askBeehaw: should copyright even exist at all? and if it should, how long *should* the ideal term of copyright be?

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to Chat@beehaw.org – 192 points –

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

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I have recently been thinking that copyright and patents should be enforced until the creator made back their money plus a set profit; like 30%. The reason for this is that it makes it similar to physical products which are often sold at cost plus some profit; usually around 20-50% depending on competition.

Doing it this way has some interesting side effects.

  • It puts creative production on par with physical production.
  • It requires transparent accounting.
  • It covers the hard work required to develop something while not giving windfall profits to minor discoveries that just piggyback off the work of others.
  • The more that is charged for a protected product, the quicker it enters the public domain. If you needed to keep a copyright for a long time then you wouldn’t charge a lot for it which is still beneficial to the public.

There could be some nuances. I’d imagine that there would be some threshold amount that covers smaller items. Maybe everything is covered for the first $200,000 or so. If one was claiming more than that for R&D then they would have to produce accounting demonstrating that amount. That way smaller creators aren’t necessarily burdened like a large corporation that does R&D for a living would be.

Obviously numbers could be fudged, but it could be set up so that is difficult. Accounting could be adjusted. Perhaps quarterly or yearly reports have to be made on which projects money was spent on. That way there would be a paper trail that would make it harder to pretend like more work was done on something than actually was.

Just a thought.

I actually really like this idea. I feel like it should also have a time expiry of some sort but I overall I think it's a good balance of protections for smaller creators and a limit to excessive greed. If it's truly a revolutionary idea, it will make back the development costs quickly and the information will be available to other creators to build on.

This is a great idea for patents, but probably doesn't work as well for copyright, as the cost of a creator's time and effort is subjective and hard to prove. Additionally, this gets a little wonky with free or open source products, which are unlikely to be making much (if any) money.

Big businesses already have figures about what a creator’s time and effort is. For small creators there would be some fixed amount, like $200,000 or something, that they’d be entitled do just by creating something. If they claim their expenses were higher than that then they would have to produce receipts.

I have to imagine that a number like $200,000 for writing a book or song is pretty good. Stephen King has written like 65 books. At $200k a pop that is $13 million just from book sales. That’s not including public appearances or speeches and stuff that could also earn money from the fame. That’s rich, but not stupid rich. Mr. King’s net worth now is like $500 million or something.

The reason this doesn't work is because there is no agreed price for someone's time. If I research for a book for 20 years while I was living on my normal paycheck how much money should I make before relinquishing my copyright? If I paint a breathtaking picture in 5 minutes on a napkin I will abolish my copyrights after selling a copy for 3$?

I imagine there would be a blanket amount that covers small creators. Something like $200,000. Now if a movie studio claimed that a new movie costs $150 million to produce then they’d would have to show the accounting for that. If they could then they would be entitled to maybe $225 million ($150 million + 50%) before the movie goes into public domain.