Research shows that, when given the choice, most authors don't want excessively-long copyright terms:
Last week Walled Culture mentioned the problem of orphan works. These are creations, typically books, that are still covered by copyright, but unavailable because the original publisher or distributor has gone out of business, or simply isn't interested in keeping them in circulation. The problem is that without any obvious point of contact, it's not possible to ask permission to re-publish or re-use it in some way.
It turns out that there is another serious issue, related to that of orphan works. It has been revealed by the New York Public Library, drawing on work carried out as a collaboration between the Internet Archive and the US Copyright Office. According to a report on the Vice Web site:
the New York Public Library (NYPL) has been reviewing the U.S. Copyright Office's official registration and renewals records for creative works whose copyrights haven't been renewed, and have thus been overlooked as part of the public domain.
The books in question were published between 1923 and 1964, before changes to U.S. copyright law removed the requirement for rights holders to renew their copyrights. According to Greg Cram, associate general counsel and director of information policy at NYPL, an initial overview of books published in that period shows that around 65 to 75 percent of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights.
Since most people today will naturally assume that a book published between 1923 and 1964 is still in copyright, it is unlikely anyone has ever tried to re-publish or re-use material from this period. But this new research shows that the majority of these works are, in fact, already in the public domain, and therefore freely available for anyone to use as they wish.
That's a good demonstration of how the dead hand of copyright stifles fresh creativity from today's writers, artists, musicians and film-makers. They might have drawn on all these works as a stimulus for their own creativity, but held back because they have been brainwashed by the copyright industry into thinking that everything is in copyright for inordinate lengths of time. As a result, huge numbers of books that are freely available according to the law remain locked up with a kind of phantom copyright that exists only in people's minds, infected as they are with copyright maximalist propaganda.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday March 03, @03:54PM (5 children)
Authors may or may not want excessive copyright terms, but the big conglomerates who own a lot of copyrighted works do, and said big conglomerates can buy Congress to change the copyright terms regardless of what mere authors think.
I won't be surprised in the slightest if we get another Mickey Mouse Protection Act this year, since Steamboat Willie is close to becoming public domain.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday March 03, @06:26PM (3 children)
That's it right there, only a small fraction of a percent of work produced is going to be of commercial value a couple decades later, much of it has a shelf life of less than a year. There should be a renewal requirement, just to lessen the issue of works being orphaned, but still technically protected.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 03, @06:45PM (2 children)
There should also be an easy way to check status. As it is (IIRC) all one has to do to obtain initial copyright is conspicuously declare the work Copyright with year of claim, name of claiming author, maybe with the symbol or some reasonable facsimilie like (c). Checking renewal status was onerous up until maybe 25 years ago, but by today there _should be_ a well advertised, easily searched database for every jurisdiction which enforces such terms.
I believe one of the truer reasons so many older out-of-copyright works are ignored by today's authors is the inherent human behavior of the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. Sure, you could read what others have written, laboriously synthesize, cross reference, and reconcile: meta-study authors get off on that to some degree, but most people prefer to just make shit up. It's more fun, it's much more gratifying to the ego, who cares if you end up duplicating prior art? (a virtual inevitability with billions of literate and published people hacking away on their own "inventive texts") "I came up with this all on my own." It's cool, it's sexy, what else matters besides getting paid and getting laid?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday March 05, @03:10AM (1 child)
Hear, hear! I'd love to put Murray Leinster's A Logic Named Joe [baen.com] in a collection. I wanted to put it in Yesterday's Tomorrows but there's no way to find copyright information that I know of. I wrote Baen and didn't get an answer.
That story is about the internet, with devices' names all wrong, but it was published in 1946, the year ENIAC was patented and decades before any computers were networked some time in the middle '60s.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @12:47PM
That story is creepily close to where we are headed.. so close..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @12:38AM
Copyright has always been in the publishers' interests, never the authors'. And we get near infinite copyright because we continue to reelect their puppets into congress. It is upon us to break up the cartels.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday March 03, @03:54PM (24 children)
If I do something one time, such as help fix someone's broken windows[1], I get paid one time. I don't get paid in perpetuity. Similarly, when I was a teen in the mid 70s, and after school swept, burned the trash, reloaded soda machines and other chores at a company that made dual chamber smoke detectors for commercial installations, I only got paid once for my efforts.[2] Imagine that.
Now someone who writes a book, writes a song, sings a song, writes a computer program, etc, why shouldn't they get paid only once for their efforts? I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't get paid a fair amount for the value of their work. But why, oh why should they be paid forever for doing something once? What is the reasoning behind that? When I do something once, I only get paid once.
If I sell hamburgers, I get paid for each one. If I sell songs, why should I get paid forever? How about if I get paid forever for the hamburger?
Why is there a difference?
Long copyright does not make sense. But it makes cents, since those profiting from it want to keep it that way.
[1]it is usually broken shortly after going through the initial setup
[2]I also got to have long conversations with the engineers and general manager of the place. Electronics, speed of light, how long would the IC in a then modern digital watch last, etc. How DOES their scientific calculator raise a decimal number to a decimal power, such as to the pi power? How does the IC chip do that? Will they throw me some of their scraps like LEDs, resistors, etc.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03, @04:22PM (3 children)
You should get paid twice: once for the burger going in, and once for the burger coming out... regardless of whichever hole either event occurs through.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Friday March 03, @04:30PM (1 child)
Hmm..., how about, if the burger goes in the mouth and leaves the mouth (vomit or otherwise), then the customer gets a refund?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03, @06:21PM
They don't get a refund, but in a way, they get the burger back, don't they?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 03, @07:10PM
I must not be doing life right. I'm paying for it coming and going.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Freeman on Friday March 03, @04:29PM
Okay, how about this, you get paid 0.0001 cents per day for the rest of your life for the hamburger. (That works out to about $3.65 for 100 years.) I'm thinking you could get a lot of employers on board that gravy train. Just don't be surprised when that train wreck ends up like Social Security. But, you say, the author gets more than that for writing the book! Perhaps, but you didn't invent the hamburger. Blah, blah, blah, creative works are different. Maybe get a better job than flipping hamburgers? They're called starving artists for a reason. Yes, some people make bank, like J. K. Rowling. Most people who write a book, don't make that kind of cash and likely couldn't support themselves, let alone a family, through writing books. The economic part of copyright is just a small portion of the issue in my book. The big issue is that very long copyright doesn't help the author. Who does it benefit the most? Publishers. Which is why it's likely not to change for the foreseeable future.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by GloomMower on Friday March 03, @04:41PM (5 children)
How do they get paid once? Who pays them? What amount? Where does the money come from? The thing is you can sell a burger once and it is gone and done. A book you can hit print and sell 1 year, 2, years, 2000 years from now. Who gets to hit print and sell it, under what conditions?
How long or many is equivalent to selling a burger? It takes longer to write a book and make a burger.
(Score: 2) by GloomMower on Friday March 03, @04:45PM (1 child)
Also say it is 1 year. Then everyone knows they can just wait a year and get a free "burger."
I'm for shorter copyrights also, but I didn't know what exactly your comment was suggesting.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Sunday March 05, @03:24AM
Copyright was never about making the reader pay. Before the end of the previous century the only way to publish anything required shitloads of money, whether a book or whatever. Copyright wasn't started to protect the writer from the reader, it's to protect the writer from the PUBLISHER.
The first US copyrights only covered American writers, so it was impossible for American writers to be published; publishers just pirated British authors whom they didn't have to pay.
I've read tens of thousands of books. If I would have had to pay for all those books I'd be pretty damned ignorant, because I wouldn't have been able to afford to, but there are libraries. READING BOOKS SHOULD ALWAYS BE FREE. To publish a printed book costs money, publishing an e-book is virtually free. I pay more per month for internet access than I do for mcgrewbooks.com for a full year. Charging $15 for an ebook is just evil.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday March 03, @05:21PM
The real story in the big publishing business often is: The author gets a fat up-front advance, and a lot of the royalties go to paying back that advance as well as possibly promotion costs depending on how good they or their agent was at negotiating. For books allegedly by famous people, even more common is that they don't do any of the writing, they hire a ghostwriter who gets a flat-rate contract or salary, the alleged-author maybe bothers to read it for final approval, and collects the royalties.
In the world of books, just like in music and visual arts, the vast majority of the people who actually create things are either low-wage labor and/or chumps who were taken advantage of by the middlemen. And that's not surprising, because book publishers are often the same friggin' companies as the other media forms.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @12:50PM (1 child)
Imagine if we could print hamburgers.. oh.. wait.. we can!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 06, @05:00PM
Don't imagine it and definitely don't try it. Then again, how much worse can it be than the average burger?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday March 03, @04:45PM
If copyright laws were applicable to bricklaying, you'd pay rent indefinitely for the house you own.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday March 03, @06:28PM
That's a dumb argument. You could arrange to be paid in perpetuity, it's just a pain to arrange. You'd get like a couple bucks a year for the rest of your life per window. This is something you can do on your own by investing them money and only withdrawing the interest.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 03, @07:21PM (2 children)
I dunno, it's such a complex topic with so many perspectives. My gut feel has always been maybe someone should get a cut if you make money, or save money, but not just because you copied it.
Some of the AV work I do involves wanting to play music through a PA system, over a broadcast / stream, etc. The license rules get very complicated, and can get into the size of the audience, if it's ticked event, etc. I don't generally get into it, but someone does. There's usually some kind of general license you can buy from ASCAP / BMI (or others) that lets you do this or that, again, some artists, some situations. Like the license I generally operate under (again, not my doing) allows me to play almost anything to a live audience, but not over the air / broadcast. So I / we find tons of music to use for streamcast. Once I did a video for a friend and found that Spyro Gyra allowed (as far as I could tell) me to use their music as background in the video. Seems like a win-win- you get your music out there without trying. It's just like open-source software: some is awesome, some not worth the time and effort to try it. But everyone's needs and tastes vary, so it's an adventure.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @12:11AM (1 child)
For me, this is a great example because I would have heard the Spyro Gyra music and gotten excited because I haven't listened to them in decades. Then I'd look them up to see what they've been up to since the 80s, maybe purchase something I don't have, etc. All because you picked them for your background and not someone else. (And it is true, I haven't listened to them in decades, but that thought of listening to them brings back happy days memories!)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday March 04, @04:36AM
Ever see them live? I did around 1996. Free concert, special municipal festival. Big lawn, packed, sitting on blankets. I got there late (and frustrated), but grabbed my (then) girlfriend's hand and just made my way to the front and found just enough of a spot. It was amazing.
Last evening after posting the previous comment I started watching Spyro Gyra vids on youtube. I think they're actually much better in concert. Or maybe I got lucky? Much more energy and creativity.
The first vid I stumbled onto, and it's so so awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9gwyzOiDFc [youtube.com]
Seriously, it shows why Spyro Gyra are so awesome, from the heart of the band.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03, @10:45PM (5 children)
> I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't get paid a fair amount for the value of their work.
One problem is determining the fair value of the work. I think the current method works pretty well for books--it's based on the number of copies sold, and possibly other terms if the author has a contract with a publisher. The number of copies sold depends on things like: is it a good/useful book, is the price affordable relative to the customer's value of the content, was the book marketed (advertised) well, were there good reviews in visible places, etc., etc.
Here's my story:
The engineering reference book (sometimes used as a text) that took us six years to write was published in 1994. It's still in print and generates between $5K and $10K per year in royalties. I'm not going to live on that, but it's a useful amount of income. Total income from royalties is now approaching the hourly rate that I charge for engineering project work (I kept track of the hours it took to write the book). It's still less than the hourly rate I can charge for short term consulting jobs.
Are there any other Soylentils collecting royalties who are willing to tell their story? What I'm seeing in the comments are mostly from people that just want things for free...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @12:19AM (1 child)
1994, huh? . . . . So you're most likely not either Milton Abramowitz nor Irene Stegun . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @12:57AM
Our book isn't *that* kind of reference. We cover a much smaller niche of engineering. But thanks for the comparison!!
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 04, @03:33PM (2 children)
We can all agree that artists deserve compensation, for works that aren't complete garbage, erring mightily in the direction of withholding judgment on whether a work is worthless. It's the compensation system we have that is such a problem. Despite all the "starving artists" rhetoric and the placing of great artists on pedestals, much work goes unrewarded. We who participate in these discussions, shouldn't we also get a little something? Maybe, if there was a way to do it that didn't make for perverse incentives that corrupt and destroy the forum. Instead, many of us pay, to support the site! And even so I fear our support isn't enough. The people who run these kinds of sites, aren't they also deserving? What of the giants, of networking and computing upon which Internet forums rest, are they fairly compensated? Copyright simply cannot handle all this.
Academic researchers get practically nothing from copyright, despite some of their work being very valuable. Indeed, copyright is a massive impediment, and has traditionally been handled by requiring researchers to relinquish all such rights to academic and scientific publishers. Get copyright out of the way. It was for the good reason of relieving those publishers of requirements that would be so onerous they would be a massive hindrance. Having to contact every one of over 100 authors, in order to get permission to do just about anything at all with the works, with just one "no" sinking the whole thing, is obviously a ridiculously heavy burden.
Researchers were compensated through the higher education system, in the form of a paying job as a university professor. Basically a form of patronage. But lately, anti-intellectualism has been increasing, and to appease it university funding has been cut. This has pushed this patronage system to the brink. For decades, academics have lamented that they could get a lot more money by working in industry. It's worse now. I am a published researcher who has no position in education, and now the pay is so poor I don't know that I want such a position. I hear some are even on food stamps? Nor have I seen one damned cent in royalties or anything else from copyright, for my works. I could have patented my findings, but as my biggest finding was an improvement of about 0.5%, you better believe that's not enough to motivate people to inquire about licensing. I didn't bother. What's the filing fee, a few hundred dollars? And you have to pay a patent lawyer to write it up. Doubtful I'd even made back those expenses. Far bigger improvements are left untouched, because dealing with patent licensing is simply that big a barrier. Easier to just wait 17 years for the patent to expire. Or join a patent pool, another massive complication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @09:16PM
> ... But lately, anti-intellectualism has been increasing, and to appease it university funding has been cut....
Citation needed, this sounds like bs to me.
I found this link https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23303 [nsf.gov] which shows that the Federal contribution to university R&D rose every year since 2010, with only a few exceptions (where it dropped very slightly).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @09:32PM
> I could have patented my findings, ...
Or your university TTO (technology transfer office) could have handled the patent, this article seems like a useful summary of university patents and licensing income,
https://www.kilburnstrode.com/knowledge/european-ip/promoting-patenting-among-academics-and-researcher [kilburnstrode.com]
ps. US patents might have cost "a few hundred dollars" at one point, these days it's easily in the thousands or maybe even $10K, given the specialized legal help needed to negotiate the system.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday March 04, @02:20AM (1 child)
If it's continuing to generate revenue why should the publisher be the only one making money from it?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @04:42AM
> If it's continuing to generate revenue why should the publisher be the only one making money from it?
In some cases, depending on the contract between author and publisher, it's very likely that the author was paid once and the publisher makes money as long as it sells.
Since no one knows in advance if it's going to sell, in the case above the publisher is like a venture capital supplier--they put up the money for the artistic work, pay to have the work created and then the publisher owns it. If the artist/creator needs the money up front, they might agree to such a contract.
Contracts like this are common in industry--"Work for Hire" means that any "work product" belongs to the company that pays for it--not to the person that performed the work. Note that otherwise the default is "creater holds the (C)" -- "work for hire" contracts reverses this.
There are plenty of examples if you look back at early blues recordings (black artists). In that case there wasn't much of a contract. The publishers paid the musicians once, at the time of the studio recording. Then, iirc, in the words of Big Bill Broonzy, "Where did all the money go?"--since there were no royalties in the deal. The musicians were naive about the music business (the producers had no incentive to educate them) and the lack of information cost the musicians dearly.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Friday March 03, @05:06PM (1 child)
Disney has been buying congress to extend their copyrights for over a century.
I'm glad the stuff is now in the public domain.
On the other hand, to re-publish or re-use previously copyrighted material ≠ drawing on all these works as a stimulus for their own creativity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @01:03PM
Disney is having their teach cut down piece by piece
https://news.yahoo.com/desantis-vs-disney-governor-gone-105205722.html [yahoo.com]