Comments on: In support of limited permanent copyright

By: Thomas Beck

Thomas Beck — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:48:07 +0000

The problem I have with corporate ownership of such franchises as, say, Mickey Mouse or Star Trek is, the corporation had little or nothing to do with creating it – they are benefitting from someone else’s creativity. Granted, Paramount finally issued a new Star Trek movie actually worth going to see, but even that was due to J. J. Abrams’s creativity. Corporations as corporations cannot create anything – all they can do is exploit, either well or badly. I don’t know legally or morally if there’s anything wrong with that, but should they be permitted to do so perpetually? I’m just asking, because I really don’t know.

By: Ceri B.

Ceri B. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:34:53 +0000

I have a suspicion that you can’t design laws to reliably keep the scope of IP claims from totalizing, so long as “this hurts our image and therefore the value of the work” is ever available as a defense. (And it really should be, if there’s going to be any IP protection at all.)

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:13:43 +0000

There’s no necessary link between duration and scope of copyright. The Air Pirates case took place when copyright durations were much shorter than at present.

In political terms, the opposite: if they had secure and permanent rights over the core commercial uses of Mickey, Disney would have less reason to defend their rights so ferociously against marginal infringements such as parody and satire.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:05:20 +0000

Seconding Danielle in #25, I’m against Waltgeld. Alfred had a better policy on Danes than Ethelred: be generous, after victory.

By: Danielle Day

Danielle Day — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:17:34 +0000

Permanent copyright is is bad idea. It effectively prevents satire (see, for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Pirates)

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:25:47 +0000

This bears some similarity to the idea (which isn’t original, but I don’t know where to attribute it) that copyright in software should be dependent on active development and/or maintenance – you can have copyright as long as you are still maintaining the codebase or developing it further, but once you cease to do this, it reverts to the public domain, thus preventing you from (frex) abandoning a project that people still use to decay, or continuing to exact rent from a project to which you no longer contribute anything.

I’m not sure what the equivalent would be – still in print? still commissioning from the same author?

By: Demosthenes

Demosthenes — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:18:07 +0000

And why, pray tell, should the rest of us care if Mickey is a franchise? The existence of a franchise does not grant the moral authority to profit from it.

I understand where you’re coming from, but the distinction between trademark and copyright already covers this issue. The copyright should be allowed to expire. To the extent that Congressional reps are cajoled (one could never say bribed) into extending it, that can serve as a wonderful indicator of where changes need to be made in the relationship between Congress and its various corporate patrons.

By: Kevin Goodman

Kevin Goodman — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:25:24 +0000

Why shouldn’t copyright be infinite for the life time of the corporate entity that owns it? I presume most companies wouldn’t survive the life time of a natural copyright and those extraordinary cases are truly the ones that need extensions. I also recognize the need for safeguarding such a privilege from hoarding abuse. Otherwise I’m against fees because property is property and I feel antiquity is no excuse for increased taxation.

By: Tangurena

Tangurena — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:24:59 +0000

IIRC, Disney paid money to A.A.Milne’s descendants/trustees as part of a deal to put granddaughter Clare Milne’s name at the top of a lawsuit against a troublesome competing rights owner

Close. The Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act included a little trick just to end a decade-long lawsuit over the Pooh. A. A. Milne had sold the rights to someone, and during the suit alleged that Disney was shorting them on royalties. For a couple weeks after the bill passed, and only for a couple weeks, a quirky feature was in effect that allowed the heirs of Milne to take back the copyrights: effectively, if a copyright had been sold, the heirs could file a certain type of lawsuit to take back the copyright and the current owners could not defend themselves. I read that it saved Disney a couple hundred million dollars in royalties.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:34:36 +0000

Well in any case, I do think it is a rather elegant (and revenue enchancing) solution.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:00:40 +0000

Sebastian, it's perfectly possible I'm repeating myself.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:12:45 +0000

It’s not just mash-up culture that’s inhibited: radio broadcasts often differ from internet broadcasts of the same program, for instance, due to rights issues.

By: Matt Kuzma

Matt Kuzma — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:59:38 +0000

I have a problem with this idea because of people like Alan Moore. If this deal were in place 150 years ago, it’s unlikely The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would have been made. And I want David Fincher or Quentin Tarantino movies about Jedi some day.

Granted the retarded Calvin peeing on stuff bumper stickers would also have been prevented by this, but I’m still not sold on the idea that all reinterpretations or mash-ups of old ideas should be beholden to franchise rights.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:56:04 +0000

Weird, I would have sworn that we talked about this a couple of years ago on a CT Quiggin post. And in my head I’ve been ascribing to him the really elegant solution. But it apparently wasn’t you John, so I guess I’ll just recount it and attribute it to anonymous:

Limited copyright for the life of the artist and some short time after. Say 10 years (exact time negotiable).

Extension for the next 10 years is a couple thousand dollars.

Extension for the next 10 years is a couple of tens of thousands of dollars.

Extension for the next 10 years is a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

Extension for the next 10 years is a million or so dollars.

Extension for the next 10 years is 10% of the gross you earned for the last 10 years or $10 million whichever is MORE.

Repeat the last step as long as you want.

Prices can be modified, this is more of a conceptual guide.

The basic idea is that you want things to go into the public domain unless the current copyright holder thinks they are so valuable that they are willing to pay lots of money into keeping them.

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:02:43 +0000

The best way to prevent Disney from screwing up copyright law is to prevent them from doing so, and the best way to do that is to support the Pirate Party, in the UK and other countries.

This strategy is perfectly compatible with John Q.’s proposal. In fact—as is often the case with radicals and reformists—they’re strongly complementary. The more likely a root-and-branch revision of copyright law looks, the more willing Disney will be to accept a compromise like John’s. And the more Disney and other IP-dependent businesses get some kind of escape clause like this, the easier it will be to win the broader goals of folks like the Pirate Party (which I share).

So yeah, activists should be challenging IP head on and economists should be thinking of ways to compensate the IP rentiers without too much harm to the rest of us. It’s all good.