I don't know why we don't adopt a renewal licensing system, with increasing costs for each renewal.
Contra this article, I don't think most folks begrudge lengthy copyright when it is incentivizing someone to invest in the IP, and they're reaping valuable rewards for it. It has fallen on hard times, but it is good that Marvel Studios was incentivized to create the MCU. I don't find media based on works in the public domain significantly better, and we've seen little enough of it that I'm inclined to think the IP system plays some role in encouraging creative production.
The issues are (i) the same lengthy copyright applies to all works, stymying use in other fields and areas when for most works there's little or no possible commercial use for them, and (ii) companies squatting or sitting on IP and not developing it, or doing so poorly.
It seems that both issues could be addressed by a renewal system in which the copyright expires after a relatively short period of time unless renewed -- initially for a low fee, and then for increasing amounts thereafter. Heck, let Disney keep Mickey Mouse indefinitely if it is willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars (and eventually billions of dollars) every ten years to do so. But in the meantime let us access the vast majority of human knowledge for which such lengthy copyright serves no purpose.
This is why electronic music is the best music--the culture of the genre is fast and loose with IP, especially since the big acts make most of their money from live shows.
We've seen some IPs expire and all anyone can think to do is make terrible horror movies, so I'm not sure if lawyers are really the problem as much as nostalgia and other economic factors. I think the bland aesthetics is a different problem and "millennial sterile" is just a trend that we are starting to get out of.
I didn't realize this morning that this wasn't by Matt, but this post is a much better informed version of the rant I used to love to give as a teenager circa 1999.
Interesting, I always assumed we are trapped in an era of remakes and repackaging simply because the baby boomers and Gen-X together are the largest cohort in the West and also the cohorts with money to spend and catering to boomer + Gen-X nostalgia therefore dominates all production decisions.
Your point that sampling has become a corporate tool was something I had not quite appreciated. Not too long ago when I was in college (okay... 15 years, give or take), sampling was viewed as quite transgressive. RIAA lawsuits were still ongoing. We had Girl Talk come for a concert on campus, and that was edgy at the time. Remix albums like American Edit had been taken down by record labels. On one hand, it's a clear victory for fair use to see the change in attitudes toward sampling. On the other hand, having it largely become just a tool to recycle back catalogs is a little sad.
As pointed out by another commenter, the Constitution lays out pretty clear guidelines for intellectual property. These have been abrogated by treaties (and that's why many of us did not support the TPP, which would have only made it worse), but treaties ultimately do not supersede the Constitution.
The idea of compulsory licensing would be a great fix... for patents. It doesn't fully resolve the issues around copyrights, because many uses of copyrighted material create no profit and therefore cannot afford licensing. (Disclosure: I am a radical IP abolitionist; I think copyright infringes on freedom of thought and freedom of speech, and should simply be eliminated. I favor an attribution regime, where you must disclose any influences/origins for any work. In practice, I recognize this will never occur. The problem is that there is no Nash equilibrium that would keep copyright at a reasonable term like 10 years.)
I haven't read the article yet, but long copyrights are such a bugbear of mine that I'll probably do a before-and-after on this one.
My before thought is that while normally the gross deficiencies of US law come from not following what normal, functional governments do because "America special ooga booga", copyright aggrandizement seems to be something that is being pushed largely from abroad (much of the appalling overextension of copyright is the result of international treaties). I am not sure how this insanity infected the brains of seemingly every lawyer in the world, so I am interested to see if there are any theories in the piece or comment section.
It's odd to ascribe as "the hidden cause of cultural stagnation" laws that have been on the books for a very long time. So why is the stagnation occurring just now? It could be that smart people have finally figured out how to use the rights purchasing game to their advantage now and not before, but that would have to be demonstrated.
And, to be honest, do we really care about the increase in the number of music biopics now? I'd say that if it gave us "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" it was all worth it.
Thanks for featuring me! I love talking about how to make copyright work better for artists and think it’s an especially important issue in the age of AI.
Feels apt to mention that Star Spangled Banner would, itself, be a good choice for some of this idea. It reused a tune, after all. My naive understanding was that that used to be the norm. Local towns would have varied lyrics to similar tunes. (And, indeed, the alphabet song and twinkle twinkle show similar in kids songs.)
There are a ton of really incredible songs that fit in this category: Battle Hymn of the Republic, Greensleeves, Danny Boy…
Edit: I misremembered - it’s not clear whether greensleeves is non-original, but the various other songs that use it’s tune (eg, what child is this) certainly are
"There are scores of covers that are now considered the canonical version of a song. . . . Jeff Buckley covers Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah'"
Uh, I've never even heard of "Jeff Buckley" before, let alone known that he covered "Hallelujah," and definitely let alone considered such a cover to be the canonical version of the song. (If someone asked me to name an artist who covered "Hallelujah," I'd name K.D. Lang.)
It's always nice to see an argument against long copyrights. Seems like the wind fell out of the sails of that movement, especially when Congress quietly (and still somewhat oddly to me) stopped doing retroactively extensions.
But as long as the Berne Convention exists, I doubt there's much that can be done about it. More compulsory licensing would be great. It's been a clear success for song covers, as you showed. But that hasn't led to expansion even in music. Imagine if we had it for streaming video. At the very least copyrights should extinguish for orphan works or things that are out of print (Disney shouldn't be allowed to lock things in the vault).
All this talk about America First but I've never seen a MAGA person complain that the US abandoned its principles of personal liberty (copyright is a restriction on speech) to adopt European moral rights ideology. Sad.
The original copyright was 14 years with an optional paid extension to 28, so the current automatic 95+ years (which requires no registration, no copyright or authorship notice attached to the work, nothing) is a dramatic difference. Something I always mention, just to make it clear what incentives were involved, is that every copyright extension in history was retroactive.
Retroactive. The basis for copyright in the constitution is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." See if you can work out how a retroactive extension promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
I don't know why we don't adopt a renewal licensing system, with increasing costs for each renewal.
Contra this article, I don't think most folks begrudge lengthy copyright when it is incentivizing someone to invest in the IP, and they're reaping valuable rewards for it. It has fallen on hard times, but it is good that Marvel Studios was incentivized to create the MCU. I don't find media based on works in the public domain significantly better, and we've seen little enough of it that I'm inclined to think the IP system plays some role in encouraging creative production.
The issues are (i) the same lengthy copyright applies to all works, stymying use in other fields and areas when for most works there's little or no possible commercial use for them, and (ii) companies squatting or sitting on IP and not developing it, or doing so poorly.
It seems that both issues could be addressed by a renewal system in which the copyright expires after a relatively short period of time unless renewed -- initially for a low fee, and then for increasing amounts thereafter. Heck, let Disney keep Mickey Mouse indefinitely if it is willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars (and eventually billions of dollars) every ten years to do so. But in the meantime let us access the vast majority of human knowledge for which such lengthy copyright serves no purpose.
This is why electronic music is the best music--the culture of the genre is fast and loose with IP, especially since the big acts make most of their money from live shows.
We've seen some IPs expire and all anyone can think to do is make terrible horror movies, so I'm not sure if lawyers are really the problem as much as nostalgia and other economic factors. I think the bland aesthetics is a different problem and "millennial sterile" is just a trend that we are starting to get out of.
I didn't realize this morning that this wasn't by Matt, but this post is a much better informed version of the rant I used to love to give as a teenager circa 1999.
Interesting, I always assumed we are trapped in an era of remakes and repackaging simply because the baby boomers and Gen-X together are the largest cohort in the West and also the cohorts with money to spend and catering to boomer + Gen-X nostalgia therefore dominates all production decisions.
Your point that sampling has become a corporate tool was something I had not quite appreciated. Not too long ago when I was in college (okay... 15 years, give or take), sampling was viewed as quite transgressive. RIAA lawsuits were still ongoing. We had Girl Talk come for a concert on campus, and that was edgy at the time. Remix albums like American Edit had been taken down by record labels. On one hand, it's a clear victory for fair use to see the change in attitudes toward sampling. On the other hand, having it largely become just a tool to recycle back catalogs is a little sad.
As pointed out by another commenter, the Constitution lays out pretty clear guidelines for intellectual property. These have been abrogated by treaties (and that's why many of us did not support the TPP, which would have only made it worse), but treaties ultimately do not supersede the Constitution.
The idea of compulsory licensing would be a great fix... for patents. It doesn't fully resolve the issues around copyrights, because many uses of copyrighted material create no profit and therefore cannot afford licensing. (Disclosure: I am a radical IP abolitionist; I think copyright infringes on freedom of thought and freedom of speech, and should simply be eliminated. I favor an attribution regime, where you must disclose any influences/origins for any work. In practice, I recognize this will never occur. The problem is that there is no Nash equilibrium that would keep copyright at a reasonable term like 10 years.)
The fairly recent copyright extensions were a corporate travesty. You are correct that we should cut back to the Berne guidelines.
> wouldn’t we just end up with an avalanche of horrible “Star War”-related content?
Yes.
Ask me how I know.
I haven't read the article yet, but long copyrights are such a bugbear of mine that I'll probably do a before-and-after on this one.
My before thought is that while normally the gross deficiencies of US law come from not following what normal, functional governments do because "America special ooga booga", copyright aggrandizement seems to be something that is being pushed largely from abroad (much of the appalling overextension of copyright is the result of international treaties). I am not sure how this insanity infected the brains of seemingly every lawyer in the world, so I am interested to see if there are any theories in the piece or comment section.
It's odd to ascribe as "the hidden cause of cultural stagnation" laws that have been on the books for a very long time. So why is the stagnation occurring just now? It could be that smart people have finally figured out how to use the rights purchasing game to their advantage now and not before, but that would have to be demonstrated.
And, to be honest, do we really care about the increase in the number of music biopics now? I'd say that if it gave us "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" it was all worth it.
Thanks for featuring me! I love talking about how to make copyright work better for artists and think it’s an especially important issue in the age of AI.
Excellent work, thank you.
Feels apt to mention that Star Spangled Banner would, itself, be a good choice for some of this idea. It reused a tune, after all. My naive understanding was that that used to be the norm. Local towns would have varied lyrics to similar tunes. (And, indeed, the alphabet song and twinkle twinkle show similar in kids songs.)
There are a ton of really incredible songs that fit in this category: Battle Hymn of the Republic, Greensleeves, Danny Boy…
Edit: I misremembered - it’s not clear whether greensleeves is non-original, but the various other songs that use it’s tune (eg, what child is this) certainly are
"There are scores of covers that are now considered the canonical version of a song. . . . Jeff Buckley covers Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah'"
Uh, I've never even heard of "Jeff Buckley" before, let alone known that he covered "Hallelujah," and definitely let alone considered such a cover to be the canonical version of the song. (If someone asked me to name an artist who covered "Hallelujah," I'd name K.D. Lang.)
Yes he’s the artist who launched the Hallelujah cover phenomenon and most of the young men doing it are sort of doing him.
As someone who first knew Hallelujah sung by the dulcet voice of….Leonard Cohen, it’s incredible to me that his song has gone so mainstream!
He died young. A very influential artist, though, from what I understand. Musician's musician, as the saying goes.
Great post and agreed to all.
I say this as an artist that did even have a small record deal once. But I never made any money
Glad I went into finance
It's always nice to see an argument against long copyrights. Seems like the wind fell out of the sails of that movement, especially when Congress quietly (and still somewhat oddly to me) stopped doing retroactively extensions.
But as long as the Berne Convention exists, I doubt there's much that can be done about it. More compulsory licensing would be great. It's been a clear success for song covers, as you showed. But that hasn't led to expansion even in music. Imagine if we had it for streaming video. At the very least copyrights should extinguish for orphan works or things that are out of print (Disney shouldn't be allowed to lock things in the vault).
All this talk about America First but I've never seen a MAGA person complain that the US abandoned its principles of personal liberty (copyright is a restriction on speech) to adopt European moral rights ideology. Sad.
The original copyright was 14 years with an optional paid extension to 28, so the current automatic 95+ years (which requires no registration, no copyright or authorship notice attached to the work, nothing) is a dramatic difference. Something I always mention, just to make it clear what incentives were involved, is that every copyright extension in history was retroactive.
Retroactive. The basis for copyright in the constitution is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." See if you can work out how a retroactive extension promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts.