Re: Knight and Public Domain

[Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>]

Bob Tess writes:
 > >> There will be a revolution - the day the Rockefellers, Gates,
 > >> and other billionaires of the world are only allowed to pass
 > >> their property on to their descendants for 75 years after their
 > >> death and then it gets distributed to the public - then artists'
 > >> property rights will finally be equal.
 > >
 > > I'm sure you don't need to have the pointed out, but just for
 > > avoidance of doubt: the two situations are not at all analogous,
 > > because if I copy the AMNH's painting, they still have the
 > > painting, whereas if I take Bill Gates's car, he doesn't have it
 > > any more.
 >
 > Artists and their descendants derive income from licensing.  When
 > copyright becomes public domain - that income is as gone as Bill
 > Gates' car.

Artists and their families gain an income from the artists' work
during the artists' life.  That money, life other possessions obtained
in other ways, will have been inherited by his family when he died.
Why anyone should _still_ be gaining an income from Knight's work 55
years after his death, and how that is supposed to stimulte Knight to
do more work, is beyond me.  And, by the way, you can bet that whoever
is getting that money, it's not his family.

 > > Of course, it doesn't immediately follow from this that I should be
 > > allowed to copy whatever I want; but it does show that any analogy
 > > with the law of physical property is at best uninformative and usually
 > > actively misleading.
 >
 > I vehemently disagree.  Copyright is a property right and is
 > defended as such in court.

That doesn't change the fact that any attempt to analogise
"intellectual property" with physical property is fatally compromised
by the fact that IP can be replicated at effectively-zero cost.  As
soon as you have a technology that allows you to do the same to my
car, you're welcome to copy that, too.

Again: I am not saying here that there is no case to be made for IP.
I am saying that there is no case by made for it _by analogy with
physical property_.  That analogy is just plain broken.  It doesn't
work.

 > From [artists'] point of view, we are not altruistically
 > benefitting society, we are hoping to pay the mortgage and leave
 > something to our children.  No one would work in the arts, or the
 > sciences for that matter if it was not possible to make a living -
 > just because it benefitted society.  In particular, paleoartists
 > never get paid what would be considered a decent wage for the
 > original work.  We count on licensing images.

Sure -- which is _exactly_ why the copyright bargain was made: to give
artists, authors and others a financial incentive to work.  As far as
I know, no-one on this list is arguing that there should be _no_
copyright.  But current copyright law, and especially the insanely
long terms, have no relation to that bargain as originally struck.

And by the way, in case you think I am blue-skying here, I make my
living writing computer programs, which are also subject to copyright.
So far as I can see, a term of ten or maybe twenty years, tops, would
be plenty enough to motivate me to produce.  Leaving my stuff under
copyright for seventy years after my death is wholly irrelevant to the
bargain.  All it achieves is to retard the use of my work.

Finally, it doesn't help that so tiny a proprtion of copyright are
held by actual creators.  Instead, it is routinely corporations
(publishers, media companies) that profit from them.  Not good.

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Supreme executive power should derive from a mandate from the
         masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!" -- Monty Python
         and the Holy Grail.