As was posited in another comment, if we're encouraging innovation here, that would help the point. Encourage creators to have to create again.

As an aside - I'd imagine for most works, the vast majority of earnings would come from the first 20 years. I mean, people aren't flocking to the theatre to see Titanic anymore, yeah? I'm sure there's some streaming deals and licenses to show and whatnot, but nothing like theatre earnings.

I very much agree with your general point but still feel 20 is too short. / Somewhere in the 30-50 range.

Copyright is not the same as patents nor is innovation the only or necessarily the most relevant concern.

Authors have rights, especially artists are often not immediately discovered, and a lot of large businesses would be able to suppress new works for 20 years.

This shows ignorance on how creators make money. Creators don't make money purely through producing new works, per se. They create money with a robust set of works whose long tail collectively forms enough money for them to live off of. This relies on the notion that the intellectual property of the creator is theirs for a significantly long time. This is because the money made upfront is unpredictable [a novel's upfront payment is often just a few thousand dollars, but takes over a year to write, edit, and produce...]

The "long tail" of works makes practically zero money. Most of them simply go out of print and into a copyright-induced memory hole. Works that still make money decades after their creation are quite exceptional.

This is only true in the sense that all creative people are generally paid exceptionally little for their work, and make practically zero money. But of those that do make a living, it is through having a robust and regularly selling body of work that is still paying money years or decades later.

This is also partially why royalties were a huge fight against Disney a little while ago, when Disney started to refuse to pay royalties for Star Wars and Marvel works after acquiring the companies that owned them. Those works were still selling years/decades after their original creation and those creatives were still owed that money.

So we should subject all works to extreme copyright lengths on the mere off-chance that a tiny fraction of them might still be making appreciable amounts of money decades later? Looks like a total non-starter.

No, I'm saying 20 years is too short because it destroys the livelihoods of the already-few creatives who can make a living off of their work, because 20 years is based off of a completely ignorant idea of how creatives earn livings.

20-years is nothing in the terms of the life span something. If you look at a lot of the authors they spend their lifes writing. Just like you'll spend more than 20-years working, so will they. But it seems you want to hamstright their earning rights. To me it's absolute greed and stealing from the working man.

The entire point of allowing things to go public domain is they is no need for copyright protection anylonger. But if people are still earning their living off of that work then someone would be getting hurt.

And this talk of a total non-starter. You need to explain why 20-years is enough. Because it's 100+ just now. So you're the one on a total non-starter.

This does not sound convincing to me; I can not imagine ANY realistic scenario where artistic activity is only viable because of profits earned more than 20 years later: Not for individual authors/creators and especially not for companies.

I think this point of view only appears reasonable because of how ridiculously extensive copyright terms are right now...

Imagine companies paying bonuses for work that was done >20 years earlier: That sounds to me neither reasonable nor helpful in any way.

The concept "death of the creator" is non-trivial in cases where the original work is the product of division of labor.

Imagine thinking this is a bad deal in a world where most jobs - even most creative jobs - are paycheck to paycheck.

Make a second thing in the 20 years you have ahead of you or find other work.

Imagine not understanding what it would really mean.

I write a book.

For 20-years I get paid for my book. After the 20-years just the publishers make money from selling my book.

Would it be ok if I came and took stuff you physically made 20-years ago and say it's ok - you made it 20-years ago.

>Would it be ok if I came and took stuff you physically made 20-years ago and say it's ok - you made it 20-years ago.

Yes. I would be thrilled if anything I made had enough cultural value after 20 years that the commons still had a use for it. Better that than, say, a publisher deciding it no longer has market value and simply never printing any more and pulping the rest.

> I would be thrilled if anything I made had enough cultural value after 20 years that the commons still had a use for it.

You would be thrilled that you made something that good. Since something that good is very very rare. You would be very upset that I was getting all the value that it provides for free just because of how long ago you made it.

> And as far as the publishers getting paid, the publishers are always getting paid. You signed away part of your rights to them to begin with, and if they couldn't get paid, they wouldn't publish your work to begin with. You've already decided they have the right to profit from your work, what's under debate is how long anyone else has to wait to do the same. 100% if I take anything off you without paying for it, you're going to be screaming from the rafters about how unfair it all is.

When you enter into a publishing contract the deal is they make money and you make money. Entering into a contract where they make money and you make nothing is fundamentally not a contract, it is not legal is nearly every country. This is why contracts where they sell companies with massive debt but have assets such as for example Football clubs sell for 1 pound/dollar/euro. There must be an exchange. The idea that it's ok for one entity to stop paying another entity just because "you knew I was going to be making money" is disgusting.

Personally, I think to disagree with the idea it's fair someone gets paid for their work is just pure greed. It's absolutely disgusting to think it's fair a company gets to make money off someone's work without paying them. I think people who think along those lines a morally bankrupt.

Create more then. Society is not obligated to provide life time rent for you and your children just because you made something years ago.

> Society is not obligated to provide life time rent for you

Society should be obligated to pay me for work that I've done if they wish to enjoy that work. If I write a book and 20-years later you want to read that book, why should you get it for free? Why shouldn't demand that you pay me money for that book?

Society is not entitled to free shit. Remember Society isn't obligated to provide payment, just the people who want the creations.

It's called our public domain rights. Culture belongs to everyone, that's the natural way of things. We willingly chose to pretend that we can't copy and distribute your book infinitely at negligble cost so you could make some money and be rewarded for your efforts. We sure as hell didn't do that so you could have functionally infinite rent seeking all the way down to your grand children.

Authors and the copyright industry as a whole lobby the governments with the intent to systematically rob us of our fair use and public domain rights. You're not keeping up your public domain side of the bargain. Why should we keep up our end? We shouldn't. We won't.

Public domain isn't a side of the bargin. Public domain is basically there to stop people making money off other people's work.

The entitlement of thinking that public domain is a right...

The entitlement of thinking you're owed eternal monopoly rights over information. The entitlement of thinking you can own unique numbers. How ironic.

Public domain is a right and its existence is implied by the words "time-limited" in copyright law. The whole objection to copyright is based on the fact they have made a mockery of the concept by simply extending copyright durantions whenever works of rich corporations are about to expire. There is no such thing as public domain if the copyright is never actually allowed to expire.