[jaxtellerSoA]

> Copyright should only have a term of life (with a minimum duration of 50 years in case the artist dies at 20-30) and that's all.

Boy you are generous, if it was up to me copyrights would have a life of 10 years, no extensions/renewals. Ten years ought to be enough to squeeze a healthy chuck of profits out of your material. If after 10 years you can't/haven't come up with anything new, then you better find a new job.

[FreakyT]

Agreed -- in addition, a shorter term like this fixes a major issue with using "life" specifically, which ends up unintentionally creating an incentive to murder the creator.

[maze-le]

Wow, never thought about it this way. Its probably a nice plot for a crime novel.

[EADGBE]

It'd be better to be able to by stock in an artist, and continue to let them live and create, while profiting yourself off those dividends.

[hfdgiutdryg]

I don't understand why HN seems to want everyone to be a wage slave. If I create original work, I want to profit off it for my life. Anything else is just punishing people who are creators rather than property owners.

[cyphar]

Because:

a) Almost all artists sign deals with publishers to "get their foot in the door" which end up giving all of the rights to the publisher, and so the artist ends up being a "wage slave" because they don't profit off the rights of the work they made.

b) Locking away works for entire generations means that cultural artistic development is stifled. Shakespeare's works were based on previous works and stories, and under the copyright system of today he would have been sued for his plays (and we probably wouldn't have them today). It is insanely short-sighted for corporations to lobby for longer copyright terms to have monopolies, at the expense of eradicating future generations' Shakespeares.

c) The original purpose of copyright (under the Statute of Anne in 1710) was to provide a very limited monopoly by the authors (not publishers) so that they are incentivised to create new works. By your own admission, having lifetime copyright protections does not incentivise the creation of new works (you could argue that it actually is a counter-incentive if you wrote one work that became very popular early in your career). A return to that system would be a significant improvement.

[hfdgiutdryg]

a) not relevant, particularly in 2018 when self-publishing is becoming increasingly common.

b) I specifically said my lifetime. An average work might be covered for two generations. Not a big deal. If Shakespeare's work is so derivative, then I don't have a problem. 50 Shades of Gray started as Twilight fan-fiction. You can be derivative without being a mashup.

c) you're talking about publishers again, as if that's relevant.

As for this:

By your own admission, having lifetime copyright protections does not incentivise the creation of new works

I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth to form a low-quality argument. At no point did I ever say or imply anything of the sort!

[cyphar]

Self-publishing is ridiculously uncommon, and it's just silly to argue that the small amount of large works that succeeded through self-publishing somehow diminishes the immense power and size of large publishing houses (for movies and books -- there is more self-published music these days). I can't even think of a recent example of a popular book or movie that was self-published ('The Martian' was written in public independently but the books were obviously printed by a single publisher).

> I specifically said my lifetime. An average work might be covered for two generations. Not a big deal.

The average lifetime is more like 5-6 generations (each generation being maybe 15 years). I disagree it isn't a big deal, and I also very much disagree that it's fine if Shakespeare didn't exist because his works were derivative.

> 50 Shades of Gray started as Twilight fan-fiction.

The work '50 Shades of Gray' has absolutely nothing in common with 'Twilight', despite it's history. Not to mention that the author probably got permission of some sort. Shakespeare's plays were far more significant mash-ups of previous stories and works (with changes obviously, but nowhere near as many changes as the two works you mentioned).

> At no point did I ever say or imply anything of the sort!

Yes you did. From your original comment:

> If I create original work, I want to profit off it for my life.

If you have a guaranteed profit source for the rest of your life, what reasonable person would ever find a need to make more works (there's no point in getting more money if you already have whatever you need)? The point of copyright is to incentivise the creation of new works -- which is the precise reason why it is limited in every country on Earth (and was even more limited in the Statute of Anne). Having a limit to any reasonable person is equivalent to unlimited (since once your dead, there's no profit motive any more) has the same effect of removing the incentive for more works.

If you don't believe that the purpose of copyright is to incentise new works, read the US constitution (I imagine you're in the US) or whatever copyright law is applicable in your country.

> [Congress has the Right] 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.

[_jal]

> I want to profit off it for my life

Of course you do. Everyone wants free money.

But look at the flip side - you want everyone else to accept an obligation to not do a a number of things with that work, and other people to enforce your rights, which is a claim on other people's time and money.

So even if you believe there's some moral right to prevent others from doing things with some "intellectual property", you're still stuck compromising with all the people you're demanding do or not do certain things.

> Anything else is just punishing people who are creators rather than property owners.

Actually, you're calling a failure to coerce others into to building legal regimes to your preferred specifications a 'punishment'. You might instead ask, why should the fact that I scribbled something down create legal obligations on someone I have never met?

[hfdgiutdryg]

Everyone wants free money.

It's not free money. It's passive income from intellectual property.

So even if you believe there's some moral right to prevent others from doing things with some "intellectual property"

It's a legal right. Morality has nothing to do with it, aside from your own attempt to baselessly undermine opposing arguments.

Actually, you're calling a failure to coerce others into to building legal regimes to your preferred specifications a 'punishment'.

Now you're just getting into "property is theft" and "taxation is violence" level nonsense. By your logic, why shouldn't I be able to just park an RV on your lawn and live there? Property rights are just some legal construct.

[cyphar]

> It's a legal right.

We agree that the current laws are like this, but laws change all the time and laws are supposed to reflect society's ethics (in the US this is a joke nowadays -- they reflect the (lack of) ethics of large corporations).

If the current laws are unfair, then having a discussion of how the laws should be (to inform a decision on whether such a reform should be lobbied for and put to into an actual law) is entirely fair. Dismissing such discussions with "that's the way it is" is just silly -- would you have made similar comments to the civil rights movements or other such movements?

[hfdgiutdryg]

We agree that the current laws are like this, but laws change all the time and laws are supposed to reflect society's ethics

In exactly the same way that property rights are enforced. We're barreling into a knowledge-based economy, yet HN wants to devalue knowledge and IP.

[cyphar]

It's not the same way that property rights are enforced. This is a common misunderstanding because of the term "intellectual property". In most countries the concepts of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets, etc are separate legal concepts with completely different regulations.

Copyright protects against the copying of works -- there is simply no analog of "copying a work" for physical property. You cannot "copy" a chair, or "copy" a table. You can make a new one from scratch based on the design of the old one, and assuming it has no patents, this would be completely legal.

Copyright also can place restrictions on redistribution of works, as well as modification (or even use) of works. This is something that is has no physical property laws associated with it -- the previous owner of a house cannot place restrictions on who you can sell your house to (or whether you can drill holes in the wall or where you can place your furniture). A publisher cannot restrict your ability to sell a book you bought to someone else second-hand.

The same argument can be drawn out for all of the other completely separate legal concepts.

Not to mention that "intellectual property" doesn't mirror the core concept of property -- it is based on scarcity. The reason why ownership of a house is important is because there is only one such house, and there must be a way to figure out who has the right to make executive decisions about that house. This is not how "intellectual property" operates. There simply is no scarcity, as ideas can be spread and copied without cost.

[ConceptJunkie]

I'm guessing you don't contribute to open source software then.

[hfdgiutdryg]

I don't. I would if I were at least paid to, but I focus on writing software for myself to generate income instead of generating some multiple of my salary for an employer.

There was an article on HN about an open source developer who is the sole maintainer of some complex, common tool (I can't recall what) who barely scrapes along. He's created many millions of dollars in value for others yet he can barely keep food on the table.

IMO, open source is great for consumers and middle-men, but takes advantage of and devalues software creators.