askBeehaw: should copyright even exist at all? and if it should, how long should the ideal term of copyright be?
askBeehaw: should copyright even exist at all? and if it should, how long should the ideal term of copyright be?
a perennial favorite topic of debate. sound off in the replies.
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I've mentioned this before here, but my stance is 20 years flat for a work owned by a corporation, and life for works owned by an individual.
Yeah that seems pretty reasonable to me. Was pissed off when the government here sneakily extended copyright length from 50 to 70 years as part of a trade deal with the UK a year or two ago - even 50 years was far too long IMO!
That's interesting. Where is here for you? Was that term something pushed by the UK?
Not sure if this person is in the same place but Aotearoa NZ recently extended copyright from 50 to 70 years after death due to a UK trade deal, so I wouldn't be surprised if the UK have pushed it. We've recently fast-tracked the change due to an EU trade deal, though, so it's not the UK alone.
Yep that's the one, turns out I misremembered the exact lengths, cheers for letting me know!
This sounds perfect
I honestly really like this idea. I would've been a fan of the model where copyright just outright can't be transferred from actual creators to a company, but that creates massive problems for collaborative works that don't have a single one creator. This model of giving individual creators lifelong copyright nicely addresses that problem.
Then you just have companies transfer ownership of their IPs to some notable figure in the company and transfers away from them when they die/leave. leading to indefinite ownership of copyrights by a company. This is even longer copyright than what we have today.
So just make it nontransferable.
why lifetime copyright ownership for individuals?
Mostly, I felt it was important to discourage IP ownership by corps by making the individual term much longer. I'm open to making it shorter, but still considerably longer than that of corporations. An individual isn't going to be able to harm infringers the way that, say, Nintendo can, and does.