dagblog - Comments for "Your Public Domain Update for 2017"

This makes me so mad.

Alex — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 18:21:26 +0000

In reply to Your Public Domain Update for 2017

This makes me so mad.

Citizen Kane is so old that the kid who plays the young Charles Foster Kane is already dead.

The first copyright revision

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 23:39:03 +0000

The first copyright revision lengthened new copyrights to the creator's lifetime plus fifty years (pre-1978 copyrights, and works-fore-hire got a straight 75 years). The Millennium Act lengthened that to the creator's lifetime plus *75 years* (or a flat 95 years for old works). And that's obviously excessive. Now we're talking about cutting a writer's great-grandchildren in on the action. The next extension will mean we'll start looking at 100th-anniversary editions of books that are still monopolized by a single publisher.

The justification is always that 1) creators deserve to be rewarded for their work, which is true enough and 2) we need to have incentives that lead people to create art. But the second extension really gives the game away. How is fifty years of profits after your dead not enough economic incentive? Who would actually be more motivated by the thought for another 25 years of posthumous profits? That's just nonsense. We're talking about large corporations investing in rent-seeking behavior, collecting profits without making any real new investment.

I have sympathy for your friend. But what she's living off is a percentage, and not a huge one, of what Sony/Time Warner/whoever collects off her dad's work. This is always pitched as protecting the creators, and of course reasonable copyright does that, but now we're talking about collecting money on behalf of artists who've been dead for sixty years and then giving those artists' heirs 8% or 12% of the take.

I had no idea about this.

CVille Dem — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 02:32:53 +0000

In reply to Your Public Domain Update for 2017

I had no idea about this. Considering that the original creators of this are, in most cases, long dead, it really makes no sense to continue this copyright. I know someone whose father wrote broadway show tunes, and she lives off of the royalties. I have much greater sympathy for her position than I do for Disney, Sony, Time Warner and many other studios.

I guess the real take-away from what you are saying is that they whole reason for this is lobbyist ~~influence~~ Bribery of Congress. It has all been normalized. It only gets worse as time goes forward.

In answer to your rhetorical

Flavius — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 05:06:16 +0000

In reply to Your Public Domain Update for 2017

In answer to your rhetorical question:

A government wth sensible policies.