Just playing the devil's advocate here but what if the copyright owner does not want the content distributed anymore? Maybe now they find the content distasteful or embarrassing.
The original term on copyright was 28 years maximum; under that rule, most copyrighted works would already be in the public domain. I think 28 years is probably closer to the "right value" than 95 years, but I'd be okay with a bit longer.
Who cares what they want? I don't. Culture should belong to us, not them.
Copyright exists to allow them to turn a tidy profit so they're properly incentivized. It's not there to enable their delusions of control nor their perpetual rent seeking. They've already turned their profit, now it's time for the works to enter the public domain. Nobody cares whether they like it or not, it's human culture and it belongs to us all.
I see what you mean now. If creators don't publish their creations, they won't be experienced by anyone. They don't matter to anyone, we don't even know they exist. I suppose it's sad in an existential way that their works could be lost without anyone experiencing them or any preservation efforts being made but what can you do?
I think it's also important to consider that the sharing of creative works is also not so boolean. Works don't always fall into neat categories of "100% publicly published to the world" or "100% completely private and irrelevant to anyone". There's a lot of grey area in the middle.
I didn't suggest that it was. I'm suggesting that this perspective on copyright is very myopic. Regulating copyright as if they are all culturally significant works is like regulating haystacks as if they consist only of needles.
The analogy doesn't hold. Not all copyrighted works are or will be culturally significant, but all have the potential to be culturally significant. We have no way of knowing ahead of time. It's regulating haystacks as if any individual straw may actually be a needle.
A work that isn't publicly shared by the author could be shared by someone else without permission. Copyright law does and should continue to criminalize this.
Literally everything "of value" that was ever published was unpublished for some period of time.
Also, people may keep works private not because they lack value, but for other reasons.
As a very simple example, a someone might take a racy photo for their own private use, not because it would have no commercial value, but because they prefer not to commercialize it. And there are hundreds of other reasons why someone might choose not to share a work with the world.
Culture itself does. I am referring to the fact that most things that people create are not published, do not become popular, and don't become culturally relevant.
As much as I wish that my meeting notes from my standup this morning were good enough to become a cultural icon, I'm pretty sure the entire planet, including me, will forget about them next week. Mundane creations like this consist the vast majority of copyrighted works.
You gotta be kidding me. They literally own our culture. In the most capitalistic sense imaginable. Actual government-granted monopolies on ideas, bits of information. Works you grew up with? You and your children will be long dead before they enter the public domain. If they could delete the copy you have stored in your brain, they would.
> All you'll do with your approach is make creators less like to ever create unique works.
That's too bad! The entire bargain with copyright is that creators are granted an exclusive period with their work in exchange for the work entering the public domain.
That's the deal.
It's a complete violation of the spirit of the copyright agreement to take advantage of the financially useful period of monopoly over the work, then use the remainder of the exclusive period to try and ensure the work cannot be archived and cannot enter the public domain.
Wu Tang Clan recorded an album and sold it to Martin Shkreli for $2 million (he no longer owns it). If I manage to get a copy of it, should I be able to distribute it freely?
Depending on the contract, Shkreli may have those rights. I’m talking about if I managed to record a copy of the record would there be anything wrong with me distributing it?
Temporary problem that will work itself out with time once the last creators die. After one generation under this system, nobody will create anything that isn't useless free garbage.
