I'd love to see some statistics showing revenue from copyrighted works vs. age. I'm betting the vast majority of revenue (and especially revenue which actually accrues to the original creator) is made in the first 3-5 years, after which continuing copyright protection is a net drain on society.

As the internet continues to accelerate our culture, that time is only going to grow shorter. Longer copyright terms may have made sense in the past when distribution was hard, but today's world moves much faster, and the law needs to catch up.

This is so different from industry to industry that I don't think it makes sense to aggregate the statistics. Plenty of photographers and illustrators for instance make large fractions of their income from reselling stock images long after they were created.

It'd be interesting if the law had some sort of "activation" clause, where the copyright would only start to tick toward expiry once a single cent of royalties had been made. That way, things that immediately start to make money (like music and movies) would immediately start to count down, while things that can take years to be licensed (like stock photos) will only start their countdown when someone actually payed for them.

I believe patent expiration varies from industry to industry; certainly copyright expiration could too?

Consider how long it takes to make a movie sometimes. The Tolkien estate realized quite a bit of value on the Lord of the Rings copyright via the Peter Jackson films, several decades after it had been written (not sure of the exact timing of the various payments).

Now--is that a good argument for such a long copyright period? I don't think so. I think the only time copyright should survive the author's death is if they have kids who are not yet adult.

We can all think of many works that continue to be popular decades after their creation, but that's precisely because we only remember the popular ones. These are by far the exception to the rule, and we shouldn't tailor our copyright policies for them.

The intention of copyright is to promote the creation of works. Rewarding authors is the means, not the end. In the case of LOTR, Tolkien didn't write it to provide licensing revenue to his grandchildren; he wrote LOTR because the creation of fantasy languages and histories was his passion and he could make some money from it. A much shorter copyright would have sufficed to inspire the creation of LOTR. Furthermore, the creation of movie adaptations would be helped by LOTR coming out of copyright, not hindered. Disney's empire was built on adaptations of out-of-copyright stories. Shorter copyright would in many ways encourage the creation of more works.

In case it wasn't clear above, I totally agree with you. If we could ever get copyright shortened I would expect a surge of creative output.

Isn't the LotR universe protected by trademarks? I'd imagine the books and movies are protected by legally distinct copyrights.

Trademarks clearly should have much longer protection periods than copyright. In fact, a business should be able to operate infinitely under the same legally protected name as long as they remain an active business in good standing and the haven't lost their brand name to a word in common usage.

There is no natural progression of law here. The first US copyright laws lasted seven years. Works were sold to publishers, they were printed, and shipped around the nation on boats and trains. Seven years.

Now with a mouse click anyone can upload music and books to digital storefronts.

The law has caught up, directly in favor of those who own the majority of successful IP. As culture has accelerated our laws have only gotten more draconian.

I'm all for this fight, but don't doubt that it will be just that, a fight that the victors will write the history of.

Cross-posted from the G+ thread:

Regarding limiting copyright to 10 years, and since you brought up ponies, I feel that solves the wrong problem. The issue I see is that a few large greedy corporations effectively monopolize the copyrights for the vast majority of the nation/worlds creative output, that they then further exploit a corrupt political system to extend those copyrights indefinitely is almost secondary.

A thought experiment: make the sales/purchase of copyright ownership illegal. This would still allow an artist or creator to license the right to sell and distribute their work, but leave them unable to lose (legal) control of such distribution. This still allows a lot of room for the mega-corps to profit, but with less outright exploitation of artists than we currently see. Copyrights are held by the creator(s) for life, and works pass into the public domain after death, not the artists estates (or more often, the organization that owns the copyright). I feel this is simple to understand, fair to creators, and still provides business incentives to non-creators to invest time and money in the production and promotion of quality content.

A lot of legitimate copyright ownership depends on the ability to assign copyright. It varies by work and by jurisdiction, but the default copyright holder (by statute) is not always the party it should be. In the US, for instance, a corporation's identity might belong by default to the designer, such that they may be able to register trademarks but be prevented from using them freely without copyright assignment. In Canada, the commissioner, not the creator, of a work holds copyright by default, so contracts of commission for things like portraits and weddings photos usually include a copyright assignment clause. (That's actually an improvement over the previous state of affairs, in which the photographer would have to hire the subject as a model for a nominal fee in one contract, then have another contract for purchase and use of the work.)

I suppose you could legislate the general condition, but there will always be edge cases. Unfortunately, allowing for edge cases is going to result in abuse.

I'd suggest a short default copyright period with a renewal system for the works that do require a long copyright period like the infamous Mickey Mouse.

Why do Mickey mouse films require longer copyright; has Disney not recouped the costs of production?

The point of copyright is to get works into the public domain by allowing creators to recoup the costs of production and make a little bit of profit, the point is not to allow an endless revenue stream from something that is public domain.

If anything works that create more revenue should have their terms expire faster.

I support letting companies keep their copyrights on the grounds that it will be a lot easier to get this actually passed, and in the grand scheme of things, Steamboat Willie is not what we want. Steamboat Willie doesn't matter. What matters is the 99.995% of the rest of the stuff done in the same year that Steamboat Willie is shielding, the stuff with zombie owners, the stuff with owners that don't really care, the stuff that you simply have to presume is owned by somebody, somewhere, who may sue if you try to use it yet at the same time there is no practical way to find out who these people are so you could seek permission.

I also support continuously raising the price necessary to renew the copyright as you try to carry it longer and longer. And again, I'm not trying to hurt the mighty Disney corporation; sums they'd laugh at would still be sufficient to open the bulk of the content back up to us, and that's what I care about.

To make my point clear, this is entirely practical. In theory, should Steamboat Willie be public domain by now? Yeah, sure, there's no really good argument based on the public interest otherwise. But as a practical matter, if we could distinguish between Big Copyright's interests and the vastly larger "everything else", we'd be much more likely to come to a compromise that leaves everybody reasonably satisfied, if not ecstatic.

I don't want to speak for the OP but he's probably referring to the character Mickey Mouse, which is already protected effectively in perpetuity by trademark law. So there doesn't seem to be a reason to distinguish copyright terms on that account.

I'd ask if we need to extend copyright on Mickey Mouse films? What good does that do?

Now, extension of trademark, that I get to a limited degree. They can be the sole Mickey maker for a while. But why should they not have to make new material to generate new income from it?

There is a flip side to this: why should you have the ability to take the hard work of whomever came up with Mickey Mouse and take it in a direction that the creator doesn't like?

Say you wrote an open source software package in 2004. Should Microsoft be able to take your work and incorporate it into a proprietary package, just because 7 years passed?

Yes, because even the founders recognized that intellectual property is not real property. You can't stop people from copying ideas, and so they permitted copyright to be applied for a limited time in order to encourage people to release more creations (because they got rights to exploit them exclusively for a while), because the idea was that these creations entering the public domain would enrich the public domain for everyone. The fact that nothing is falling into the public domain (and probably never will again in our lifetimes if the status quo continues) is the biggest flaw in the current copyright system.

No, you don't get to own an idea forever just because you thought of it first. The very concept of 'owning ideas' is silly, but even if it wasn't, the second you tell it to someone else, it becomes part of the collective society and culture. If you don't like the deal that copyright gives you, you have a choice: don't share the idea at all. And that's fine, and I'm sure that the world would have kept spinning if nobody ever drew up MickeyMouse.

I don't think that's the flipside to my point. I think the flipside to your point would be "why have IP protection at all? It's an idea in my head now, why should someone else have control over that and my ability to execute it?"

And I don't actually program anymore, so let's go with writing: should anyone have the ability to republish it without my consent after the copyright has ended? Yes. Even a big publisher.

Should anyone have the ability to take my created work and extend on it, using my creations outside of the created work? Yes, after the trademark ends.

On the other hand, there is the problem of abandonware that is so old the owner don't actually enforces copyright on it anymore but technically it is still copyrighted.

I don't know if that's a "problem", it's just piracy. I think the abandonware scene is what film would look like with shorter copyright. Well, and non-traditional sequels and remakes may have actual budgets...

Well that depends on your flavor of open-source, doesn't it? Didn't Microsoft use some BSD code for their TCP/IP stack once? (I'm sure it's long been rewritten.)

The biggest hurdle with copyright is the Berne Convention. Copyright isn't merely an American problem, but one that needs to be tackled globally.

Opt out of it / ignore it, if the US can opt out of the Geneva convention then it shouldn't be a big deal to get out of the Bern convention.

I'm sure John Yoo could find something in the Constitution to allow it.