture. if you write a book it's safe to say you have borrowed from other works of culture. you might have put a new spin on it but that isn't to say you have created something wholly new. how could you possibly claim to have crated a new artistic work uninfluenced by previously created artistic works? thus how much of this work do you truly own?

when you look at the Disney animation classic's back catalogue you see an awful lot of work from the commons. does this not display the value of having these works in the commons?

That 70 vs. 20 year argument assumes a bunch of facts not in evidence. In a star-search business, the outlier winners are a big part of what sets compensation levels for the authors that don't have runaway successes. It's possible, even likely, that cutting copyright terms back to an unprecedented 20 years --- that's shorter than the term we had in the 1700s --- would in fact drastically reduce the amount of work that gets produced, by making even the hits so unprofitable that nobody will invest in their authors.

Meanwhile, if you rolled back the last two big extensions --- CTEA and the Berne-joining Copyright Act of '76 --- and brought us back to 1909, you'd still have 60 year terms. I'd flip the argument around and claim that no copyright opponent on HN would accept 60 years either. So what are we arguing about? Does term have anything real to do with this?

I probably should have left off mentioning any actual number of years, since my argument was not trying to argue for any specific length of time.

The question I was answering is if we have copyright at all, why shouldn’t it be infinite in length? The answer is that the incentive copyright provides to creators has diminishing returns, and eventually provides no extra incentive… how long that period actually is is not obvious, but it is likely somewhere way before 95 years. And since society gets a benefit when works enter public domain, society has an incentive to try to set the length of time as short as possible while maintaining the incentive to create.

I am not trying to argue for an exact length of time, just explaining why we don’t want it to be forever.

I agree it shouldn't be forever. Maybe it should even be shorter. But I don't look at the market for original authorship of cultural works and think "wow, this a lucrative field to get into". Most authors are just barely getting by.

That is also part of what the article is pointing out… after a few years, only the wildly successful works are going to continue to have demand enough to make copyright matter… 99% of creators aren’t going to be affected at all by the length of copyright, so 99% of creators will not care either way.

I know I'm saying this for the 50th time on this thread so I'll keep this short: it is not the case that just because only 1% of works are still throwing off cash 50 years later that a 50 year term only benefits 1% of work. The probability that any given work will be profitable 50 years from now is priced into lots of deals; that's how star-search businesses work.

I’d be curious on the economics for publishing… probably varies by the genre. I can’t imagine most tech publishers, for example, are banking on profits in 50 years.

Someone probably could get industry numbers for how much publishers make on copyright older than 50 years… and with the time discount for 50 years of not having the money to use for other purposes… and see how much each creator gets in the star-search lottery