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posted by LaminatorX on Friday April 24 2015, @02:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the useful-progress dept.

It's election season in the UK, and the Green Party's policy document has been coming under scrutiny recently. In it is a desire to reduce copyright term to 14 years (not life + 14 years, but 14 years from publication).

Unsurprisingly, this has received a bit of a backlash from various parties.

There's no chance the Green Party will form the next government, so this is all academic, but is this a sensible idea? Are people overreacting?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM

    by mr_mischief (4884) on Friday April 24 2015, @05:08PM (#174739)

    So how about make it ten years and let them renew 7 times. If it's not renewed, it becomes public domain. It gives them 80 years if they're still in business and still interested. It gives abandonware legal standing in the public domain. It's win-win.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 24 2015, @05:27PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 24 2015, @05:27PM (#174747) Journal

    That only works if DRM is prohibited. If copyright is limited in that way, and DRM is legal, then they can sell things that only work as long as the seller keeps a "token" site running...and you can only play the work if you've got an internet connection and the seller's "token" site is running. Some games have already done this, and become unusable while those that bought them are still playing.

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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday April 24 2015, @06:06PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday April 24 2015, @06:06PM (#174773)

    The only real rule of copyright law at this point seems to be: "Thou shalt not allow Mickey Mouse to pass into the public domain".

    To provide a bit of a story of how ridiculous the current copyright regime is: My grandfather was a musician. Mostly because of my grandfather's folk song collection work, my family gets a fairly small check once a year, even though he died 35 years ago (we send the money to a charity in the area where he collected the songs) and he did most of his work over 50 years ago. As for why we don't release his work into the public domain, if we release our claim on it, all that happens is that ASCAP gets what we were getting.

    And of course all the focus on the money of copyright ignores the other motivations for doing artistic work. For example, I have to think that granddad got a bit of gratification because one of the songs he collected became a hit for Lonnie Donegan, and also was the first recording ever made by a couple of nobodies named Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

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    • (Score: 1) by Rickter on Friday April 24 2015, @08:16PM

      by Rickter (842) on Friday April 24 2015, @08:16PM (#174829)

      I think we need a tiered IP structure:

      7 years for initial copyright, possibly with significant renewal fees for a few years of extension, say 1% of total revenue (cumulative) /year. So your blockbuster movie that makes $300M domestic box office and other pay per view and DVD sales? $3M to renew for year 8. If you don't foresee more profit than that, then you don't renew. The fee for year 9 goes up by the amount of the sales from that year.

      30 years of format shifting control, So if you write a book or video game, you should have a significant amount of time to sell the rights to a studio who would make a movie out of it, and have time to create the work, but if they fail, you still have enough control to hire another company. (We don't want a five year window, where Universal Studios makes a movie with your OK, but then delays releasing until 5 years and week after publication, then publishes the movie under fair use and gives the writer no profits, and has a jump on all of the other studios due to their agreement with the author.)

      30 years of derivative/sequel work limit: So, only George Lucas/Lucas Arts/Disney could create a for profit movie in the Star Wars universe for 30 years, until 2007, then anybody could create Star Wars movies. So, nobody could create a Mickey Mouse work for 30 years from first usage. (You couldn't extend this forever, or nobody will ever get to make derivative works, which is what we are trying to get away from.) Beyond that time, works that are not done with the permission of the original author and most recent rights holder, must clearly state that they are not associated with the original authors, so customers don't blame the original creator for crappy work done by the derivatives. So you could have several groups working on Star Wars derivative movies, books, and games, competing with each other, and the ones that give the best deal to artists & actors probably will make the best movies, and get the most business. They would only enjoy the 7 year copyright limit for each work.

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday April 25 2015, @01:18PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Saturday April 25 2015, @01:18PM (#175042) Journal
    And model it on the patent system, where each renewal is more expensive than the last.
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