It’s a Wonderful Copyright Mess
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act has had some interesting consequences in nearly every medium imaginable. In the realm of Christian worship, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” (copyright 1922) can be used freely by any worship leader, while churches will have to pay royalties if they want to legally sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” (copyright 1923) before 2018. In the realm of detective fiction, all the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are in the public domain except for the last ten, which are set to expire between 2018 and 2022.
However, the key word here is “set to expire.” Will any of these works, from The Adventure of the Retired Colourman to Steamboat Willie, actually enter the public domain? I doubt it. Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) gave a clue that this was just the first of many copyright extensions. In support of her bill, she declared her support for long-time MPAA president and lobbyist Jack Valenti’s concept that copyright law ought to be extended to “forever minus one day,” as it would be unconstitutional to extend them forever. Disney will never let Pinocchio, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty enter the public domain, even though, ironically, it was able to make these films because of the public domain.
However, the eternal copyright poses a problem because it goes in direct contravention of why the Constitution granted the copyright power. The goal was to advance the arts and sciences through the creation of a rich cultural heritage. Instead, copyright renewals for terms that may last nearly a century have imperiled our cultural heritage. Our laws have been made with big successful films in mind that are critical and commercial successes that can be counted on to turn studios a profit year after year. But only 2% of works published between 55 and 75 years ago maintain any commercial value. In the vaults of film studios are thousands of hours of movies and television shows that have not seen the light of day in years. The physical quality of the prints decays over time.
Already several films have suffered from death by copyright.
Many out-of-print books that could be re-released, or even slightly revised for modern audiences, remain not only out of print but unprintable due to copyrights that passed to disinterested parties. Consider the Mr. and Mrs. North books, which were extremely popular in the 1940s and 50s, but have been out of print for 25 years. The first novel is set to come into the public domain 95 years after its 1940 release, in 2035. It may be available through Project Gutenberg, or a successor site, provided an actual copy survives that long.
In addition, forces beyond the market threaten many of these works, such as the nefarious political correctness that reared its ugly head when the Fox Movie Channel canceled a Charlie Chan marathon due to protests from Asian pressure groups. The irony is Charlie Chan was created in the 1920s by novelist Earl Diggers to combat the portrayal of evil Asians, like Fu Manchu, with a brilliant and benevolent police inspector. Chan was popular, appearing in 37 movies. For some modern pressure groups, he was not sexual enough and acted subservient and overly polite. (Apparently, the films should have featured an Asian version of Shaft in the 1930s.)
To compound matters, Fox controlled the rights to these films and none were available on DVD, and many of the VHS tapes are no longer available. Fox eventually aired the films, however, with an extra that fans were sure to love: a panel of Asian film actors and critics to complain about the films and American society in between the movies.
Most of the Charlie Chan films have since made their way onto DVD, however the incident illustrates the risk of giving Hollywood the rights to eternally control cultural treasures. Those films and books which are viewed as out of line with the views of some pressure groups could have public access severely restricted or revoked, all under the guise of the copyright, which was designed to encourage these treasures’ development.
How can we restore sanity to our copyright system and preserve American culture?
First, there should be no further extension of copyright protection. Ninety-five years is far more than enough protection.
Secondly, Congress should approve the Public Domain Enhancement Act, which would require U.S. copyright holders of works older than 50 years to pay a $1 fee every ten years to maintain their copyright. If it’s not worth $1 to a copyright owner to maintain the rights to their work, it should pass into the public domain.
Third, content creators should be encouraged to release their work into the public domain far earlier than the current limits. Most people don’t care what a writer who has been dead seventy years wrote. By releasing their work into the public domain sooner, authors may ensure that their work continues to have life long after they’ve passed.
Disney and other nigh immortal media companies can be expected to demand another round of copyright extensions. If they continue to prevail, we will lose even more of our cultural heritage. The only real solution is writing copyright law that once again restores the Constitutional balance between the rights of content producers and the public.
Since the public interest of copyright is to incentivize creation and publication, th epublic’s interest was satisfied upon initial publication. The exclusive legal protection offered was a sufficient quid pro quo for the authors to disclose. The ONLY reason to extend the term retroactively was to reward the copyright holders since there could be no addition incentive to disclose that which already was public. It would be interesting to correlate campaign contribution and politicians votes for the Bono bill. I view them as being like bribes since there was no apparent benefit to the public.
Then consider that these copyrights under American protections are being bought by foreign companies who have no incentive to develop the American public,(where those protections hold their value), but instead it serves their investments,(a cash cow), to hinder the American Cultures and Sciences into stagnation for the advancement of their own country’s interests….
I see works of art differently than other inventions. I can’t see where the public good is served by limiting copyright to artists. Some musicians or writers, create only one succesful work in their lives. I think they or their human heirs should hold the rights forever and a day. If it continues to make money why shouldn’t they? If the copyright slips to an entity rather than the creator or his kin, it should automatically be eliminated.
what about limiting copyright to the lifetime of the original creator? when the author dies, the work passes into public domain
Copywrites and patents have become so tangled up in non-logic it will eventually destroy the protections they seek to protect. Copywrites are used to protect the written word and have been used also to protect performances which it was never intended to do. The medium the performance was recorded on can be copywrited but not the performance itself because it could never be duplicated anyway. Can you copywrite sound? Can you copywrite ideas? Can you copywrite a color? New law seems to say yes and it is the extension of these protections that keep pushing copywrite protection to the realm of rediculous where copywrite protection now extends to music played at a private establishment even if the music is not the reason that paying customers are there. Take a bar or cafe that plays background music from a CD that was legally bought. They are not charging customers to listen to the music they are charging for drinks and food. Copywrite law demands that the operator of said restaraunt and cafe pay a fee in addition to the fee already paid.
Before recordings were made or when they were in there infancy when you bought sheet music you also paid a copywrite fee. The owner of the sheet music was then free to use it as he or she saw fit. Many local concerts were given and no violation of copywrite laws as they had already been paid. It was the advent of recordings (performances) that messed everything up. The record, tape, cd, dvd can be copywrited but the contents as in the performance really cannot be as these things are really onetime events just captured on the medium. It is the re-produceable medium that is protected. This runs counter to the law as it has evolved and re-written.
The more they try to extend and protect the more that these prtections become meaningless. In todays world it is possible for a company to own a diease and this has already happened. It is possible for a company to own a persons DNA and this can happen or may already have happened. If we want copywrites and Patents to mean anything a limited term of exclusivity is mandatory.
Hence the reason I no longer purchase Disney video’s or products. They can get along without my $24.00, and I and my children can get along without them. If more people voted with their wallets Congress and Conglomerates would either change the way “business is done” or they’d be done.
There are more than enough hungry entrepreneurs out there to take their places.
Ted Turner’s colorization of It’s a wonderful life allowed him to copyright the movie and keep it off the air during Christmas.
He did this because the movie stands for everything Turner despises and doesn’t believe in. In his mind, it promotes a belief in God.
In cahoots is the Democratic majority who are all for preventing the message of It’s a wonderful life from polluting the public airwaves or telephone lines with a message of hope and peace; or the thought that there may
be a God out there who knows us and loves us.
Barack Obama, the anointed one, too, can be counted on to back any legislation that prevents a subversive movie like It’s a wonderful life
from seeing the light of day.
Makes one proud to be a Democrat. Doesn’t it.?
Johnny Utah@4: Don’t bother writing if you’re on your death bed, hmm? How about if you’re just feeling a little poorly?
I have to be able to bequeath the rights to my heirs. Now how long do they keep them? That’s the question.
Project Gutenberg doesn’t have to wait for the copyright to expire and then hope that a copy has survived. They can scan a copy now and lock up the digital copy until the copyright does expire. Technically they can do that. I’d have to check whether it is legal. Such a situation would be different from Google’s efforts, as Google has been making parts of copies available to the public.
If the public library movement were getting started today (instead of about 150 years ago), the public library movement would never progress an inch. Oy.
For an interesting fictional treatment of the issue of perpetual copyright(one which is still under temporary copyright!), you are referred to the short story “Melancholy Elephants” by Spider Robinson, from the collection of the same name. It’s worth a read.
3. Thomas_L….:”I think they . . . should hold the rights forever and a day. If it continues to make money why shouldn’t they?”
Because the original intent was for the work to pass into the public domain where it would enrich the culture. Instead of that, we are getting a culture of pirated works because the pirates are instinctively sticking to the original plane. But a pirated culture doesn’t benefit anyone or anything; it’s just a culture of defiance.
6. seanmahair: “Hence the reason I no longer purchase Disney video’s or products. They can get along without my $24.00, and I and my children can get along without them. ”
Amen to that! Our church has decided to stop singing copyrighted hymns (written after 1922). It’s a win-win because we save the bulk copyright fees, and we learn about our original Christian culture (which is a lot more meaty than modern copyrighted Christian culture).
Thomas L, do you really want your heirs and their heirs to be nothing but sponges off a little ditty that you may hammered out over an afternoon?
9. Of course it’s legal. You can make as many copies of an item as you want for personal use as long as you paid for the original. What you can’t legally do is distribute those copies while they remain copyrighted.
Another question concerning limiting copyrights to a term of years other than dating from the author’s death: shall a series have its copyright expire based on the first episode or publication or the last? After all, the copyright protects not only each individual issue or episode, but also the series itself from having for-profit derivative works based on it without the author’s consent.
As for Congress taking up this issue, while it may be bad for society for them to extend copyrights further, better they spend their time on copyrights than all the other nonsense they are squandering our money and freedom on.
the perpetual copy write, just what one would expect from a congress feathering a cradle to grave entitlement mentality. How quaint. If it’s any consolation, it can be found in Marx’s observation that capitalists produce there own grave diggers, and Michael Moore is a capitalist. After all, those Protestant capitalists doing good works to get to heaven ended up producing, paradoxically, the modern secular socialists. Doubtless, todays secular socialist could end up producing a new age religion, say, Climatology, with a little multicultural Islamic slant to enforce the new dispensations. I can see it now, Mikey making propaganda movies for the Mullahs. In Mikey’s world, they’re already freedom fighters, and we are the world. Damn, now we get to look forward to an infinite universe of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which certainly smacks of deification.
One of the benefits of public domain and copyright limits is that it forces the copyright holder to no longer rest on their laurels, so to speak. If they are no longer the only entity to benefit from it’s intellectual property, they are forced to innovate and create new exclusive properties. Same with patents. It not only enriches by allowing for new interpretations of the same material, but by incentivizing the creation of new material.
Maybe we could have the law so that copyright expires X years after the creator stops using it. That’ll allow Disney, et al. to keep creating new properties that enrich them and the consuming public, while allowing new interpretations after they have exhausted them.
#4 your question was perfectly answered by #8.
Adam graham: say god forbid that your dad passed away.. would you then want the government to take your inheritence? I am not sure where you got you law degree in entertainment.. this is not the 1980.. I am in entertainment biz and things have changed a lot…
One of the new ideas of the digital age, at least for print authors, is to give away the digital copies for free after the first runs of hardcover and paperback are out, say 3 years after first publication. This concept has been pioneered by Baen Books for SF and Fantasy authors who have wanted to give it a try over at the Baen Free Library. It is counter-intuitive, but the idea is that if someone is willing to read a book online or even with a digital reader, that individual will then seek out a hardcopy.
Strange as it may seem, a tactile copy that requires no electricity to read, that you can put physical notes on and otherwise utilize in analog ways actually does have a value to readers. So much so that the royalties on works on the out-years, which are typically abysmal, have increased by doing this. Readers interested in a story or series can peruse it online and then seek a hardcopy for further reading and perhaps buy more from that author as well. If you don’t like it, then there is no cost for reading the material to the publisher or reader.
While this is less than perfect for video releases or music, the idea of releasing downsampled video and offering full resolution versions would be an interesting one. By locking up a work and trying to extract a minimal residual value for ‘special releases’ studios would be able to try the idea out that individuals could watch or listen to works that are perfectly acceptable on a small screen or has a commercial short version for music, and then offer the full-size or full length version for payment. This would at least encourage the studios in their stewardship role if they insist on keeping material locked up… and new artists/directors trying to break into the business may find this idea appealing so that releasing their material in a free venue would encourage sales and yet still leave a free version of their work for the public at large. Free can make you money… just don’t tell the studios that.
Addressing the orphaned works is one that is of growing concern to geneologists as many of the works now getting captured by the Disney Extension have no heirs, no existing publishers and no one to officially release these locked up works containing vital data on historical lineages that are of public interest. Those were published with expected expiration dates and yet they cannot be made freely available due to copyright. The nominal fee concept would help get orphaned works out of that limbo and into the general public’s hands. These laws do need to be changed, and Jerry Pournelle has pointed out that many of his past works that would normally have lapsed into the public domain are held by publishers and anyone wanting those works have a near impossible time finding them… the original 14 + 14 is inherently fair due to the fall off on residuals post-publication. Even with enhanced amounts, that is by making a version of the work free to get those higher residuals and at some point that entire work for all versions needs to come to the public for general appreciation and use. That is how our culture is built: on common ideas and works.
I write because I must, as is true of most writers, I suppose, but I keep at it in the hopes of one day being successful and selling *my* work. It’s only *mine* because of the copyright laws and its guarantee in the Constitution.
I get nervous about Socialism creep whenever anybody goes after those laws. I get more nervous when I hear nonsense phrases (“death by copyright”). And I get real nervous when somebody comes up with a “good” replacement for what we’ve already got.
“First, there should be no further extension of copyright protection. Ninety-five years is far more than enough protection.”
Tell it to my kids…whose money we’re burning today in other arenas. Please explain to them why it’s not fair they should get a cut of my success.
“Secondly, Congress should approve the Public Domain Enhancement Act, which would require U.S. copyright holders of works older than 50 years to pay a $1 fee every ten years to maintain their copyright. If it’s not worth $1 to a copyright owner to maintain the rights to their work, it should pass into the public domain.”
This is so totally wrong in so many ways. Congress screws up just about everything it touches: it can keep its hands off my copyright. And as for the fee — it’s didley-squat compared to the money I might be able to make by renewing my own copyright, and anyway, do you really think it’s going to stay that low? Nothing does, when the money’s going to bureaucrats. Let’s cut them right out of the food chain here and leave it up to me to practice my own rights…you know, the general conservative approach.
“Third, content creators should be encouraged to release their work into the public domain far earlier than the current limits. Most people don’t care what a writer who has been dead seventy years wrote. By releasing their work into the public domain sooner, authors may ensure that their work continues to have life long after they’ve passed.”
“Encouraged” so often becomes “forced” in such “for the people” schemes, and this one is no different.
You know, it’s thinking like this that keeps me wary of conservatives and their sites. You all really aren’t all that different from the leftists you so frequently complain about it, you know that?
Barb, let me get this straight: George Washington, who signed the Copyright Act of 1790 into law, is an evil, raging leftist who, were he alive today, would have made you “nervous about creeping Socialism.” Do I have that right?
Barb (#19), I think you missed the point of this article and that of many of the posters. Your copyright isn’t a perpetual, God-given grant — it’s a “limited time exclusive” granted by the government for you to benefit from your intellectual property. The public is supposed to get the benefit of your work after the copyright expires. The fact that a “limited time” is now 95 years says more about the lobbying efforts of a few corporations than anything else. They don’t call the extension to 95 years the “Mickey Mouse” law for nothing.
You say “tell it to my kids…explain to them why it’s not fair they should get a cut of my success”…OK, here goes. The public has rights, too, though this group of people don’t seem to have any representation in Washington DC from any organized political party at the moment.
For your information, the heirs (i.e. people who had no stake in the realization of the copyrighted materials) I have had to deal with in numerous copyright licensing deals have always been the worst people to try to work with. They didn’t make it, they don’t care about the legacy of the materials and they couldn’t care less about the public. In many cases they don’t even care about money, keeping the material “alive” or the highest and best use of the material. Your material might be better served in the public domain because companies just sit on these materials and no one benefits — that is the point of this article. This is why people need to “use it or lose it” when it comes to copyrights.
If your copyright becomes in the least valuable, you can expect your children to sell it to a company or trust — the chances of anything valuable staying in your family for more than one or two additional generations approaches zero. Something about fools and their money. The public is cheated of something they should have received and rent seekers are again rewarded.
Woah, Barb, slow down there.
If you really wanted Congress to stop meddling then you should be FOR the rolling back of copyright, which has occurred due to Congressional overreach in the past few decades and will likely continue. It’s not like your copyright was sitting around and now someone is advocating that Congress put its hands on it. The point of the article is that Congress has been putting its hands on copyright for a very long time and has been touching copyright for a long time (and thus, according to you probably screwing it up). Disagree with the article, but know that you are not disagreeing about whether Congress screws up. That’s exactly the point of the article. Congress has royally screwed up.
And if you think that copyrights should be in perpetuity, what about patents? Shouldn’t an inventor of say, aspirin, still benefit, or his heirs? What about the millions of other things, like transistors, tvs, etc etc? Do you realize that there would be little technological progress if that were the case? Drugs would be much, much more expensive than now as there would be no generics.
This really is a case where special interests, such as Disney, can overrule the good of the majority because their interests are too diffuse. It is the same reasons that we have sugar and corn subsidies. Modifying the copyright laws to their original, Constitutional intent would save the average American probably less than $100 a year, but cost Disney billions. So, it’s worth it for them to pay lobbyists millions a year but no one lobbies against them. So, most of the written word is now out of print–neither being read, nor making money for the artist or heirs.
*sigh*
A little basic research would be useful here. Up until the Berne Convention, the United States used the “limited term plus one renewal” method that the column author is so totally in love with.
lease explain to them why it’s not fair they should get a cut of my success.
Because they didn’t create it. The intent of copyright law is that nobody creates works that aren’t derivative and/or inspired by all that went before. The idea was to protect works for a very finite period of time to give an author/creator time to recoup their expenses.
The notion that not making copyrights perpetual is socialist is absurd since the original intent was much more limited. I firmly believe that 95 years is far too long and that copyrights should be cut back to 14 year plus 14 renewable at an elevated expense rate. (Patents should also be seriously reduced in time and scope.)
Forever less a day (infinity minus one) or minus or plus any finite number is mathematically equal to infinity.
Go over to Iowahawk’s web page and see his take on the story. “It’s a Wonderful Bill” It’s a hoot!
#19:
I have to wonder about knee jerk reactions.
I get nervous about Socialism creep whenever anybody goes after those laws. I get more nervous when I hear nonsense phrases (”death by copyright”). And I get real nervous when somebody comes up with a “good” replacement for what we’ve already got.
The quarrel would be with the Founding Fathers. They’re the ones who ascribed the purpose of the Copyright. The article proposes moving back towards the system they had, and if you want to be suspicious of something new. Consider that until 1976, when a Democratic Super Majority passed our current copyright laws, copyrights were for 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. ‘
This is so totally wrong in so many ways. Congress screws up just about everything it touches: it can keep its hands off my copyright. And as for the fee — it’s didley-squat compared to the money I might be able to make by renewing my own copyright, and anyway, do you really think it’s going to stay that low? Nothing does, when the money’s going to bureaucrats. Let’s cut them right out of the food chain here and leave it up to me to practice my own rights…you know, the general conservative approach.
First of all, with all due respect, I’ll take odds that most folks won’t be around to renew a 50 year Copyright. Secondly most material that’s 50 years old isn’t marketable or of any commercial value when it’s locked up by copyright, so then it can fall into the public domain, where it can benefit the culture which is why the Constitution created the Copyright power.
Current copyright law has no renewal provision, it’s life of the author plus 70 years or 95 years for a work for hire, which means that many authors are forgotten and much of our cultural heritage lost, with no benefit to the creators.
Try to make copies of family heirloom pictures that were taken years ago by a professional that is no longer around. No one will touch them. This situation is causing records and parts of our heritage to be lost. There needs to be hard limits. The only protection authors have is copyright law. They best realize they work for the consumer and not vice versa.
Missed in this piece is the reason why the writers of the Constitution put this in the document. They were just formerly Englishmen. They had lived with Royal Patents which were inheritable ‘pieces of the action’ that operated in perpetuity. They loathed them. Our modern Congress for the price of gold, from large entertainment conglomerates, in their little reelection coffers has basically returned that concept to our lives. One day we might remember why our forefathers either left or were thrown out of Europe.
Why should copyrights expire, and expire reasonably soon (28 years total is plenty)? It’s a simple question of fairness.
Let’s put aside the question of incentives for production for the moment.
Copyrights should expire so that society is paid back for all the millennia of prior work that the copyright holder incorporates into his or her own work. No copyright or patent holder ever created anything entirely out of whole cloth.
A writer? You wrote in a written language, right? Did you invent it? Almost certainly not, but even if you did, the very idea of written language is not a law of nature. It’s a human invention, owned by humanity as a whole. The same goes for everything you ever learned about writing. You owe.
An engineer? You used mathematics, mechanics, materials science, and many other things discovered by societies long dead. The knowledge now belongs to humanity as a whole. You can’t create without using it, and that means when you create, you owe.
99.9% of what any creator incorporates into their work is something that was first invented or created by someone else. That tiny incremental 0.1% is what you added, and what you deserve to be rewarded for. That’s fine; reap all the rewards you can, without limit…for 28 years. Then it goes into the pool for the next person to use. That’s when YOU pay YOUR royalties.
It’s a thorny issue. Being a creative myself, I’ve often thought that the lifetime of the original author should be the minimum, and the lifetimes of his direct progeny the maximum. As for the 14 year ideal, that is simply laughable on it’s face. Some music I composed 14 years ago hasn’t seen the light of day, and even if it had, I’m still a relatively young man, and the idea that I should lose control over my work after such a brief term is truly unfair. I certainly agree, however, that a faceless corporation raking in money on a seventy-five year old movie just because they have lawyer-politician friends in congress is repugnant. That sort of thing needs to be stopped. I’m not going to hold my breath, however, as anything that makes money for lawyers tends to be enshrined.
Spot on, Adam.
The current copyright terms, longer than the average human lifespan, get passed from generation to generation like feudal titles, and in real terms they have the same effect as medieval rights of monopoly. Like “Affirmative action,” which confers preferential and inequitable treatment upon certain individual Americans because of who their parents or ancestors were,in amounts to an stated but still unconstitutional title of nobility. They ought to be prohibited by Article 1 of the constitution.
The current copyright laws also are the main explanation for why Hollywood feels free to flaunt the patriotic, morally conservative center of America. Who cares if this year’s films are a little slow on the sales — there’s always DVD rights from 1930′s Snow White to fall back on.
I favor a constitutional amendment that limits the time for copyright protection of any kind to 14 years per term and 28 years total, not to exceed 14 years after the author or oldest rights holder who contributed to the material dies.
How about the greater of the life of the author or 25 years? Fair to the young- they can keep it for life. Fair to the old and the sick- their heirs can still use it for 25 years.
I guess we should apply all these copyright extensions to patents as well. The scientists and their successors who invent new life saving drugs should be forever (minus a day) able to reap the rewards to their inventions. In fact, I would argue that in this example the item produced was significantly more difficult to produce and more lucrative to the producer than most written work and should be even more strenuously protected.
Hmm, what about the transistor. Maybe Intel should be paying royalties on each transistor on each chip produce to Shockley and Bell Labs.
/sarc
Why the greater protection to creative entertainment product versus creative intellectual product?
Good point John Davis. Taken to its logical extension, perpetual copyright and patent protection would eventually bring all technological and potentially all artistic progress to a halt since the cost of paying royalties and even the administrative work required to track down all pertinent patents would render the cost and time requirement of innovation prohibitive. I
magine trying to invent a better widget when royalties would have to be paid on every screw, flange plate and piece of copper wire incorporated into it. Likewise, imagine trying to create new works of fiction if faeries, dragons, asian detectives or gun-slinging cowboys were to be copyrighted.
I think that copyright law and patent law should be more closely aligned. 17 years is plenty for any work, whether art or invention.
The problem is with Congress. They kowtow to “Big Entertainment” and the RIAA. Primarily because campaign fund raising and lobbying are tied together. Money talks, and big money talk counts more.
35. Stock characters and archetypes cannot be copyrighted. You can no more copyright a dragon than you can the English language. To wit, specific characters cannot even be copyrighted- character names and likenesses fall under the third domain of intellectual property: trademarks.
34, 35 & 36
The driving force issue is politicians’ self interest.
1. 99%+ of politicians know they can not invent anything useful (and thus patentable) so will never personally benefit monetarily from a patent.
2. Politicians know with certainty that they (or a ghost writer) can write a book, article or speech which is instantly copyrighted and can potentially financially benefit themselves.
Conclusions:
1. Politicians will ever continue to give greater scope and length to the copyright laws as they see those as potentially promoting their own financial situation.
2. Politicians view on patents will change as the donors to their reelection campaigns dictate.
The copyright should be tied to the life of the writer or creator – period. While an artist or inventor should not suddenly lose all claim to his or her life work, those rights should not continue on after the death of the creator. Walt Disney – or whomever technically created Steamboat Willie – should not have suddenly had his rights to his own creation stripped from him, but the current executives at Disney should have no claim at this point, as Walt (or whomever the original creators were) have long passed.
Good one Adam!
If our current copyright laws had been in place when bricks were invented, we would all have to pay a royalty for every brick in the USA to Mr. Brick-thinker-upper’s family in perpetuity.