Copyright: Forever Less One Day

Copyright is a good idea, but the way it is currently used is not.
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• Category

  Education

[thatgauravkid]

it doesn't really make sense for copyright protection to be the same for media like books and movies and for things like scientific research. Science inherently builds off of previous works, so while copyright on media content doesn't necessarily limit the amount that artists can create, copyright protection on scientific processes will inevitably hinder scientific progress.

[Marc B. Poblet]

As the video shows, anything longer than the life of the author makes no sense.

A fixed time, enough for the author to get compensated but not excessively so (as it was implemented to start with) would be better.

The idea is to incentivate the authors to create... letting them and their children (and unrelated rights holders, something that should be prevented) live forever on a single work doesn't incentivate anything but corruption.

Promoting copyleft and Creative Commons would be good, too.

[bob bobz]

but if copyright was only for authors lifetime they'd have to worry bout bein murdered

[jshowa00]

I agree with this. However, many pieces of scientific work are placed in journals for the sole purpose of gathering money to produce such articles. If articles where allowed to be freely copied, there wouldn't be much of an incentive to do things like peer review or to even publish such works. Which is why I only advocate copyright for a limited time, but the limit should be different between different types of media.

[jshowa00]

You actually can after the copyrights finished. You'll just have more competition. There isn't much of a reason to keep it above or at the life of the author. After all, why should I pay someone who hasn't done anything with the work for several decades? Why can't I remake Star Wars, A New Hope after 30-50 some years? George Lucas hasn't touched that movie ever since it was created.

[jshowa00]

There's a lot of things still in the U.S. Constitution that don't make sense, like the electoral college. The problem is, its difficult to change and many politicians are too short sided to change it.

[jshowa00]

Agreed, but I would even argue that up until the life of the author is a cop out as someone could simply just "write" (and I say that loosely) a book called Twilight and simply stop doing anything and ride the boat of earnings. I think 50 years is a nice round number because it goes to the majority of most peoples lives and it also benefits a company that the creator may have started if the author happens to die beforehand.

[jshowa00]

"Besides, if there were hundreds of different Star Wars films being released, people would get bored of them, I'd think."

This is the age of the Internet, where things like "Harlem Shake" don't get boring until "months" after they have been originally released. Its called letting the market decide.

[QuarstyAndZack]

"Lookin' good. But still dead."

Too good!

[alexydecroocq]

Reading the comments I've got the feeling this video completely failed to it's purpose... Guys, we need to do something about that! Not just sit in a chair saying this is bad! You don't get anything that way!

[MrVJ0]

Hey I'm a stalker...