Book People Archive

Re: [WP editorial] Copyright Craziness

Tony Kline wrote:
> 
> But....Copyright beyond the artists or inventors own lifetime does not
> promote the arts or sciences....nor does it secure the copyright to them
> but only to their representatives........or am I just being stupid as
> usual.....(ha ha ..don't answer that!!)..someone explain to me how
> copyright beyond the lifetime of the creator does either of the things
> the Constitution intended!! 

Sure.  Suppose that I've got six months to live, much to the dismay
of my spouse and infant son, who will have little to live on once
I'm gone.  But I've also thought of a plan for a novel that's sure to be
a best-seller.  If copyright survives my death, I can put all my energy
into the novel, and help support my family with the royalties,
even if I won't be around to enjoy them myself.  Hence, the copyright
provides me an incentive to write, and therefore promotes the
progress of the arts.

Mind you, even in this case it would almost certainly
suffice for the copyright to last for 25 years after my demise.  (Life plus
25 years was the minimum length specified in the Universal Copyright
Convention, now largely superseded by other treaties that specify
longer terms.)  By then, my son will have grown up, had the chance to
attend university, and can presumably work for a living himself.
And my spouse, if still alive, will have had 25 years to
save up royalties for retirement, and/or find another source of income.
(If I was a sufficiently famous author, maybe they can even support
themselves with memoirs about living with me, or arrange to have
some of my unfinished works or outlines expanded into salable books.)

As Pete Seeger said for a New York Times article,
"The grandchildren should be able to find some other way to make a living,
even if their grandfather did write 'How Much Is That Doggie in the Window.'"
(Copyright to that song, by the way, is now scheduled to last until
 the end of 2047.)

It's a more dubious stretch to retrospectively extend copyright
to my novel *after* I've written it, and passed on.  There isn't
any way to give me an incentive to first publish something I've already
published, let alone something I'm no longer around to republish or revise.
As Eric and his lawyers put it, "It is rather difficult to incent a dead
author to produce more works."  The dissenting judges in the DC circuit
seem to agree, but it has yet to be seen whether this argument against
extending already-existing copyrights will prevail.

John