[Wikimedia-l] Study: Nobody cares about your copyright

[George Herbert]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at 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.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com