How Much Copyright Protection Do We Need?
The goal of copyrights (and patents), as clearly
stated in the Constitution, is "To promote the progress of science and useful
arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right
to their respective writings and discoveries." This limited monopoly gives
incentive to authors (and other artists) and inventors to create, because they
can make money on it for a while before everybody else has a go at it.
Money.
Once the art stops selling, it
no longer generates money for the artist. No more incentive. Keeping the
public from the art at after its commercial profitability is gone benefits
noone. Letting the public at it, on the other hand, creates massive opportunity
for transformations and new creations. The Public
Domain.
But art never completely stops
generating money. Sure, that book might not have sold any copies this year, but
maybe next year it will. Or maybe in ten years. To maximize incentive to
artists you really have to make the monopoly last for all
eternity.
But let's say, just for a
moment, that we're willing to be happy giving the artists 95% of the potential
revenue for a work of art. It might take a thousand years to get every drop of
that last 5%. Surely that's a small enough amount that the artists can
reasonably donate it to the public as gratitude for the
support.
How many years would a
monopoly have to last to give that 95% of the money? I don't have numbers, I
fear -- just guesses.
I'm willing to
bet that books, movies, music, videogames, and the like get well over 95% of
their income in the first 5 years. I know mine do. If people were allowed to
pirate my games after they were 5 years old, it wouldn't impact my bottom line
at all.
Copyright now gives massive
protection for roughly 100 years. And now they can't legally sing "Happy
Birthday" to you at Denny's without getting permission first. That just ain't
right.
Filed Tue - January 24, 2006, 06:43 PM in
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