katatak's Journal: The Idea of Perpetual Copyright

A recent New York Times editorial piece expressed the idea that copyright should be perpetual. The idea that an author or composer has any right to keep a creation he has sold to a publisher is new to the 20th & 21st Centuries. Before modern copyright law, authors, unless they self-published themselves or had some other contractual deal with the publisher got no further remuneration.

For instance, when Tchaikovsky sold his works (most of them and all of the most famous ones) to his publisher Pyotr Jurgensen , he had no more control over those works and got no further remuneration.

When he was short of cash, he had to write more music and sell it. This arrangement was lucrative to both Tchaikovsky and Jurgensen. On his death, his twin brother Modeste, inherited nothing of Tchaikovsky's published creations. Of course since he (Modeste) was a poet, he had his own publisher. (This information is from David Brown's biography of Tchaikovsky ISBN 0575054271)

What existed then was a healthy commercial market place; a composer writes music which he sells to a publisher. Jurgensen printed the music and sold it to the public. All sales were final. The fact that the copyrights lapsed was encouragement for the production of more music.

Unfortunately this market place has failed and in its place we have created an abortion which does not encourage new authors or composers, but discourages publishers from taking chances on new works my new authors and composers. As well, the Public Domain has been steadily depleted of new works, because fewer and fewer new works are added to the Public Domain each year.

Along with the sad state of the Public Domain, we have large corporations who hoard artistic works, and who demand more and more power. Pay per view, Pay per read (perhaps even pay per word) are all aberrations of new copyright laws.

Copyrightable things are the expression of ideas. As such they belong to another groups of things which we call ephemeral. This distinguishes them from real things, which have material substance. The problems with pinning down an ephemeral object or idea is obvious -- no physical being. There can be at any one time none or an infinite number of any single ephemeral item. A piece of Real Estate (land) is unique and can be identified precisely by coordinates on a map.

Why should a composer be entitled to remuneration ad infinitum for a work he creates? I have a hard time reconciling to myself that there is a class of people who should be remunerated again and again for the same piece of work, and some for work which they did not do! My father only got paid once for the heavy duty logging machinery he repaired. I don't get paid again and again for the piano lesson I teach or the computer network I repair unless I teach another lesson or keep maintaining the network I repaired. Composers and authors and all so called "owners" of the ephemeral have no right to be paid for doing nothing. Not one penny.

I believe we need some copyright law to bring order to publishing. A publisher should have to sell something to be able to make any money from his copyright work. But this implies work in that something is printed and distributed or something is placed on a website which has traffic and can charge a fee for reading or can sell advertising space. This is the only way we have a viable economy. People do work for pay. Companies produce goods for sale.

A less obvious fact is that books and compact discs are mechanical devices. They are not the work of art! A book must be read to express an idea and a CD must be listened to for you to hear the music. A printed musical score must be performed (actually, it is on-the-spot compiling) to express the musical idea.

Publishers make the intangible, tangible. This is the way they make money and add value to their contribution to the society which gives them some protection for the ephemeral works they publish. This contribution is even more valuable when they give physical existence to a previously unexpressed artistic idea. So composers, authors, and programmers alike create new works and have them published or they self-publish them thus adding to the greater public good.

Not allowing extended periods of copyright protection is one of the ways in which we encourage creative activity. Allowing someone to live their whole lives because of one good idea sells the creator and the public short

For this reason, I argue for drastically decreasing the length of time any work is protected! The length of the copyright should be half the life expectancy of a human at most. Personally I would argue that 25 years is a reasonable period of time.

These concepts worked in the past. Not only J.S. Bach, but thousands of now unknown composers living in his time produced music in this manner. They were paid once for what they produced. Music was lucrative career if you were good. In fact Generations of the Bach family made their living in this manner.

We are increasingly unable to enforce copyright laws. We have already seen the futility of DRM, but we also see increasing demands by publishers to increase the term of copyright. This will only lead to an even greater disaster than we have now in the area of so called "Intellectual Property".