Voluntary Copyright Expiration
Many of us who are involved in the discussion about copyright would like to see copyright law in America as it was back in the early 1800s, shortly after the founding of the United States. The shorthand for this is the "founder's copyright", and it's a counterpoint to the media cartels stretching copyright 70+ years out past the death of the original author so they can keep people paying for what is clearly our shared culture at this point (for instance, Winnie the Pooh, and the song Happy Birthday).
What I'd like to do is start putting out the idea of a voluntary copyright expiration. That is, if you agree with some of the aspects of copyright law (at least, for the 'limited time' as defined in the United States Constitution) but feel that it's vastly overreached, I'd encourage you to specify on your own works that your work will become cc0 (essentially public domain, even in countries that don't recognize the existence of a public domain) after a reasonable amount of time. And this isn't just for free and open source people or creative commons art. If you're an indie game studio and you agree about the overreach of copyright law, there's nothing stopping you from placing a voluntary copyright expiration on your game's license (say 5 to 25 years down the line, long after you'd otherwise stop making money from it).
Would there be any interest in this? If there's a positive reaction, I might consider adding something to the art submission form. Fuirthermore, if any other people or organizations would like to work with me on pushing this idea out to more people, leave a comment here or catch me on IRC so we can get in touch.
Thanks!
Bart
Comments
I agree wholeheartedly with you on this, and I will definitely incorporate this in my works
Brilliant idea. But a facility to record creation and expiration dates might be required. Something like a server governed by a non-profit community driven organization. Overkill?
creative commons did something like this called founders copyright but they discontinued the program.
Yeah, when I googled for it, I found a page on the CC wiki that no longer exists. I'd love to see something like that continued.
Yes.
Have a couple standard durations as well as custom. A traditional ye-olde-days length and a fast turn-around length more suitable to the heightened pace of the modern world.
You can see what the founders copyright was via google cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QTvWrHv5gdIJ:creati...
It sounds a good idea.
I guess one catch is that the likes of Disney have no issues with raiding the public domain for content that they then use in derivative works which are locked up for 95 years or more. So a system where some people voluntarily release their content isn't the same as one where it's shorter copyright terms for everyone, and I can see the standard copyleft argument - making something under a GPL-style licence expire after a shorter term just makes it easier for someone else to build a derivative work that's then copyrighted for 95 years, or perhaps indefinitely.
Though I can see it being a good thing in terms of raising awareness, making the point that there are people who believe in shorter terms. Often the debate is polarised as if the only two options are "the current system" and "no copyright everything must be free".
It would also be useful for people releasing content where they don't want to use Free/Open licences (either people doing things commercially - or perhaps people who don't want their work used commercially in the short term).
And it's perhaps a compromise between the two opposed views of GPL vs BSD style licences: I can see that I might say "I'd rather choose GPL, but in 20 years I don't really care what someone does with it, so the copyright might as well expire by then".
In times like today the expiration should more be something like 5 years, because things change very fast, especially in the digital sector, the most money is made in this time and after that it's outdated.
But I think the big reason why there is no expiration is to cause shortage in material, because the less material others get, the less they can build and the less competitors there are on the market, so more money can be made.
In the commercial point of view it is never useful to give something away for free, because this can make yourself useless and unemployed, so most companys would rather dig their stuff in the ground forever so no one can ever use it, than giving it away for free.
So I believe rules like that will not change much, there has to be a major mindshift.
I did this awhile ago with my album. It doesn't make sense for copyrights to last longer than patents so my stuff becomes CC0 after 20 years. Why should my monopoly last longer than an inventor's?
http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a55740/the-shifting-language
My work is all CC0 from the get-go because I believe not only ideologically that art should be free, but in a practical sense I can't really prohibit others from copying my work without taking them to court, etc. and I basically have no money for that. Coming from a science background it's actually rewarding to see others using your work in their projects, since we can all build off eachother's knowledge and insights. Why not treat arts the same way? Copy, share, modify, redistribute, whatever. It's what computers were made to do.
Yes, expiration dates are good. Individual items I make are usually cc0, full games will become cc0 after I sell a certan amount.
With regard to Disney raiding the public domain, I say great, let them do it. Not becauase I particularly like Disney, but rather because they're primarily responsible for the fact that copyright keeps getting extended indefinitely. If they start raiding the current public domain, that's another talking point for returning copyright law to a reasonable length of time. (Sure, most of their stories come from raiding the public domain as it is, but that's old stuff. It would be another matter entirely if any of the authors were still around to discuss their views on Disney's hypocricy with respect to copyright.)
Wait so brave isnt a good ol Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grim lion king isnt based on Kimba the White Lion finding nemo had nothing to do with Pierrot Le Poisson Clown etc etc
Of course it did. As you said, Disney has been raiding the public domain forever now. I'm just saying that if they raided the modern public domain, it would put it into a context that might grab a bit more attention so we could start talking about copyright overreach.
Actually 2/3 of the examples I gave was of them raiding current copywritten works... so ya
I really dont see them caring much
The beauty of it is that Disney doesn't have to care; the voting public does. Pushing this with Disney will accomplish nothing. Disney is in business to make a profit, and their business model is profitable.
We need to start fighting this stuff at the local and state level, in our political primaries. I'm not sure where the Libertarians and the Greens stand on this, but I do know that on the national level, the copyright situation isn't Republicans versus Democrats; it's legislators and media lobbyists versus the public. The only way to fix this is to a) vote third party, or b) go to our party primaries and vote for people who have a populist focus when it comes to copyright issues. (Note: OGA has no opinion about which political party you should vote for.)
This isn't a fight that can be won in a day. It probably can't even be won in a decade. But we can either give up and go home, or keep pushing out awareness of the issue and hopefully affect some change some time down the line.
Change.org should be a starting place for an idea like this. Let me know if you want me to start a petition on it.