Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

copyrightlately.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 171 posts

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#111

Post by OkayPhysicist »

theragra wrote: post #2

As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.

Copyright for nearly everything but software, is primarily a question of "can I reproduce this other person's creative work?". Fair use doctrine is so broad that I think it most everything else falls under most people's accepted "artists deserve to be compensated for their work" gut instinct.

If you're going to save money by not coming up with an original idea for a movie, or video game, or whatever, and then use the public goodwill produced by an existing work to market it, it seems perfectly just that the original creator gets a cut of that action.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#112

Post by Aerroon »

WalterBright wrote: post #94

Germany didn't have patent laws in the 1800s. Their economy rapidly industrialized and boomed. I don't believe on balance that patents would be a net improvement. Are companies really going to stop making things better if they couldn't patent it? Note that Tesla open sources its patents.

The benefit of patents is that you have to make your patent public. After the patent runs out anybody can reproduce what you patented exactly like your did.

The problem, of course, is that many companies see patents as a way to rent-seek. Establish enough patents in your niche and now nobody can compete with you. This is particularly a problem in the modern world where technological advancements have accelerated so much that a 20 year long patent is an eternity. An entire industry can just die off in that time.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#113

Post by iso1631 »

jcranmer wrote: post #98
observationist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0-5 years commercial copyright - the author/creator has total say on any and all commercial use, fair use doctrine applies. Years 6-10, extended fair use: mandatory attribution and 15% royalty but otherwise unlimited for public use in any context, for any reason. Years 11+, goes to public domain. Simple system. Encourages creativity, 99% of all money made on media (books, music, movies,etc) gets made during the first…

So what you're saying is that you think George R R Martin should not see a dime of revenue from the hit TV series made off of his books? Because Game of Thrones came out 20 years after the first book was published.

Maybe it would have encouraged him to write the last books and thus have an ending

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#114

Post by specialist »

observationist wrote: post #57
theragra wrote: post #2

As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.

0-5 years commercial copyright - the author/creator has total say on any and all commercial use, fair use doctrine applies. Years 6-10, extended fair use: mandatory attribution and 15% royalty but otherwise unlimited for public use in any context, for any reason. Years 11+, goes to public domain. Simple system. Encourages creativity, 99% of all money made on media (books, music, movies,etc) gets made during the first…

I'm totally fine with your proposal.

I especially like no-permission-needed for commercial use with predetermined royalties. Throw in patents and I'll be your best friend for life.

Another reform notion I heard (IIRC): Require formal renewal of copyrights. $10 fee per year to cover expenses. Allows Disney to keep their Tug Boat Willie and Mickey Mouse for as long as they like, without borking the rest of society.

My own reform idea: Royalty also paid to the government. For all IP, for all time. To enjoy our govt's subsidies, protection (tort), and adjudication (contracts), you gotta pay.

The aircraft carrier groups, diplomats, intelligence services, and lawyers needed to keep our markets open don't just pay for themselves.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#115

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Aerroon wrote: post #110
jimmydddd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the other 99.99999% of authors?

If they wrote a book 20 years ago and it didn't sell much it's not going to sell now either, no? But I do like the idea of length determined by inverse correlation of size of the creator. 20 years might be too short where an author writes something popular and a movie company just waits 20 years to do something with it rather than pay the author.

> If they wrote a book 20 years ago and it didn't sell much it's not going to sell now either, no?

That's not a universal rule. Andrzej Sapkowski wrote a little short story called "The Witcher" in the 80's, that he expanded on into a novel series through the 90's. Then a game development studio made a series of wildly successfully videogames based on his work, which definitely made way more money than his books, to the point that Netflix made a tv series based on his books. I struggle to imagine how it could be just that the videogames and tv show, based on his work, owe him nothing.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#116

Post by mindslight »

bobro wrote: post #103
theragra wrote: post #2

As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.

Just to try to understand this, do you think anyone should be able to make, say, a Harry Potter movie right now paying nothing to the author?

Why not?

This is a fantastic example - the Harry Potter movies have already been wildly profitable, surely enough to have solidly incentivized their creation. And they are now firmly part of our collective cultural background, to the point that most of the value comes from the network effects of people who have watched them rather than the works themselves.

The first book was written in 1997, and released as a movie in 2001. The last book was written in 2007, and released as a movie in 2011.

Putting a 20-year limit on the copyright would mean that one could use the characters/story (from the book) starting in 2017 - either riffing on them or perhaps even a complete remake. And this would still be 6 years after the final movie was released. The movies themselves would of course each have their own 20 year periods of monetization. You could legally watch the whole series of movies on a personal computer starting in 2031, which is still 5 years away. This all seems eminently reasonable to me.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#117

Post by OkayPhysicist »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #12

Copyright doing what it does best. Killing new works that resemble a bit too much anything under its protection and allowing rentseekers to live off others.

That's because you're ignoring the primary purpose of copyright, which works perfectly and is invisible because violating it so obviously stupid (because the rules exist): I, an author, go to a print shop and say "I'd like 500 copies of my book, please", and then print shop sells me my 500 copies, then prints 1000 more and sells them themselves.

Copyright is primarily concerned with one-to-one recreations of existing works. That is the primary reason for copyright's existence. All the other stuff is built out of trying to close stupid loopholes that people would try exploit.

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#118

Post by saltyoldman »

theragra wrote: post #2

As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.

It's always funny seeing these threads, when it's about AI these people defend copyright to the death. Then when it's about a private IP owner holding onto their IP, it's "death to copyright"

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#119

Post by estimator7292 »

jcranmer wrote: post #98
observationist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0-5 years commercial copyright - the author/creator has total say on any and all commercial use, fair use doctrine applies. Years 6-10, extended fair use: mandatory attribution and 15% royalty but otherwise unlimited for public use in any context, for any reason. Years 11+, goes to public domain. Simple system. Encourages creativity, 99% of all money made on media (books, music, movies,etc) gets made during the first…

So what you're saying is that you think George R R Martin should not see a dime of revenue from the hit TV series made off of his books? Because Game of Thrones came out 20 years after the first book was published.

[flagged]

Re: Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees

#120

Post by TitaRusell »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #115
Aerroon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wrote a book 20 years ago and it didn't sell much it's not going to sell now either, no? But I do like the idea of length determined by inverse correlation of size of the creator. 20 years might be too short where an author writes something popular and a movie company just waits 20 years to do something with it rather than pay the author.

> If they wrote a book 20 years ago and it didn't sell much it's not going to sell now either, no? That's not a universal rule. Andrzej Sapkowski wrote a little short story called "The Witcher" in the 80's, that he expanded on into a novel series through the 90's. Then a game development studio made a series of wildly successfully videogames based on his work, which definitely made way more money than his books, to t…

He sold his rights to CDPro. Also the videogame made him famous- I for one read one of his books BECAUSE of the game and I'm sure that I am not the only one.

There's a reason why writers want their books to become videogames and or movies. I would not be surprised if the Tolkien estate made more money after the Peter Jackson movie came out than in all the decades before...

And most importantly artists are not children. If they don't have business sense enough to read a contract they should hire an agent.

Post reply on HN