[ghaff]

Really the main (even only?) thing "broken" about copyright is the terms. (ADDED: I generally favor orphan works legislation but I also get the argument that this is also more likely to favor corporations than individuals.)

And basically all the schemes to make copyright more expensive, difficult, requiring jumping through hoops and paying increasing amounts of money to renew? That just basically screws individual creators (who already don't make much money for the most part) to the benefit of the major content rights holders who are not going to forget or be unable to pay for copyright renewal. Which is probably not the objective of most of the people dreaming these up.

The US actually took a pretty big step towards benefitting more small-time creatives when it aligned with the Berne Convention and did away with explicit notices being required.

[jacobolus]

The point of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, not to be fair or to guarantee a lifetime of income to popular authors and their children. To that end, the exclusive copyright is supposed to be of limited time.

Having no-effort century-long copyright might narrowly benefit a tiny number of small-time creators, but it robs the public of our collective culture.

[dahart]

It’s definitely worth including the full quote and discussing what it means.

“Congress shall have Power . . . 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.”

Part of the intent behind the law is to promote the sciences and the arts through these exclusive rights. The idea is that creators will have an economic incentive to create, because they’ll have some protection from copiers. The idea was not primarily to promote culture by releasing works into the public domain. This framework acknowledges both means of promotion, the short term protection of profits, combined with the long term acknowledgement that society will benefit from works becoming public after some time. So it is trying to be fair to both authors and to the greater social good, and it requires deciding & balancing what the term length should be.

[jacobolus]

It’s not intended to be “fair” to authors, is my point. It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And I don’t think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce works they otherwise would not (if the term were only, say, 10, 20, or 50 years).

The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems to me, in broad strokes, like a good balance between promoting new works vs. giving public access to previous works.

The century-long term only benefits a vanishingly small proportion of creators (which is to say, a vanishingly small proportion of creators' inheritors). The primary beneficiary is a small number of very large monopolistic media/publishing firms, who have e.g. bought up the rights (for peanuts) to the past century of back issues of thousands of scientific journals, and now keep them behind a paywall.

But the harm to the public is incalculably large.

[dahart]

The original terms do sound pretty good relative to today. 28 years, with some action required to renew. What does the Berne Convention say? “the general rule is that protection must be granted until the expiration of the 50th year after the author's death.” Since this is fairly globally adopted and not very US-specific, does that influence your opinion on terms? What is the reason that the Berne Convention allows for terms this long, and if we want them to be shorter, what needs to happen, in order to get lawmakers globally to agree?

I certainly might have misunderstood your comment about being “fair” to authors. I guess you were saying that the US copyright law isn’t doing anything to distinguish between independent authors, small businesses, or large corporations? It certainly does allow for big business to have an easier time of things, and is not at all fair to individuals and small businesses, that’s true.

[jacobolus]

My point is that fairness or guarantee of author’s natural rights or whatever is not in my understanding the fundamental premise for copyright (in the USA). US copyright, at least as established by the US Constitution, is based on practical/utilitarian considerations, and is primarily concerned with benefit to the public.

In my opinion the Berne convention (which is instead premised on authors’ supposed natural rights, without much concern for the public) is a incredibly harmful and anti-social system which should not have been ratified by the USA. It has become even more harmful in the digital age.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on copyright history, law, or philosophy.

[dahart]

I guess I don’t know what you mean then. The US copyright law and the Berne Convention are both trying to establish what should be deemed fair, with respect to publishing and copying creative works. They establish (define) the fairness of copying something you didn’t create. They also try to be fair to creators and society by giving authors some rights (time-limited exclusive copyright), and by giving society the right to take the work into public domain eventually. The explicitly stated concerns are about protecting the economic interests of creators, which I’d agree might be characterized as utilitarian, but also with general social good, benefit to the public as you say, which is perhaps a lofty ideal?

* edit, since I didn’t see your edits about the Berne Convention. That’s an interesting take. I thought most copyright progressives viewed Berne as a marked improvement over US copyright pre-Berne. The most important aspect of Berne is that it’s globally adopted, so the discussion about terms really needs to be about Berne more than US copyright law, I think?

[mindslight]

Besides the lengthy term, another major problem with copyright is how forcefully it has been applied to the personal realm. If it were a limited commercial right that made companies play fair with each other while leaving individuals alone, I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it. But from yesterday's nastygrams near libraries' xerox machines [sic] and stores' blank tape aisles, to today's shakedowns of torrenters and kneecappings of software developers, the way it has been conceived as some absolute property right is utterly draconian.

[dahart]

Oh I don’t think either the main or only problem is terms, I’m simply asking parent for clarification. Declaring it wholesale broken needs a Chesterton’s Fence justification; we can’t fix it until we acknowledge why it’s there, and identify what parts are worth preserving.

I only recently learned that the US has a bit of a Berne Convention loophole in the sense that you are required to register works with the copyright office before you can seek damages for copyright infringement (otherwise you can only demand they cease and desist). That fine print seems like it undermines the spirit of the Berne Convention just a bit, and most other countries that adhere do not have this extra hoop.