• Rainbowsaurus@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    Bro, what? Some books take more than 5 years to write and you want their authors to only have authorship of it for 5 years? Wtf. I have published books that are a dozen years old and I’m in my mid-30s. This is an insane take.

    • monotremata@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      The one I thought was a good compromise was 14 years, with the option to file again for a single renewal for a second 14 years. That was the basic system in the US for quite a while, and it has the benefit of being a good fit for the human life span–it means that the stuff that was popular with our parents when we were kids, i.e. the cultural milieu in which we were raised, would be public domain by the time we were adults, and we’d be free to remix it and revisit it. It also covers the vast majority of the sales lifetime of a work, and makes preservation and archiving more generally feasible.

      5 years may be an overcorrection, but I think very limited terms like that are closer to the right solution than our current system is.

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      You don’t have to stop selling when a book becomes public domain, publishers and authors sell public domain/commons books frequently, it’s just you won’t have a monopoly on the contents after the copyright expires.

      • xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        how about: tiered copy rights?
        after 5 years, you lose some copyright but not all?

        it’s a tricky one but impoverished people should still be able to access culture…

          • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            Probably allowing everything but producing reproductions.

            Basically they could use the ideas from the book and whatnot to do whatever. But they couldn’t just print duplicates with a different cover and sell them for cheaper.

      • zenpocalypse@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        And how do you think that’s going to go when suddenly the creator needs to compete with massive corps?

        The reason copyright exists is for the same reason patents do: to protect the little guy.

        Just because corporations abuse it doesn’t mean we throw it out.

        It shouldn’t be long, but it sure should be longer than 5 years.

        Or maybe 5 years unless it’s an individual.

        • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          35 minutes ago

          Oh so like the music industry where every artist retains full rights to their work and the only 3 big publishers definitely don’t force them to sell all their rights leaving musicians with basically nothing but touring revenue? Protecting the little guy like that you mean?

          Or maybe protecting the little guy like how 5 tech companies own all the key patents required for networking, 3d graphics, and digital audio? And how those same companies control social media so if you are any kind of artist you are forced to hustle nonstop on their platforms for any hope if reaching an audience with your work? I’m sure all those YouTube creators feel very protected.

        • bss03@infosec.pub
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          60 minutes ago

          The reason copyright exists is for the same reason patents do: to protect the little guy.

          If you actually believe this is still true, I’ve got a bridge to sell ya’.

          This hasn’t been true since the '70s, at the latest.