Authors, Singers and etc... after death?

[Banana Jelly]

So, I was thinking about the ACTA, and Copyright. I was thinking about the copyright length after the death of the singer, songs, movies or anything about that.

Then I was started that the copyright length is 75 years, which is certainly beyond a persons lifetime. So, I thought why not just automatically cancel any copyright from the author, or singer after his death?

Since the Author can't profit from his work any more, it should become public domain, rather then have businesses feed off the copyright even after the death of the owner.

My opinion would be that the copyright cancels out immediately after the copyright owner (author singer or etc) dies. It get's tricky when we talk about businesses owning copyright, because businesses can't really "die", so let's just say after they go bankrupt and quit being a business, or some sort. But it's pretty complicated when you go to businesses rather then individual work.

Opinions?

[chilon]

My opinion would be that the copyright cancels out immediately after the copyright owner (author singer or etc) dies. It get's tricky when we talk about businesses owning copyright, because businesses can't really "die", so let's just say after they go bankrupt and quit being a business, or some sort. But it's pretty complicated when you go to businesses rather then individual work.

Opinions?

You hit upon the biggest problem with your own idea IMO. When immortal entities that never die own copyrights your solution can't really work as intended. Most important copyrights are owned by corporations anyway rather than individuals (just look at Disney Corp. opposed to Walt Disney the person).

I don't think declaring when a business goes bankrupt is the same as people dying. Every single person will eventually die. Not every business goes bankrupt. In fact in today's world most businesses never go bankrupt even when they cease to exist. Mergers, takeovers, etc dominate the corporate world now.

So if a company is bought out or mergers with another company, you believe the copyright should transfer to the new conglomerate entity?

[Viking Prince]

If I found a company that makes great widgets, I will hold a series of patents and copyrights on the widget design, marketing, etc. When I die, I would like the business to continue for probably my estate will consist of stock in the comapny for my family. I am pretty certain that my employees, stockholders, debt holders, etc. all have an interest in the company continuing. Why else would they be secure enough to make their investments in a company? What security would there be in a company if the owner could die by accident the next morning?

So how is this differant from the interests of a writer, musician, or painter?

As a side note -- if a movie production company purchases an exclusive right to a book for a movie, what happens when the author dies? Can competing film companies now pick up the material for free? If so, how much financial return can the author expect for the film rights? How can a creative artist receive compensation towards the end of life when even a natural life without accidental death would mean diminshing compensation as the artist ages and may indeed be better with age?

[magickyleo101]

How can a creative artist receive compensation towards the end of life when even a natural life without accidental death would mean diminshing compensation as the artist ages and may indeed be better with age?

I think this is the crux of the issue. Intellectual property rights exist to encourage people to produce intellectual property. The stronger the right, the greater the incentive and the more is produced.

If you terminate the rights with death, the incentive to produce additional works diminishes with each day you age. If you catch sick and might die soon, you have almost no incentive (at law) to finish your work or arrange for its completion.

Since there's no reason to think that authors closer to death should be less encouraged to work than young/healthy authors, the declining incentive that would result from your proposal is a bad outcome.

[Dr. Croccer]

I think this is the crux of the issue. Intellectual property rights exist to encourage people to produce intellectual property. The stronger the right, the greater the incentive and the more is produced.

If you terminate the rights with death, the incentive to produce additional works diminishes with each day you age. If you catch sick and might die soon, you have almost no incentive (at law) to finish your work or arrange for its completion.

Since there's no reason to think that authors closer to death should be less encouraged to work than young/healthy authors, the declining incentive that would result from your proposal is a bad outcome.

This makes no sense. Do you think that an old writer will be more inclined to write if he'd get royalties for his corpse after his death? Unless they have an interest in maintaining their family, which seems doubtful, as publishing rights tend to go to their respective corporations.

If anything, having such a long time for intellectual property, and such harsh laws, is counter-productive. Probably the vast majority of songs now sample older songs. Sampling is very often viewed as illegal by the copyright corporations. Many new artists might not be able to express themselves fully out of fear that the sample they took will land them a lawsuit and such. Even worse, you have cases of rich and succesful bands blatantly plagiarizing the works of far more obscure ones, who very often can't afford to take legal action, whilst the same time anyone who dares to sample their work can and probably will be sued.

[magickyleo101]

This makes no sense. Do you think that an old writer will be more inclined to write if he'd get royalties for his corpse after his death? Unless they have an interest in maintaining their family, which seems doubtful, as publishing rights tend to go to their respective corporations.

(a) It won't just undermine the after-death money because, as VP pointed out, publishing companies and other purchasers of intellectual property will pay less for a right that's about to expire than for one that's going to last a long time. So the rights that the author will get up front during the course of his life will be diminished. (b) People do care about their families and the wealth that goes to their family after death. For example, people pay lots of money (money they could spend while they were alive) to estate planning attorneys to make sure their estate avoids taxes and is divided according to their wishes. If that sort of thing wasn't a concern for them, they would spend that money on something else.

If anything, having such a long time for intellectual property, and such harsh laws, is counter-productive. Probably the vast majority of songs now sample older songs. Sampling is very often viewed as illegal by the copyright corporations. Many new artists might not be able to express themselves fully out of fear that the sample they took will land them a lawsuit and such. Even worse, you have cases of rich and succesful bands blatantly plagiarizing the works of far more obscure ones, who very often can't afford to take legal action, whilst the same time anyone who dares to sample their work can and probably will be sued.

The issue of how substantial a right should be during the life of the right is a different one from the issue of how long the life of that right should be. Maybe protections against sampling are too harsh. That doesn't mean the copyright should end earlier, and it especially doesn't mean that the copyright should be tied to an arbitrary event like the death of the producer (who may not even be the holder at that time).

Besides, bits of songs that people can sample are a good we want to encourage people to produce. That means we want to ensure they get paid. That doesn't happen unless you enforce the right to them. Maybe paying for samples increases the song writer's costs of production, but paying for wheat does the same thing to the baker's. That something raises costs at one step in the chain of production is hardly a reason to refuse to enforce rights at another.

[chilon]

If I found a company that makes great widgets, I will hold a series of patents and copyrights on the widget design, marketing, etc. When I die, I would like the business to continue for probably my estate will consist of stock in the comapny for my family. I am pretty certain that my employees, stockholders, debt holders, etc. all have an interest in the company continuing. Why else would they be secure enough to make their investments in a company? What security would there be in a company if the owner could die by accident the next morning?

This generalized form produces an invalid and unsound argument because you cannot remove the special contextual circumstances of each industry from a debate on morality of copyrights.

For instance, your argument will look very different if you replace "widget" with "Fashion" than if you replace "widget" with "life saving pharmaceutical drugs".

Your arguments sounds perfectly fine if applied to something innocuous like new action figure toys but it sounds extremely cold, vicious and impractical when applied to life saving drugs.

Formally speaking, not everything can reduced to a vague concept of widgets. You have a huge unproven assumption in making this statement: that every single thing that can be exchanged, traded or consumed is reducible to the exact same generalized form.

This is incorrect.

So how is this differant from the interests of a writer, musician, or painter?

Because every industry has fundamentally different circumstances that you ignore when you turn things into a "Widget Problem".

Copyrights/Patents on pharmaceuticals is already vastly different from some other industries with very different concerns for society because they affect the health and life and death of individuals.

Intellectual property is fundamentally different than physical property industries and failure to acknowledge that obvious fact and incorporate it into a different set of laws would be a huge mistake.

Writers, musicians and painters do not "produce" in the same sense that the textile industry does and people do not "consume" art, writing and music with the same behavioral patterns they do other types of physical goods. A business model (or set of business laws) that might work perfect for textiles could be an absolute disaster if applied to a creative industry.

Here is why:

I think this is the crux of the issue. Intellectual property rights exist to encourage people to produce intellectual property. The stronger the right, the greater the incentive and the more is produced.

This is a huge flaw in my opinion.

Incentive structures are not remotely the same for creativity and the arts as they are in business decision making.


In Game Theory terms, you are assuming that everyone derives the exact same utility value from the exact same monetary rewards in every single circumstance. That is a huge mistake. You are assuming every single creator can and will change their production of creativity in linear relation to monetary reward incentives and that is just wrong.

Then you have recognize that other things provide incentives for people: Status, Fame and Prestige being commonly studied aspects of things that often trump monetary value in decision making.

Your notion would seem to suggest that an author who was working on his magnum opus would somehow be dis-incentivized to ever creating their life's masterpiece if somehow they would not get a copyright on the work after death. That sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Your argument would seem to imply that someone like Stephen King would not have had any incentive to finish his Dark Tower series if his work was not copyright protected when he was hospitalized. Thats really ridiculous. Stephen King is a great example of an author whose behavior and decision making cannot at all be reduced to monetary incentives. Going back in history provides all sorts of examples like Hemingway or Doestoevsky. When it comes to the truly talented artists, authors and performers, monetary incentives are not going to affect "production of creativity" the same ways. Many truly talented musicians, artists and authors would be creating no matter how much they would get paid. Giving more copyright protection after death is not going to miraculously translate into more great art being produced.

Look at the vast difference between Radiohead's business model and Metallica's business model. Clearly one of them is far more motivated by typical monetary incentive structures while the other has very different incentives working on their decision making process.

Intellectual property is not effectively reducible to physical widget analogies.

--------------------

Oh and software coding is another example that blows the idea of copyright protection spurring advances out of the water.

Imagine if every single computer coder demanded copyright and patent protection for every single line of computer code ever written.

Do you know how detrimental to technological advance that would be?

Yes, there is proprietary software but specific lines of code are used and re-used in almost every type of software app. Today's internet would not exist without a huge amount of "plagiarized lines of code".

There has been studies done on this that I can look up later that demonstrate that excessive patent and copyright laws are detrimental to innovation and technological advances.

[scarybandit]

Copyright laws may prevent major corporations from stealing from one another, but the private user has in effect been free of their rule for years now.

If I may paraphrase the situation:

1) Computers are copying machines. They get better and faster every year.

2) The internet is a worldwide communication network for computers. It is getting faster.

3) No copy protection can alter the fact that digital media becomes analogue at the point of being seen/heard*.

3) Therefore, control of copying has become impossible.

4) It follows, copyright as we have known it for most of the 20th century, has become unenforceable on private users.



*eg: To illustrate, imagine in the most simple sense, you can videotape a computer screen with a video camera. Obviously it is unnecessary to use such crude techniques, but the point is made.

[Viking Prince]

This is edging very close to advocating illegal activities. Please take care.

VP