Yes. This would really hurt the ability for authors to make a living if everyone could do what the IA claims the right to do. It just won't work for sales to be cut off after a few physical copies by digital copies everywhere.

Really the main (even only?) thing "broken" about copyright is the terms.

And basically all the schemes to make copyright more expensive, difficult, requiring jumping through hoops and paying increasing amounts of money to renew? That just basically screws individual creators (who already don't make much money for the most part) to the benefit of the major content rights holders who are not going to forget or be unable to pay for copyright renewal. Which is probably not the objective of most of the people dreaming these up.

The US actually took a pretty big step towards benefitting more small-time creatives when it aligned with the Berne Convention and did away with explicit notices being required.

Besides the lengthy term, another major problem with copyright is how forcefully it has been applied to the personal realm. If it were a limited commercial right that made companies play fair with each other while leaving individuals alone, I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it. But from yesterday's nastygrams near libraries' xerox machines [sic] and stores' blank tape aisles, to today's shakedowns of torrenters and kneecappings of software developers, the way it has been conceived as some absolute property right is utterly draconian.

Oh I don’t think either the main or only problem is terms, I’m simply asking parent for clarification. Declaring it wholesale broken needs a Chesterton’s Fence justification; we can’t fix it until we acknowledge why it’s there, and what parts are worth preserving.

I only recently learned that the US has a bit of a Berne convention loophole in the sense that you are required to registers works with the copyright office before you can seek damages for copyright infringement. That fine print seems like it undermines the spirit of the Berne convention just a bit, and most other countries that adhere do not have this extra hoop.

The point of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, not to be fair or to guarantee a lifetime of income to popular authors and their children. To that end, the exclusive copyright is supposed to be of limited time.

Having no-effort century-long copyright might narrowly benefit a tiny number of small-time creators, but it robs the public of our collective culture.

It’s definitely worth including the full quote and discussing what it means.

“Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Part of the intent behind the law is to promote the sciences and the arts through these exclusive rights. The idea is that creators will have an economic incentive to create, because they’ll have some protection from copiers. The idea was not primarily to promote culture by releasing works into the public domain. This framework acknowledges both means of promotion, the short term protection of profits, combined with the long term acknowledgement that society will benefit from works becoming public after some time. So it is trying to be fair to both authors and to the greater social good, and it requires deciding & balancing what the term length should be.

It’s not intended to be “fair” to authors, is my point. It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And I don’t think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce works they otherwise would not (if the term were only, say, 10, 20, or 50 years).

The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems to me, in broad strokes, like a good balance between promoting new works vs. giving public access to previous works.

The century-long term only benefits a vanishingly small proportion of creators (which is to say, a vanishingly small proportion of creators' inheritors). The primary beneficiary is a small number of very large monopolistic media/publishing firms, who have e.g. bought up the rights (for peanuts) to the past century of back issues of thousands of scientific journals, and now keep them behind a paywall.

But the harm to the public is incalculably large.

The original terms do sound pretty good relative to today. 28 years, with some action required to renew. What does the Berne Convention say? “the general rule is that protection must be granted until the expiration of the 50th year after the author's death.” Since this is fairly globally adopted and not very US-specific, does that influence your opinion on terms? What is the reason that the Berne Convention allows for terms this long, and if we want them to be shorter, what needs to happen, in order to get lawmakers globally to agree?

I certainly might have misunderstood your comment about being “fair” to authors. I guess you were saying that the US copyright law isn’t doing anything to distinguish between independent authors, small businesses, or large corporations? It certainly does allow for big business to have an easier time of things, and is not at all fair to individuals and small businesses, that’s true.

My point is that fairness or guarantee of author’s natural rights or whatever is not the fundamental premise for copyright (in the USA). US copyright, at least as established by the US Constitution, is based on practical/utilitarian considerations, and is primarily concerned with benefit to the public.

In my opinion the Berne convention (which is instead premised on authors’ supposed natural rights, without much concern for the public) is a incredibly harmful and anti-social system which should not have been ratified by the USA. It has become even more harmful in the digital age.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on copyright history, law, or philosophy.

I guess I don’t know what you mean then. The US copyright law and the Berne Convention are both trying to establish what should be deemed fair, with respect to publishing and copying creative works. They establish (define) the fairness of copying something you didn’t create. They also try to be fair to creators and society by giving authors some rights (time-limited exclusive copyright), and by giving society the right to take the work into public domain eventually. The explicitly stated concerns are about protecting the economic interests of creators, which I’d agree might be characterized as utilitarian, but also with general social good, benefit to the public as you say, which is perhaps a lofty ideal?

* edit, since I didn’t see your edits about the Berne Convention. That’s an interesting take. I thought most copyright progressives viewed Berne as a marked improvement over US copyright pre-Berne. The most important aspect of Berne is that it’s globally adopted, so the discussion about terms really needs to be about Berne more than US copyright law, I think?

The copyright system, just like the patent system, is based on a recognition that if anyone can trivially copy something you make, there is less point in working hard on it for a long time, because you won’t be able to benefit from your labor (and perhaps won’t even be able to support yourself).

Unlike working on something physical (say, a bushel of grain, a shirt, a bookshelf, or a house), when the work is an idea (like a better mousetrap or a catchy song) if someone copies it they can profit from your labor at your expense because they pay none of costs of creation, so can undercut and outcompete you.

Therefore, the thinking goes, creators won’t bother making new intangible creations like textbooks or paintings or inventions if they can’t have some kind of exclusive right over publication or use. (I’m not quite sure what empirical evidence there is for this claim. That seems like an interesting question, but it’s probably pretty tricky to investigate.)

The goal of the copyright and patent system is to encourage creators by granting them limited-time exclusive rights, whereby they can benefit from their hard work. Those creators then do useful work they otherwise would not bother with, and the public benefits.

But the premise is not an abstract ideal of fairness or a guarantee of moral rights for authors and creators. The premise is promotion of science and useful arts. At the point where the copyright term is interfering with (rather than promoting) science and useful arts, it is too long. That is, the fundamental question should be “does this system most benefit the public?” not “is this system the fairest to authors?”

I’ve never met a creator who decided what or whether to create based on their descendants' earning money from exclusive rights to their work 50+ years into the future. Maybe such creators exist, but I would guess those to be vanishingly few.

Is there really no middle ground between “five years after publication” and “seventy years after the last author’s death”?

I’m suggesting there is a middle ground, yes.

>Books frequently get popular long after initial publication.

Is that relevant?

To me copyright is there to encourage the creation of new works. I doubt any publisher takes into account book sales more than 5 years out when deciding whether to publish a new book.

I have artist friends. Current copyright acts as more of an inhibitor than enabler of their creativity.

I think books (or any works) staying popular on a long time scale, or becoming popular long after creation, is extremely relevant to how long copyright terms should be, yes. That seems apparent, so why do you ask?

You’re right that copyright is there to encourage creation of new works, and the stated mechanism for doing this is by granting the creator a limited-time monopoly, so they have a chance to make money.

Why do you doubt that publishers aren’t considering more than 5 years, and to turn your question back on you - why exactly is that relevant? There certainly can be a difference between why they decide to publish a book, and whether they should have the exclusive right to make money from a book after 5 years, can there not? Since you’re making a broad generalization, think about all book types, text books, reference books, novels, literature, non-fiction, etc. Aren’t some of those slower to publish and slower to go out of date? Think about walking through Barnes & Noble and tell me you believe that everything in the store in less than 5 years old.

And how does copyright inhibit your artist friends? Copyright doesn’t enable creativity, it just protects it, right? Are you sure your artist friends would even get paid for their work without copyright laws in place? If you are sure, then why?

What differentiates libraries from the IA in this context, though?

Good question. I would guess four things that make a meaningful difference are 1) libraries are attempting to adhere to first sale doctrine, and attempting to have the ebook “returned” before lending it out again; 2) libraries aren’t trying to use Fair Use as their justification for ebook lending; 3) libraries aren’t scanning books, they’re only offering existing ebooks; and 4) libraries are publicly funded and not a private, for-profit company. Combined, I would guess these things put library lending on a stronger legal foundation.