a perennial favorite topic of debate. sound off in the replies.

  •  Helix   ( @Helix@beehaw.org ) 
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    201 year ago

    Yes, copyright and should exist, but only for about ten years, which should be enough time to get rich off it. Afterwards you can just come up with new ideas.

    • Ya copyright that lasts longer than 10 years likely stifles innovation because the people who have experience in the industry and the capital / resources just stick with making the same thing instead of improving it.

    • Thinking about it in terms of other industries shows some of the issues with copyright. I get that the protection is probably necessary since there is value in the content that’s higher than simply the marginal cost of replicating it. I don’t think a person should be able to do something once and get a lifetimes income from it though, and I’m definitely opposed to things like large producers giving the talent shitty contracts that funnels the profits to the production company and bypassing the actual actors, writers, crew, etc…

      10 years probably sounds about right. I’d also like it to be more liberal about exceptions like personal/private use, non-commercial use, educational use, journalistic use, etc… One big issue for some kinds of small media is if they use a clip from a big name bit of content the filters on many media sites will pull it down. While there’s an appeal process to claim it as news media or similar exemption, and get the media content returned the timeframe to process this often means things like news coverage lose out on the monetization because week old news type coverage isn’t very valuable. Similar things can happen with things like a home video where there’s copyright content playing in the background, even if it’s just incidental to the intended content of the video.

      I’m also okay with some kind of renewal options. This would be things like if a content producer remasters something like re-releasing a movie in HD, then 4K then HDR, or remastering a video game for a current-gen console, then the clock can start over on the remastered content, while the previous release would still roll-over into public domain.