I know why it happened, but it still strikes me as odd, the fact that the goalposts kept moving, as it were, with copyright. And it’s weird no matter whether the copyright is there to give other people rights to use, copy and modify the work, or rights to the author to protect and profit from their work. In other areas of the law, the general rule is that what counts is the law at the time. It’s only illegal if it was illegal at the time the offence was committed, for example (the major exception being crimes against humanity). Even patents are valid for a set period of time, and companies know how long that will be when they apply for the patent (hence all the pharmaceutical tricks with minor modifications that they hope will be just enough to get a new patent on). Only in copyright, that I’m aware of, has it been the case that the period of validity has been so massively changed and applied retroactively. From 21 years (see History of Copyright to the death of the author plus 50–75 years, depending on the country you live in and some convoluted dependencies. And then there’s the famous extension by which Mickey Mouse would have been in the public domain by now, but won’t be for a while yet.
It just seems odd to me, the fact that copyright is the exception to the general rule. But maybe it just seems odd to me.
It seems odd to me too.
“Retroactive” has more than one meaning. I think there have been only a few cases where works fell into the public domain and were then retrieved from it again. There is certainly no economic sense in extending the copyrights on existing works (no one is incented to produce more because in future the copyright might be extended, and in retrospect the dead cannot be incented at all), but it is simpler to have to apply only one rule at a time, rather than having to apply 1968 rules to works published in 1968 and 1988 rules to works published then.
If it is Disney, people are agin’ it. If it is Ma Kettle, people are for it. The law should be blind but what is she hiding under that skirt?
Should Google allow the Google Warehouse contributions to be used for a for-profit business such as SceneCaster? Do the model makers deserve any reward for their work? Is the use of a free tool such as Sketch Up sufficient reward for giving up their copyrights to Google companies? On the other hand, does anyone believe one can build complex virtual worlds without libraries? Does it matter to the public that content built in the closed server farms using in-system editors disappears the day one turns off the electricity?
Ted Nelson was right. We have to find a solution that is fair for the producer and the consumer. The headlong rush to being Google sharecroppers can easily leave the producers with nothing but their own private watermelon patch and none of the corn.
Len, I was deliberately not talking about the rights or wrongs of copyright, just about how long copyright lasts before things go into the public domain and how that has changed so much.
John, it is simpler in some ways (although the “author’s death + x years” takes away a lot of simplicity) but it does break that general principle and I still find it odd. Your argument of simplicity would theoretically be applicable to many issues, not just copyright, but I’m not aware of any to which it does apply apart from copyright — are there some?
I don’t think you can fairly comment on the terms without mentioning the conditions.
The Sonny Bono position of ‘forever and a day’ is at one extreme. The other extreme is ‘information wants to be free’. I think of these as extremes. Where is the consideration of a reconstitution of copyright itself that makes sense in the digital age beyond donations that make the other guy profitable and not just a little arrogant. Silly Valley is becoming a dreadful example.
Nelson saw this coming and tried if ineffectively to create a network that could cope. IOW, as long as one extreme (free info) works with the new mega-services without regard to any consideration of payment, expect the other extreme to be just as, well… extreme in their claims.
What I am looking at is that for some of the emergent forms of expression such as virtual world building, we have to create our own solution or continue to be Google or Linden Labs sharecroppers. It isn’t a good lifestyle and goes against everything the markup tribe was trying to make possible in terms of sharable resources.