Just because the copyright wasn't (someone's idea of) perfect prior to Disney, doesn't absolve Disney of responsibly when they start shifting the term in entirely the wrong way.
There are other reasons to argue the term should be shorter, or that creators should be granted a less valuable right for their works. But "the current term doesn't track the lifespan of the author well" seems facially nonsensical. I mean, just to start with, there's the difference between John le Carre, whose last book (before he died) was published when he was 88 years old, and someone like Christopher Paolini, the Guiness record holder as youngest author of a bestseller. How does lifespan even make sense here?
Although, now that you've brought it up, 10 years with expiry on death of the author sounds fantastic. Authors are incentivised to create new works and companies are incentivised to purchase them. A balance must be struck between rewarding individuals for their work and preventing corporations from monopolising cultural touchstones.
I feel like you're overestimating the financial longevity of the overwhelming majority of works. Most are forgotten about a few years after their release. The ones that aren't will typically have made more than enough money for the author to live lavishly for the rest of their life.
> The extra value realized by a term of 70 years versus 56 (the 1909 number) is, in significant part, realized during the author's lifetime. It gives them something more valuable to sell.
I sincerely doubt that for the vast majority of works publishers are signing contracts based on anything other than how much they think it'll sell in the first year at most. Given that authors struggle to be paid at all unless they've already found massive commercial success, it seems obvious that the only party benefiting from longer copyright terms is the company.
There seems to be a belief that the expiry of the copyright period precludes the author from monetising the work further, whereas it simply means they will begin to compete with others for that monetisation. With a 10+ year head start and humans typically preferring to reward the original creator they should do okay for themselves.
Our current intellectual property regime is fundamentally opposed to how human culture has developed and progressed. It's difficult to imagine how barren a world we'd live in if our predecessors had sought to limit any retelling of a story that wasn't approved by the original author. It's a condemnation of our society that the retelling of many of these stories has been criminalised by a company that found much of it's success in retelling the very same.
Over what period of time do new works make most of their money? Over what period are production companies their payback over when deciding whether to invest in new works?
I would suggest 5 years more than covers the above.
To me the point of copyright, and the only way you can defend a state sponsored monopoly is to encourage creation of new works. If 5 years does that, any more just prevents derivative works, which are new creations in their own right.
I'll grant that perpetual copyright is at least logically sound, but once you move away from that I don't see how you can make an argument for anything more than a minimal (enough to encourage creation) copyright term.
Houses of the Holy is 50 years old. So is Innervisions. There's A Riot Goin' On? 52.
If you're trying to argue that success at the scale of Zeppelin or Seinfeld isn't somehow an incentive to creation, I mean, OK, but I guess I can rest my case, too.
Yes people do want their work appreciated. I dispute the fact that anyone makes something today based on the financial worth of it 70 years down the road.
Pointing out examples that just so happen to have lasted a long time doesn't mean they made it with that expectation.
Further if that is provably the case, you still have to answer why they have a right to a state sponsored monopoly. And after all that my second suggestion is to have an annual increasing fee. So that only things that the owners are willing to actually make use of and pay to maintain stay copyrighted. That would seem to answer your objection
Let's say you write something brilliant, the next Harry Potter in financial terms. You shop it around but none of the big publishers will touch it, of course they're all owned by 2 or 3 companies. You self publish and it sells a couple hundred copies; 5 years later, bang, a major Hollywood blockbuster and media blitz. No need to pay you a cent.
2 films, the Sherlock and elementary series and now enola Holmes, despite Sherlock Holmes being near (in copyright terms) the end of copyright.
So that would tend to disprove the thesis. Plus it suggests that having the author on board is valueless. Would you want to pay the author a fee and get them on board, or do you want them bad mouthing your new film?
Further, any author that writes a book with any legitimate expectation that it's going to be made in to a film is probably successful enough already.
JK Rowling probably wasn't expecting a film deal. She wrote the books without that expectation. I'm interested in a copyright that encourages and allows her to write books, not make her into a multimillionaire. If anything her success means she can write less books. Is that a good thing? I'm not in favour of keeping her in penury, but copyright should be about allowing them to work, not make it so they can stop.
He was already mostly public domain, with only a few stories still copyrighted. (And his estate claims that some character traits like "having emotions" are part of those stories.)
Then there's the seven percent solution which came out shortly before Sherlock Holmes went public domain.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...
Then if you look at technology like the internet, there's plenty of people creating things, not for monetary reward, but because they enjoy it.
Not that I'm necessarily on the same /page/ as the parent. I would defend copyright as a tool to enable new works to be created and allow creators to make a living, and ultimately get works into the public domain. As such I would limit copyright to a much shorter period.
Copyright sucks in so many ways but replacing it with nothing at all would actually kill creative industries. My personal ideal solution is copyright with fair (as to be determined by courts so you can’t charge $1e100) mandatory licensing. Wanna make a derivative work, use someone’s art, show a movie, have a show on your streaming service? As long as you pay the royalties nobody can tell you no.
Except this is trivially disprovable by simply looking at YouTube.
Copyright plays essentially zero role in the business models of the vast majority of sucessful youtubers, and it is arguably a platform that is far more sucessful than traditional media at producing high quality, relevant content.
Sure, if you get rid of copyright some business models will no longer be possible... but some new business models will now be viable.
You wouldn't argue "we have to protect the baby crushing machine industry because if we don't then the baby crushers won't have a job", so why are you making that argument for copyright?