- Trivial for Microsoft
- Painful for a typical HN contributor
- Impossible for anyone earning minimum wage
I think a better standard might be "actively trying to commercialize."
[1] Or it is truly worthless; in which case, what do you need to retain the copyright for?
OR it was a novel that did not sell well in the first printing but had a small devoted clique and then some years later starts selling enough to make $120,000 a year.
OR it didn't get taken up by many people but now there is some interest in your work so people are talking about potentially buying the rights for Netflix but of course you have to pay 65K to make sure you have those rights to sell, which is money you don't have, so you need to take out a loan in order to potentially profit from your labor.
OR you're Peter Beagle https://www.cbr.com/the-last-unicorn-peter-s-beagle-regains-...
The fact is that there are a million ways in which a class of entrepreneurs make money off of their work, even though, like most entrepreneurs they fail, and whenever HN starts talking copyright there are always people who probably make significantly more per year than the average writer does at writing who want to make sure writers make even less.
It's weird that HN often loves entrepreneurs, and wants to make things easier for them - but not writers.
Aside from that this scheme, as most other fix copyright schemes, will not be taken up by most other countries (other than U.S I mean) as they tend to have a "copyright exists because creators have moral rights to ownership of their work" theory of copyright and not the whole "copyright exists to foster innovation" theory.
As other countries will not follow the U.S you would have what you often have today, things in Public Domain in U.S and not in other countries and so you cannot freely make derivative works for an international audience at least as you would be sued.
Further, you are still free to take that risk and pay the 64k. Just like you are free to buy/sell that bitcoin for $x. That is your risk to take.
OR one can make an argument that has nothing to do with any of the things I commented and tick an item off the HN scorecard!
>Further, you are still free to take that risk
Probably if they were smart they would just forego the risk of creating something in the first place as it would be a world with much less chance of a payoff.
Do people create things on the basis that there might be a payoff 16 years down the line? Did David Bowie write his last album on the basis of how how much money he'd make?
The first year is $1, is that a risk? 2nd year is $2. If you written a book or whatever I would think you've got some insight by then whether it's worth paying the $4.
And the Shakespeare reference is relevant because where do you want the cutoff? Life+70 is nonsensical, unless you're arguing for perpetual copywrite you need a line somewhere. Where do you want to draw the line?
Life + 70 is based on the concept of copyright outside of the U.S which doesn't think copyright exists to promote the arts but rather because if you create something you have a right to how it is disposed. All of these clever American solutions to copyright that would fix how it works in the U.S are not going to affect how it works outside the U.S and thus Life + 70 is more in keeping with the non-American conception of the purpose of copyright.
Outside the U.S pay 1 dollar to own something you made is nonsensical.
>Outside the U.S pay 1 dollar to own something you made is nonsensical
Define 'own'. You aren't paying to own the thing, you're paying for legal protections.
This is the issue with intellectual 'property' it isn't property, it doesn't require an owner, you aren't deprived of the use of your work if I 'steal' it. You will always own a book in the sense that if somebody copies it, they need to give you credit. That concept of 'ownership' makes at least as much sense as yours.
Define I am not talking about my opinions about stuff, I'm talking about what the legal concepts are regarding copyright in the EU.
The EU is a place that is not America. The EU has more stringent copyright rules for non-corporate copyright holders (where it is 70 years after death of longest living creator, if Steamboat Willie was owned by its creators instead of Walt Disney corporation it would still not be Public Domain in Europe)
>Yes because the US had no influence on the current copywrite system...
I do not believe the EU has been influenced by the U.S to make a copyright system that is more strict than the copyright system of the U.S. It makes more sense to suggest their copyright system is more strict because they have a different model of what a copyright system is for that would argue for a stricter system of copyright.
So in the hypotheticals we're discussing, why are you pointing out it isn't compatible with the legal concepts of the current system, unless you want to keep those concepts?
1. Even if only limited to U.S extremely unlikely to ever be implemented.
2. because of EU and other regional differences regarding copyright's purposes your hypothetical has actually no chance of ever being enacted outside the U.S
3. if your hypothetical was enacted inside U.S but not outside it would not solve the issue I find most irritating, near impossibility for people who do not have a team for dealing with these things to figure out if something is actually Public Domain or not?!?
I recently had Google tell me it thought a video was copyrighted but it is definitely public domain in U.S but they might be right because hey some of the people who worked on the movie the video was taken from died in 1960s - so when does it run out of copyright well I can't track that down so I better not use that for what I want to do with it.
Lord Dunsany died in 1957, I have a lot of uses for his stuff lined up but I better not do anything about it until 2027.
My hypothetical is bring systems better in alignment - hopefully making EU more limited like U.S and thus people who want to use something to make art etc. can figure out exactly if it is in PD or not simply. Because that is the real copyright problem holding back small creators.
In the context of reusing parts of movies it is difficult to figure out if it is in PD or not because the +70 years applies to major creators - is that director, producer, major actor?
I have a great use for Beat The Devil - that's in public domain in U.S because copyright not renewed - but not sure if that is really the case in European countries. Everything I do to research suggests it is - but... it's too much of a mess to realistically be absolutely certain. Probably is because surely the copyright must have been owned by United Artists so 70 years from 2023 at worst - maybe... but I mean John Huston died in 1987, in some places it was released in 1955 - so if 70 years from public release that's 2025? If 70 years from Huston's death forget about it.
However, a mechanism which works for Star Wars and Mickey Mouse, but not for a short story, a play, or a specialized piece of software written by a single individual which e.g. generates $20k / year, doesn't work for me.
The length of the copyright shouldn't be proportional to the effort invested in the work. If a book my parents wrote is supposed to move into the public domain, so should Star Trek: The Original Series.
That doesn't preclude mechanisms like:
- Required (free) registration. I go to a government website, get a code, and from there on, it says: Copyright (c) 2022. Registration number 5f902b0a-f56c-402a-95fd-47f12f40e538
- Required (free) maintenance. I need to renew this to maintain copyright.
- Anyone can look up the copyright owner (even though it might be Copyrights By Proxy, which is okay too -- anonymity is valuable).
- Reasonable limits on duration.
This handles your forum post, abandoned works, and to be frank, a majority of works under copyright. Most things move into the public domain. However, most things isn't the same as everything.
I'd also be supportive of a radical expansion of fair use doctrine.
although I'm not agreeing with them they are not really beating up a strawman - in the EU it's life+70, because it has a different motivation for copyright than the U.S - this means that you may think something is in public domain but then you find out it isn't really because the person who made it in 1925 died in 1970.
My personal standpoint is that copywrite should be the minimum necessary to encourage and allow people to create works.
That would suggest to me somewhere south of 10 years, possibly varying with the specific art form.
The doubling fee thing is somewhat appealling because it acts as a tax on valuable works.
If Disney wants to spend millions to protect Mickey mouse then there is that option, yes the public domain loses, but the tax acts as compensation for that.
I don't see why this doesn't work for the little guy. If they want to pay the fees they can, the point is people are only going to pay fees if it's worth it. That applies to Disney or Joe blogs. If it isn't worth $1/$2/$4 why should you get to stop everyone else using it?
* I'd be supportive with 10 years for software, articles (newspaper or scientific journal), and similar things which go out-of-date quickly.
* I would be supportive of 10-20 years for things which make most of the profit in the first few years, such as movies.
* I'd be supportive of 20-30 years for music, where it often really does take a while to build up an audience and to cover costs.
* I'd be supportive of the lesser of the authors' life and 50 years for things like books. A lot of books take a long time before they begin generating any sort of reasonable returns.
* I'd be supportive of longer periods for things which are CC-BY-SA, GPL, and similar licenses, which aren't as burdensome as All Rights Reserved, and where the copyright has a motive beyond profit.
The little guy won't be able to afford this for more than 7-11 years. The big guy will be able to do so much longer. I'd actually rather flip it around so the little guy has longer copyright than megacorps.
Right, so where's the social value in it? The work has proven to be of little value. What's in it for the people who extend copyright to keep giving it to you even though they don't really care for what you have to offer?
Moreover, while your entire story has proved a complete and utter failure, what if just one page of your story has tremendous value for the next author who knows how to add a more compelling page 2? Why do we want to hold back that human progress so you can sit on something that doesn't even make you any money?
>Moreover, while your entire story has proved a complete and utter failure
I'm thinking you probably don't know anything about the pricing of short stories?
At any rate in the example given I supposed that a short story can earn higher rates than normal rates for short story publication which might, if you are lucky, be somewhere around a few thousand dollars at publication in magazine form, some more thousands at winning an award, and then in a collection of short stories where it might reliably earn 10000 dollars a year (for its share of the whole collection length of something), note - that would be an extremely successful short story as far as short stories go (without selling media rights)
Obviously this varies depending on where you sell your stuff, and if you earn money for awards.
Let's say you sell to the New Yorker http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-new-y... so you earn about 7,500 for the short story.
The award that has paid out the most for a short story ever evidently paid 30 thousand pounds https://lithub.com/read-the-story-that-just-won-the-biggest-...
You may not know this but very few stories win awards, awards being structured to be relatively rare. Obviously if someone has not one an award for their short story you may consider that their work has been a complete and utter failure, but even so...
let us consider if someone sold to the New Yorker, which hopefully you will agree is likely to be one of the better paying markets and evidently by your calculation one of the short story markets that publishes things that are not complete and utter failures (because it pays more than others right?), and if they then won the highest paying award ever they would have another 30,000, now assuming this short story is part of a collection of short stories and the author is really popular I think we can say this short story in the collection makes about 10,000 per year.
in 16 years that is - for one of the most successful short stories in the world - 197,500 dollars.
on edit: I really find it amusing that HN of all places really wants to limit how people can make money on what is an entrepreneurial activity - sitting down and writing a story and then trying to sell it.
In democratic places, copyright is extended for the benefit of the population at large. That does not necessarily mean fostering human progress, but it does mean something that benefits the population as a whole. Copyright can be taken away if the people at large don't see some kind benefit.
> I'm thinking you probably don't know anything about the pricing of short stories?
If exchanged for $1 per copy, you have a theoretical ~$8 billion dollar market. $65k is chump change in comparison. Hell, make it 1¢ – that's still $80 million. If you have not captured anywhere close to those numbers, you have either failed to do your work justice in distribution or it is actually worthless. Either way, in that state what is the benefit to you holding it back?
> Let's say you sell to the New Yorker http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-new-y... so you earn about 7,500 for the short story.
But in that case you can sell the copyright, so they would inherit the copyright cost. Whether or not they see $65k worth of copyright value is up to them. It would no longer be your burden if you return to your minimum wage job after the sale.
> I really find it amusing that HN of all places really wants to limit how people can make money on what is an entrepreneurial activity
I find it amusing that someone, on HN of all places, falls down to basic logic. An idea posted on an internet forum does not imply one's wants or desires.
Moreover, for practical purposes, why would you even talk about what you actually want? The thing you have chosen as your want is where you will have already put in the most thought effort. What more are you going to learn once you have settled on something? The things you don't want are going to provide a much more interesting discussion and opportunities to learn.
>If exchanged for $1 per copy, you have a theoretical ~$8 billion dollar market. $65k is chump change in comparison. Hell, make it 1¢ – that's still $80 million. If you have not captured anywhere close to those numbers, you have either failed to do your work justice in distribution or it is actually worthless.
OK, well thanks for the confirmation.
>I find it amusing that someone, on HN of all places, falls down to basic logic.
Hey! Me too! We do have something in common after all!!
Glad we both recognize that short stories are effectively worthless. Even the most recognized short story I know of sold for, according to your figures, basically nothing. Why are we trying to keep that under a super important lock and key again?
> Hey! Me too! We do have something in common after all!!
I know. You already told us in the previous comment that you were amused by it. Thanks for telling us again, I guess.