That doesn't go far enough. Copyright terms should be on the order of 20 years or so, and should have nothing to do with whether or not the creator is still alive.
It should preferably depend on the type of work. Books generally have a long, slow RoI. People are still buying Tolstoy. I don't believe Tolstoy should be copyrighted, but insofar as copyright is a system designed by eighteenth-century economists to incentivise creative works, it seems to function basically as designed with long terms for books.
Movies and music last a little shorter. For some reason musicians tend to have short natural lives, and copyrights start to seem like grave-robbing.
Video games and software are practically dead within two decades. The primary effect of copyrights on software more than 20 years old seems to be to stifle innovation and promote rent-seeking. I think this is why tech people have such a dim view of copyright, because the system as it exists seems to create a lot of busywork and headaches that just feel so unnecessary for anyone tasked with filling in the gaps.
It's probably too short. It would live authors with very little bargaining power particularly if they become bigger in their writing carriers. Corporations would just have to wait 20 years and save themselves the exclusive rights and royalties.
It should be looked form the frame of how long is appropriate to promote the creation of the arts etc. Realistically no author is thinking I won't create this art unless I get lifetime + 70.
I would think 50 years total is a much more reasonable figure.
40 years seems like the highest defensible limit. This would mean if you created a work in your 20s, copyright would expire when you're eligible for social security. It's safe to say that if you haven't made money on your work within nearly 2 generations since its publication and before you become a pensioner, you're not going to. Or it's at least not going to drive you to create new works.
Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change. There's not much mainstream demand for Sum 41 anymore. Also corporations can't have much margin on public domain material; there's too much competition if anyone can publish it, and for digital creations they'd be competing with legal p2p sharing. So they need that exclusivity.
> There's not much mainstream demand for Sum 41 anymore.
Perhaps not for Sum 41. But how about Beatles? Elvis? Michael Jackson? Metallica?
I don't know if people will still be listening to Swift and Eilish in 50 years from now, but something tells me that Beatles, Iron Maiden, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, will echo for eons..
Not all copyright is owned or even licensed to organisations.
It really is a bad feel if you created something, then 20 years later someone releases the exact thing you created and make millions and you don't get a cent of that money.
Also many people after retirement age probably need the income from royalties a little bit more than when they were in their prime, not less.
A simple, naive solution I've seen proposed would enable copyright extension on an exponential fee scale.
This has the nice side effect of wildly-successful works disproportionately funding the copyright offices, thus enabling theoretically lower fees for newcomers.
> Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change.
Corporations create the taste. They can even wait hundreds of years. Just look at how many old stories are remade today. Unless there is something extraordinary, hyped for longer than a summer, they will wait all they want.
>It should be looked form the frame of how long is appropriate to promote the creation of the arts etc
I agree, I don't see how 20 years isn't long enough from that pov.
What company is going to wait 20 years before signing a book deal, film deal, etc.
Further. This still ignores the fact that there's value to having the original creator attached. You don't want the author of the book trashing your new film, you want them promoting it.
How about copyright terms of 10 years for all works, or for a tiny nominal fee (between $1 and $10) you can list the work on a register for a further 10 years, which you can do multiple times up to a maximum of 50 years. The idea is to strike a balance between giving creators time to monetise their works while also allowing abandoned/unlicensed works to fall into public domain reasonably quickly.
I get the idea, but I think that's way too short. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out in 1997; imagine if instead of paying Rowling for the royalties to make the movie in 2001, the studios had just waited until 2017 and done it without her permission, paying her not a penny.
They most likely still would have done it. Books like this usually have a short shelf life in the public consciousness. Harry Potter being an exception to the rule is in large part based on the hugely successful long-running movie series.
That's actually very common in Hollywood. Wait if a work survives the test of time. And then reap on the now money-loaded customers and cash out from their reminiscence.
Except you forgot about competition within the movie making industry. They could very easily end up competing against each other by making 2 or 3 movies of the same thing, which lowers their overall return, and is a bad deal for everyone.
I think it just depends on the pricing the copyright holder wants. If you can pay a few bucks and get exclusive rights, it's totally a win. If you have to mortgage your business to get the rights, it's a much harder decision.
I think a reasonable compromise would be, by default a copyright lasts 10 years, but they can extend it another 10 or 20 years(or maybe even until their death), if they pay a fee of some sort, perhaps yearly, so the copyright will expire as soon as it doesn't make sense to pay the fee anymore.
This lets the long-term copyright winners continue to win for most of their lifetime, if they cut the people(the govt) in on some of that return. While most things that don't need long term copyright get dumped into public domain to help invigorate and make more awesome new ideas.
> They could very easily end up competing against each other by making 2 or 3 movies of the same thing, which lowers their overall return, and is a bad deal for everyone.
Public domain is not new. They already have this situation now, and usually avoid this, probably for exact this reason.
> This lets the long-term copyright winners continue to win for most of their lifetime
Seems not very reasonable to support the rich and paywall the poor.
Hollywood is already rebooting reboots of remakes of comic books vaguely based on historic events. Imagine if original copyright rules in the us applied (14 extensible by 14 for a living author). They could reboot anything before 1995 for free.
They already do that now, even for less stuff from less than 20, 30 years. They reboot, remake, continue anything for whatever reason. Money is relevant, but by far not the biggest hurdle to prevent them. The permissions of the right holders and the influence of the creators are more important IMHO.
For example, Netflix just now announced a reboot of One Piece Anime, a series running for 25 years. The creator is still working on the original source. Imagine if Netflix could just do that on their own, the creator had no influence at all on their work. They could just make shit along the way as they see it. Twist it, change it, with their power, they could be damaging the original work for good, simply because they are bigger.
The Idea is even worse. It's not uncommon for artists to work a long time for next to nothing, until someday they have a big breakthrough. 10, 20 years are nothing. And while newer works are usually then one bringing a breakthrough, making good money with early works is also happening often. Usually, artist grow in their own little niche, until they hit mainstream.
That's a term shorter than 1909, before Disney even existed. Seems pretty unlikely. The "life" stuff doesn't make any sense, either; it's always been a genuinely weird term.
In 1909 the US switched from a term of 28 years extensible by 14 if the author lived, to a term of 28 years extensible by 28 if the author lived. It didn't grow to life +50 until 1976.
Edit: I think the confusion may arise from the Berne convention. The US did sign, but not until 1988.