There's a pretty fundamental difference between patents and copyright that I think justifies copyright being longer: a copyrighted work could not exist without its creator. IE, the Beatles catalog would not exist without the 4 Beatles, specifically. However patents are discoveries and can be discovered by other people.
I don't disagree, though I would argue that bullshit like "design patents" blur that line somewhat.
Even within patents, you're not supposed to be able to patent a "fact", which is why most math is non-patentable, and it gets into kind of weird territory when you get into stuff like algorithms: is an algorithm part of mathematics and therefore a fact and therefore non-patentable? or is it closer to an invention and engineering, and therefore should be patented? Or is coding "creative" enough to where we should actually be copyrighting algorithms?
I have no idea the answer to that question, or where the line should be drawn (though I gravitate towards the "math" side).
I don't know where I'm going with this; intellectual property law is weird.
Yeah, as in all things, the categories start to blur at the edges. Most algorithms seem like mathematical discoveries to me, whereas the source code for a piece of software has pretty clear corollaries to copyrighted works like novels (including passing the test that I propose: it could not exist without it's creator).
I kind of think that patents should not exist. I'm not a scholar in the area, but I am not aware of good evidence that, without patents, we would be bereft of the many inventions of human history and especially the last 200 years. And actually, the open source movement demonstrates that there is a very strong human impulse that will create and invent things without material recompense. My reading of patent history is that people who were inventing things anyway wanted a way to profit from it, not that there was a lack of invention and patents were arrived at as a solution to that problem.
Perhaps someone could object that companies are responsible for a lot of invention and they need to be incentivized in a way that individual inventors do not. But I'm not convinced that making a better mousetrap isn't enough of an incentive. After all, companies spend an incredible amount of money on sales and marketing (usually a larger line item than R&D on a company's income statement) and neither of those gives you a legally enforced competitive advantage.
I think the best argument for patents is to encourage drug discovery, since the costs are enormous due to the testing requirements. But if the main cost is in testing, then perhaps the solution is to require that copycat medications also go through the testing process, at least for some period of time. Or just have patents for drugs but not for other things. Or just have the government engage in drug discovery and validation directly (normally I'm against the government doing stuff, but I'm not convinced that the lack of a profit motive would be worse than the presence of a profit motive when it comes to drug discover).
No, copyrights make sense to be longer. But not “century” long. But something like 15 years for a copyright, renewable each year after for a growing cost, up to 30 years total, seems reasonable to me.
The main point being, if you’re still making money hand over fist from your book you wrote, or film you made, you can keep the copyright. But at some point, you have to prove it has value by paying for it, with a fast growing price each year after, and still a finite time where the copyright goes away entirely. This prevents dead copyrights where you can’t even find the copyright holder, because they died 50 years ago, and the work is obscure, but you want to license it. But if you create some original song or story or whatever, it’s totally fair that only you get to make money from that for a very long while.
> The main point being, if you’re still making money hand over fist from your book you wrote, or film you made, you can keep the copyright.
> But if you create some original song or story or whatever, it’s totally fair that only you get to make money from that for a very long while.
Why is this “very long while” based on how much money you are making, and why would it be different from creating anything else?
The point of taxpayer funded legal and police protection for owners of patents and copyright terms is to incentivize creating something, not to maximize rent seeking abilities for the creator.
I don’t think preventing you from diluting the brand I created is rent seeking. Creating a work is an investment, which, almost never pays off (think of how many unknown musicians, authors, and artists there are). So when you find something that people like en masse, you should be allowed to reap those benefits. I hardly consider that rent seeking. But the escalating cost prevents actual rent seeking - if your work stops producing value, squatting on it IS rent seeking, and so you have to pay escalating amounts, or relinquish it, and let someone else have a stab at it. You are also allowed to continue to create new derivative works, and you have a huge head start on any future competition, since you have that time limited window. So if you continue to create new value, your timer “restarts” on those new works, so I think that’s sufficient incentive to continue creating.
Trademarks protect brands, not copyright and patents. That is a different discussion, but trademarks already work that way, where if the trademark owner keeps using the trademark, then they get to keep it. A creative work is not a brand, the name of the person or company that produced it is a brand.
> if your work stops producing value, squatting on it IS rent seeking
“Producing value” is far too nebulous of a parameter to legally enforce. Again, the point of a copyright and patent is to incentivize creation. At a certain point, it moves from incentivizing to rewarding those that sit on previous accomplishments.
That is why old movies, music, and games are locked away or only accessible via pirating, why TV shows from the 1990s and 2000s have different soundtracks if streamed legally today, and why patent trolls exist.
I actually think copyrights could have the exact timeline that patents do right now and I'd be more or less happy; twenty years with a possible ten year extension seems pretty fair to me.
That's enough time to realistically make money off your creation, but not so much time that your great grandkids are also making money off of it.
The fact that a lot of things are invented and patented in the US shows that the comparatively shorter timespan doesn't appear to be discouraging innovation and creativity, and I think that would hold with copyright as well.
