>If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your book be removed from places like IA
What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions.
And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no longer readily available? Does it depend on the type of book? What if it's for sale broadly but not in the state where you live? What if it's free but must be read in person and cannot be taken home with you?
> What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works?
Too bad. Once you publish it the first time, the cat is out of the bag. Eventually it's going to go into the public domain whether you like it or not.
> And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no longer readily available? Does it depend on the type of book? What if it's for sale broadly but not in the state where you live? What if it's free but must be read in person and cannot be taken home with you?
Good question but can definitely be decided. $100 is probably fine. Regulators can decide. Yes. Not good enough. Not good enough.
We have frameworks for mandatory music licensing, we can do more things like that.
Should we apply that logic to gplv3 code too? Just basically disregard the license since knowledge should be completely free? Or maybe impose some burden on the maintainers to keep the code active and constantly changed so that the codebase doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time?
I'm genuinely wondering , because to me there's a clear parallel yet in tech circles we almost always see defense of copyleft code (which I totally agree with, I'm extremely pro GPL) and a very heavy bias towards maintainers. I know GPL code is already free but we are talking automatically putting copyrighted/licensed material in the public domain which isn't GPL compatible.
> doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time?
The whole thing that allows copyright in the US is in the Constitution:
> 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.
The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed.
This was probably a little short, in my opinion. 25+20 seems reasonable; most works have no commercial value after 25 years, and 45 years is already a long time to keep things that have become cultural touchstones locked up. The present legal regime of life of the author plus 70 years is clearly excessive.
> but we are talking automatically putting copyrighted/licensed material in the public domain
This already happens: just after an unreasonably long period of time.
> which isn't GPL compatible.
Code which is in the public domain is freely compatible with code under the GPL.
The whole point is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Stuff kept locked away beyond its useful commercial life is no longer promoting progress (the authors have already gotten paid anything they're going to get). Indeed, most of present works borrow deeply from the public domain but the authors seek to only return the same favor to future authors in a few generations.
How long should Nintendo be able to rent-seek and convince/force the same people to buy the original Super Mario Bros. over and over again? Should that be done in 2030, or 2080? What about operating systems of the 1980s-- should they be locked up to 2090, even though no one will sell them to you?
At some point, there are substantial impediments to legitimate archival and research purposes; to keeping existing important systems working; and to allowing the free exploration and creativity that comes from remixing and building upon past works.
> The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed.
> This was probably a little short
Strongly disagree. And for anything that's distributed digitally it's an eternity.
The goal should be that as an adult you can build on the things you grew up with as a child. Anything longer than that is absurd. Remember that copyright is an infringement on your right to free speech so should need extraordinary evidence for that any additional second of the copyright term actually fulfils its constitutional purpose. You don't need to allow maximum commercial exploitation to encourage more works. In fact I would question if commercial exploitation is something that needs to be made possible at all considering that humans are naturally driven to be creative and we have a giant corpus of creative works to fall back on which can now be copied and distributed easier than ever.
The current terms that won't even let your grandchildren benefit from the work your generation funded are an outright affront to the spirit of the constitution. At this point we would be better off scrapping the whole concept of copyright.
> And for anything that's distributed digitally it's an eternity.
On the flip side, there's a fair bit of fiction, etc, where the same author has been acting as steward of the series for 35 years. Having them still get proceeds from book 1 is an important part of the calculus to continue. There's a balance to be struck here.
I do think there should be a significant fee at renewal.
> The current terms that won't even let your grandchildren benefit from the work your generation funded are an outright affront to the spirit of the constitution.
The current terms are absurd, agreed.
> At this point we would be better off scrapping the whole concept of copyright.
Nah; I like there being a market to make expensive works of intellectual property, which depends upon copyright.
Well the GPL code was never being sold in the first place, so these rules might not apply at all. And it's still available the same way it always has been, so that suggests no need for intervention. Alternatively it would make sense to treat source code differently from books and photos and music and movies.
> lose its license after an arbitrary period of time
Of course GPL code would become public domain after an arbitrary period of time, that's how public domain works. In the year 2024, why shouldn't anyone be able to reuse 1997 linux code or pieces of windows 95 in their own programs?
The GPL is a clever hack of a broken system. Given copyright existing, I like the GPL's protections. I would rather take no copyright, as that would address many (but not all) of the reasons the GPL exists.
> There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions.
This is actually exactly why I agree with OP. See also the changes made to Roald Dahl books. Future generations deserve to be able to read the content that their forebears produced as they produced it.
I'm supportive of an author's right to not initially publish something that they at the time are uncomfortable with being made public. There should be protections for that. But once something has entered into the public consciousness in a particular form, I'm not okay with a cultural censorship wave being able to memory hole the original copy and replace it with a sanitized version (or wipe it out entirely). They shouldn't be obliged to print content that they find objectionable, but that content needs to be accessible or we lose our history.
Messy and uncomfortable as it is, future generations have a right to see us as we were and are, not as the second-generation holder of our too-long copyright wishes we had been.
You have really hit the crux of the issue. We shouldn't allow corporations or individuals to control something that has become part of our shared culture. Beyond shortening copyright lengths to the absolute minimum required for the statet purpose of encouraging more creation we probably also need limitations on author rights for works that have gained widespread public adoption similar to how trademarks can become genericised. At some point you shouldn't get to decide if and how your creation is distributed even if you can still demand royalties for a while.
Authors should have that inalienable right, and it should not transferable via contract or any other means. Publishers, on the other hand, should have no such rights: they own the presses, their inalienable right should be to refrain from using them.
That part is already solved. Under current international law, if you commission a work then you own the economic rights, but the original author retains the moral rights. In fact, selling your moral rights is not possible.
It sounds like the suggestion is that retracting / completely discontinuing a book should only be part of the moral rights, not the economic rights.
I'm not sure how feasible that is, but it's not totally unprecedented. For example, one of the moral rights recognized by many countries is the right not to have your works destroyed. E.g. even if someone else owns the physical object of your painting, they are not allowed to set it on fire, and you could sue them if they did.
What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions.
And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no longer readily available? Does it depend on the type of book? What if it's for sale broadly but not in the state where you live? What if it's free but must be read in person and cannot be taken home with you?