On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
Maximising artistic production is a terrible goal for policy.
Why?
The whole idea of copyright - as the US started seeing it, in our constitution and thence onwards, is properly rewarding creative people for their efforts. Free content and culture and information - Wikipedia included - is great. I don't see any need to forcibly tear down the whole edifice of commercial paid arts in the process.
In particular, the public has no problem with individual musicians and writers being rewarded for their efforts. Trying to overcome that would mean making enemies out of most of the populace on this when we don't have to.
The authors I've talked to about this see books turned into films in the 8-10-15-20 year timeframes and want at least that much, and also notice that the Tolkein estate are making out like bandits from the recent trilogy, which was far longer downstream.
At the very least civil liberty, equality, and security need to be considered as well. If 15 years is indeed the correct length for maximising artistic production, the correct length, considering more important things, is much less. 14 years is indeed a meme and again would be a vast improvement. But given 14 years or any other shortening is totally infeasible in the near term, I'd prefer a bit more visionary advocacy that resets the debate, again putting artistic production at a far lower priority than freedom etc.
Nobody's made a big public case for any shorter term.
That's a mistake. The whole CC and free content movement needs to step up. We need Cory and other luminaries advocating for a sane term, and 14 is a good round number that works for everyone except insane anti-IP bigots on one hand and Hollywood on the other, whom I feel little remaining sympathy for.