[nutrie]

Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again. Do I lose the copyright then and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away? That’s just one example of possible implications. My point being, trademark is directly tied to the dynamics of the free market, while copyright only indirectly. And copyright is not forever.

[mlyle]

> Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again.

Then you own that physical painting.

> Do I lose the copyright then

Yes

> and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away?

No, but if you gave your friend Bob a copy of the painting, he's allowed to copy that copy as much as he wants once you lose the copyright.

The original copyright system-- you could only get the full term by extending 14 years in. That's maybe a little early. But making you pay a fee to keep the exclusivity and/or show recent use in trade makes sense.

[gnicholas]

> No, but if you gave your friend Bob a copy of the painting, he's allowed to copy that copy as much as he wants once you lose the copyright.

Wouldn't this require Bob to outlive the artist by many, many years? My understanding was that copyright extends well past the death of the original creator.

EDIT: I'm curious why this is downvoted. Am I incorrect about the length of copyright being decades past the death of the creator? A quick google shows that it extends to 70 years past the life of the creator, [1] which means that it would be quite unlikely that an adult who receives artwork from the creator would live to see the time when it's not under copyright. That is, even if the artist died the next day, it would be 70 years before the copyright expires.

1: https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycl...

[mlyle]

I can't downvote you, but I presume that you're being downvoted because your comment seemed to not understand the context of the thread.

A. Someone proposed making copyright "use it or lose it"

B. Someone else said this could have unintended consequences, like people breaking into your house to take a copy of a work where copyright has lapsed.

C. I pointed out that's not how copyright works: it has nothing to do with control of physical artifacts.

D. You then presumed that the copyright runs for a long time, which contradicts the premise we're talking about in "A", and is completely out of left field. (In any case, it's irrelevant to the question in B-C; if I have the one of the only extant copies of something from a century ago, you still can't come take it to make a copy).

[gnicholas]

Gotcha, thanks. This appeared so deep down in the thread when I commented that I didn't realize it was attached to an alternate-universe hypo above.

[sytelus]

I used to make this argument until I came to know of law (at least in USA) that if you don't use your house and someone else starts using your house then they can claim the legal ownership of your entire house in as little as 10 years! It was very shocking and complete antithesis of property rights in US that are so dearly held. When you think about this, in long run, it might sometimes make sense that future generation can use what previous generation has built.

[fifticon]

many countries have variants of this, for many years/since olden times. In my country, it is called 'hævd'. Instinctively, it makes incredibly much sense to me, even more so than property law. The way I view it, it is precisely the foundation that ownership sort of rests on. (ie, i respect 'we have been using this for a long time' more than 'our ancestors whipped everyone in the village').

[throwaway48476]

In Europe it was common to have disputes between parties with competing several hundred year old claims. Adverse possession prevents this.

[kube-system]

No, those laws are actually a recognition of property rights. Although it has become a popular social media trope to criticize things like adverse possession and "squatters" rights as some evil thing, the reason they exist is to protect people from being kicked out of their homes by others exploiting lack of or technicalities in paperwork.

Let me give you some examples of why these laws are actually good:

* Adverse possession: Imagine someone has been living and maintaining a property for 30 years. They have a single family home, and a driveway. They have a fence around all of their property, and they pay taxes on all of the area. The footprint of the property is exactly as they bought it 30 years ago. Their property is beside a piece of undeveloped, unoccupied, unmaintained land. Today, a land developer purchases the undeveloped land, and they come up with a 100 yr old document that shows that the part of the lot where their driveway is should be part of their lot. The developer then demands that the fence be torn down, and the driveway be given to them, despite the fact that the homeowner bought the property that way, has paid taxes on and maintained that property for 30 years, and nobody has brought this up as an issue in the past 100 years.

* "Squatters" (really, tenants) rights: Imagine someone rented a home in 2020. They've been paying rent every month since then, on a month-to-month basis, without a written lease. In 2024, the home was sold to an investor who wants to renovate the home and flip it. The investor wants to flip the home as quickly as possible, so they tell the tenant to leave immediately with no notice. They call the police and tell them that someone is squatting in their home. The police tell the owner that they must file for eviction, because they are not capable of determining whether the person living in the home is a "squatter" or a tenant. Only a court can do this.

Adverse possession is really just a recognition that mistakes made a long time ago shouldn't undo current realities. And "squatters rights" are really just a recognition that tenants don't have to defend their own property rights in front of a cop on their front porch at 2am on a Tuesday, they get to defend their rights to their leased property in court.

[arrosenberg]

No, because thats theft. Its more like if someone took a picture of it and reproduced it for sale. In that case you would likely lose a copyright claim in practice, even if you may have a valid claim in theory.

[themoonisachees]

IIRC a part of copyright "activating" is publishing the content in the first place, so I don't think GP would have a good case to begin with, not that it matters.

[gnicholas]

Copyright does not require public publishing of the content — just "fixed in a tangible medium of expression". This would have been accomplished when the painting was created on paper.

[arrosenberg]

This is essentially what I was referring to in the second sentence. Even under the current system you might theoretically have a claim, in practice you'd have a hell of a time proving it, so it wouldn't tangibly change the outcomes like OP is suggesting.

[nutrie]

This is exactly what I meant. That’s why I said it just one of the implications, out of many.

[gnicholas]

Ah sorry, I didn't realize your comment was in response to some hypothetical new copyright system proposed upthread.

[TeMPOraL]

> Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again. Do I lose the copyright then and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away?

If you paint something, show to a few people, then decide to put it in the drawer, nobody cares. However, if you displayed that painting in galleries for the past 20 years, became semi-famous for it, and then decide to destroy your work, I'd say the public has a stake and a right to say "no", to at least make and preserve some copies. On top it being an asshole move to destroy well-known work, even if you have the right to do it.

> And copyright is not forever.

It effectively is if you destroy the work before your copyright on it expires.

[nutrie]

Copyright laws don’t care that nobody cares. This is a misconception of the concept.

[majewsky]

This discussion is obviously about what the law should be rather than what it is.