"The real incentive here is for corporate owners that bought copyrights to lobby Congress for another 20 years of revenue—not for creators who will be long dead once this term extension takes hold."

"I thought it was a moral outrage. There wasn't anyone speaking out for the public interest."

- Sen. Hank Brown, the only Senator to be against extending copyright in the 90s. Shame there were not more like that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/25...

It bugs me that there is never any accounting for the "loss" to the public. When a work that would otherwise enter the public domain is instead kept copyrighted, that is essentially privatisation of public property. If congress decided to sell national parks to private owners there would be a massive outcry. The idea that they would just give them to private owners for free would be considered utterly absurd. Yet this is exactly what extension of copyrights is. At very least, people would insist a proper valuation be put on them and the benefactors asked to pay a commensurate amount to the public to compensate the loss of public property. Yet none of this happens, these extensions are made as donations to private benefactors as if it means nothing to society.

This is because copyright law is unintuitive, and most don't understand its origins. People don't feel that creative works rightfully belong to the public. The existence of terms like "intellectual property" doesn't help.

Very much this. It is plain unhealthy how many people perceive copyright as being a 'measure to ensure income for artists'.

Hmm, at least in the US, the relevant sentence is: "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."

The way I read it, the intent of latter half of the sentence clearly is to enable artists to profit from their works. Note that it does not say "all artists shall be paid no matter what". But by having exclusive rights to their works, it can work roughly like any other property in a capitalistic society: that is, artists may be able to capture rewards proportionate to the amount of the value they provide.

I am not a legal scholar, but to me the intent of the latter half is clearly stated by the first half: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

One way to promote scientists and creators is to allow them to warn money so they can keep sciencing and creating.

Nobody is arguing that. What people are arguing is that if copyright does not promote the progress of science and useful arts, it fails to fulfill the intent of its existence. The follow-on argument is then that indefinitely extending copyright undermines that promotion of progress. If you buy both arguments, then you see why many people find the extensions so objectionable on Constitutional grounds. I don't think many people disagree with the first argument, because it's right there in the text (which is the point I believe your parent was making), but of course lots of people disagree with the second argument, believing that longer copyright terms better promote creation.

That's obvious, but the more interesting discussion (which we're really here for) lies in the unstated part of the sentence: how were the actions stated in the second half intended to result in the goal stated in the first half?

Don't you think that authors who release their work freely under copyright believe that yes it actually is a 'measure to ensure income for artists?'

I think that a large majority believe that it is to guarantee that their descendants receive royalties for all eternity.

Or...maybe some payment to themselves for their work?

What do you do with payments after your dead?

Corporations do not own these works. They lease them.

Think about it. If you have the right to use land for 95 years, after which it reverts to my possession... you do not own that land. You're just leasing it from me.

No copyright holder owns any of this. They have a long-term lease to be sure, but it's not theirs. And they're bad tenants. They're ruining the property apparently out of spite, that is, when they're not trying to bribe politicians to steal it away from us forever.

As one of the saddest plots, look at the below article, showing the lack of availability of books from the middle of the 20th century.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-mi...

In my boyhood I had been fascinated by science fiction short stories, many of them I found in anthologies published in the middle of the 20th century in America. Being born in a non English-speaking country, I soon run out of reading material for translations were hard to find. When I learned English (and connected to the Internet the first time) I tried to find more from my favourite authors but with little luck.

When talking about the disappearance of books, Isaac Asimov's Great SF Stories anthology series[1] always comes to my mind. Around 2006 I spent a whole week searching for it - of the 25 books I managed to find only four or five.

Nevertheless, I assembled a pretty big (and pretty illegal) collection of nearly-impossible-to-find sci-fi stories during my days in high school, but lost it when my computer went wrong a few years later. (I am sure I could have recovered them somehow, but back then I had no idea.) Last year I tried to reassemble my collection but I gave up, it would have been too much work.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Isaac_Asimov%27s_Grea...

They could always put their work in the public domain themselves. However I agree that copyright laws are now insane. Apart from the ridiculous length of the terms, it can be hard to work out if any particular work is public domain since not all author's death dates are known. I really think that if copyright has any reason to exist at all, then a term of 5 years would be sufficient.

There's a few issues with that:

1) "Putting in the public domain" isn't actually possible in considerable parts of the world; you'd have to use a license like the CC0 to achieve as such,

2) Dead people can't give out licenses, and

3) Society has largely come to rely on the (mistaken) notion that copyright is a measure for ensuring income for artists, and in return this makes it very, very hard for an artist to break that notion by CC0ing their work, and still gain an income.

And why can't they have a license that simply says: "10 years after the publication date, this work will enter the public domain"

And in countries where they do not have a concept of public domain, simply change the royalty to 0 after that period of time.

Or, simply say, after 10 years, you'll also be permitted to do x, y, z with this work (where x might be redistribution, derivatives, etc).

At least in the US, authors have the right to do this today.

Couldn't an author renounce copyright for certain works?

Perhaps if you want to be listed on those sites, you should do that before you die. Or your heirs can if they have no ongoing payments from that work any more.

Many authors do make their works public domain, especially for technical books published in the '80s and '90s that retain value as theoretical and conceptual works (despite referring to obsolete technology). Other authors won't go so far as to relinquish copyright, but will distribute electronic copies of their work freely.

totally forgotten in the US. The rest of the world can still enjoy old works. Also, volunteers can still scan, transcribe, produce, catalog, store old works without the world knowing it. The moment copyright expires, they can make it available (assuming you are allowed to do the first few things).

The Constitution calls for a limit. I argue that and time frame greater than the average life of a human is virtually unlimited. I doubt the intent if the Founding Fathers was for the limit to be an insane amount of time.