Which Copyright would we like to see ourselves ?

[Odin]

Hello

Please allow me here in this place to start a new discussion - not about copyright legislation
as it is today, but how we would like to have it instead.

I want to apologize for my bad English.

I have been a member of the Swedish Pirate Party for about one year. We are working
politically for a renewal of the international copyright laws. What we want to see is a
reduction of the copyrigth terms to what these laws were in their beginning:

- Short protection terms

- Copious rights for commoners to share artistic information independent of the method
for its communication

According to my own opinion no copyright term should anyhow be allowed to extend to
longer protection periods than those which are granted to inventors according to patent
legislation (20 or at its longest 25 years from date of application).

As an argument for this I would like to claim a principle of equal treatment for all creative
workers independently whether they are producing in the scientific-technical or in the
artistic-esthetic sector.

Regards from


Frank Zintl
Scientist and church musician

[pml]

Hi!

No need to apologise Odin, though it is always nice to have indication that we English-speakers shouldn't attempt to nitpick your words!

Copyright laws were invented in the first place to allow the creator (and publisher) of a work a limited time to commercially exploit their work and receive benefit from its popularity, allowing the creation of more works: in particular I don't see any particular benefit from long posthumous terms for deceased authors (who obviously can't create anything new), except for building up an estate where the author's work remains commercially viable - and if some of the work is unpublished, this allows publishers to benefit from getting it out into the public arena, if not directly into the "public domain" initially.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of many author's works are not hugely commercially viable after their decease - for every composer or author of the "first" rank there are hundreds of "second" or "lesser" rank individuals, simply by the principle of mediocrity, and even a "first rank" author will have occasionally produced some "duds". It is iniquitous for these works to be buried by history simply because of an essentially "inactive" copyright - take for example, the huge stock of twentieth century films that are in desperate need of restoration before the acetate films decay into dust, but are not permitted to be "copied" since the copyright owners cannot now be found, sixty or seventy years later.

I would prefer to see a system whereby works that are no longer "commercial" propositions would be surrendered to the public domain either voluntarily, or a much more limited time after the last deceased author's terminus, say twenty or twenty-five years, rather than the current life plus seventy which seems to be the preferred stance of the aggressive nations (some of whom have rogue pressure groups advocating perpetual copyrights). Not being a lawyer, however, I have no particular idea of how such a system could be fairly implemented in the current morass that is international law. Moreover, the current system for derivative works - works that (intentionality aside) explicitly quote, or adapt or use techniques borrowed from other works - is completely broken and unworkable as it stands, since the barriers for many artists to re-use the work of other artists are in my opinion quite artificially high and prohibitively expensive.

Regards, Philip

[Odin]

Hello

My solution for the problem with unreasonably long protection periods in
the copyright legislation would be to harmonize all kinds of immaterial
property legislation.

The shape of the patent legislation would be the model for all the other
laws.

Personally I can not see any reason why the creators of musical, litteral
or artistic work should enjoy a better (longer) protection of their rights
to their work than what inventors do to the result of their scientific or
technical creativity (inventions).

The differences which today grant rules like lifetime + X years to artistic
creators but no more than 25 years after patent application to inventors
are only historical. There is no justice behind the laws for protection of
immaterial "property" as these laws are formed at the present, treating
technical and artistic creators so differently.

It should also be discussed how and if an idea CAN or should be regarded
as a person´s or company´s property in the same way as material property
such as a chair or a table or a fried chicken or a building, since ideas can be
copied and manifoldedwithout physiccally removing them from their "owners".
I think that ideas and information - at least if it has been created for the
public and has been legally published before - should be as free and as
common as possible.

We in the Pirate Party (there is a Pirate Party also in Canada !) are
planning to change the immaterial property laws according to our own ideas
and values. But before we can do that we must first of all win elections and
enter the national parliaments. Here in Sweden the next elections will be
next year in September.

Best regards


Frank Zintl

[Carolus]

Frank raises an interesting point. In the earliest era of the USA, patent and copyright laws shared a nearly identical - and limited - term. The first copyright law was for a term of 14 years, followed by an optional renewal term of 14 years. The term started running upon publication. I believe patent terms were the same initially, or very close. That's all changed, of course in the intervening 200 years. Now we have a copyright term of life of the last surviving author plus 70 years, while the patent term is only 17 years from grant of patent, plus a renewal term (I can't remember right now, but it is less than 17 years).

The endless lengthening of copyright term has resulted in the nasty situation for films mentioned above by Philip, along with the whole morass of "orphan works", which are works still under copyright where the claimant is long out of business, dead, or otherwise impossible to locate.

[Odin]

Hello

Cutting back the Copyright to what it was in its beginning is a long term political project.
The recently founded Pirate Parties are the only political movements who have the intention
to put this issue on the international political agenda. At the same time this would strengthen
the rights of normal plain citizens to share artistic and other published information with one
another on a noncommercial and non-profit base.

Best regards from

Frank Zintl