I think that it is reasonable for copyright terms to last for a set period of time, and for there to be a set number of renewal terms available (if sought), and for copyrights to be transferred as if they were ordinary property of a decedent's estate.

But beware of the infamous widows and orphans argument. The value of a copyright is a total crapshoot. Most are worthless. Of the few with any economic value, most of them will see most of that value realized very shortly after publication in a given medium.

Leaving copyrights to the survivors of an author is like leaving them a big pile of lottery tickets. Most are worthless, a rare few get lucky, and it's just plain financially irresponsible unless you already knew which ones were valuable. If you're worried about the survivors, encourage authors to spend wisely, to get life insurance, to make sound investments, and to support governments that create and maintain good welfare systems as a safety net just in case. Besides, helping only the families of authors is unfair to everyone else in dire straits, so copyright is really not the place for widows and orphans.

The creation and publication of more original works is only one of the goals of copyright, but it is neither the only one nor the most important one. Copyright also seeks to enlarge the public domain as rapidly and as fully as possible. Beyond some optimal point, we get into a situation of diminishing returns. And if copyright gets too long and too onerous, it can actually be worse for society than not having it at all.

I don't think there can be too many works created and published either, but some works do come at too high a cost. If I would only create a particular work of art in exchange for a perpetual copyright and mandatory royalty payments from everyone, all the time, we can probably agree that while it would be nice for my art to exist, society will be better off overall not paying so much, even if that means the art doesn't get made.

Right now the closest we're seeing to that are the multi hundred million dollar blockbuster movies. If more sensible copyright law meant that they were no longer profitable to make, well, if rather have the law. Much as I might like the spectacle, we know we can all live with lower movie budgets.

I agree (provided that you mean that authors' right to try to profit is granted by the public for public purposes) but with one caveat: copyright exists to serve the public interest (specifically the public interest in having the greatest possible public domain) and should be fine-tuned so as to not merely fulfill that interest one way or another, but to do to the greatest extent possible. If, and only if, abolishing copyright would result in this public purpose being advanced more than in any other way, it is right to abolish it.

We should not take abolition off of the table. When it is unnecessary, there's no need for anti-abolitionists to fret, and when it is the best option, not considering it would be wrong.

Well, authors got no such thing until copyright was invented in the wary 18th century, and even then it took quite some time (with a helping hand from colonialism) for it to become widespread. But new works were still created, from antiquity on.

Copyright is an incentive to create a work, but it is not the only one, and it is not always even the most important one.

Yeah, but it's been no panacea, either. Vermont is pursuing a single-payer system, and that sounds a lot more appealing to me.

Given a copy of the broadcast on a computer with a jog wheel to control the fast forward and rewind, I doubt it would take long, especially given that most ads are scheduled to occur at more or less standard intervals. It can't be harder than what people with DVRs have to put up with now to fast forward past ads.

Probably the way to go would be to: 1) Have a system of strict formalities to have a copyright on a published work (with an expanded definition of publication including public performance or display), such as registration, notice, deposit, and a token fee (and also having lesser, automatic rights on unpublished works, which expire after a span of time that would be adequate to get a work finished and published); 2) Have terms be very short, like just a year from first publication anywhere, with renewal terms available if applied for in a timely fashion; 3) And with varying numbers of renewal terms available depending on the type of work in question. Computer software 'ages' quickly, so perhaps only 4 renewals for a 5 year maximum term. Movies tend to have a bit more life to them, so perhaps as many as 19 renewal terms for a total of 20 years maximum.

This way, works that the author doesn't feel are worth copyrighting enter the public domain immediately, works that the copyright holder doesn't feel are worth continuing to keep copyrighted enter the public domain sooner than they otherwise might, and ultimately the maximum cumulative term length is not too long either.

I disagree.

First, patents are not granted on the basis of the effort expended to invent a patentable invention. The sweat of the brow theory is just as much bunk for patents as it is for copyrights.

Second, the purpose of patents is to encourage the invention, disclosure, and bringing to market of inventions which otherwise would not be invented, disclosed, and brought to market, and where the restrictions on the public are as minimal as possible in both scope and duration. Patents have an inherent negative effect on invention, disclosure, and bringing to market, and so it is important that the incentive is large enough to spur on more of this behavior than it inescapably deters. Further, patents inherently limit the freedom of the public to practice the invention, and tend to have negative effects on the market due to the monopolistic prices the patent holder can charge, so it it is important that the positive benefits of the patent for the public also outweigh the inescapable negative effects it has on the public.

What's interesting about the software and business method fields is that there are many natural incentives for invention, and bringing to market. And while formal disclosure could still be useful, the system is gamed to make disclosures unhelpful and at any rate obervation of the patents in practice in these fields usually reveals anything that disclosure would. This means that the incentive of a patent amounts to little in these fields, but the negative effects of the patent are not mitigated at all. Thus patents here act to harm inventive activity more than they do to spur it on. Combined with the negative effects on the public, software and business method patents wind up producing more harm than good.

Someday, perhaps, the natural incentives in these two fields will diminish and there will be more of a role for an artificial incentive from patents. By all means we should watch for that so that we can revisit the issue when th time is ripe. But for now, software and business method patents harm more than they help. That's why we need to be rid of them.

Well, for now. There are plenty of copyright holders who are opposed to public libraries, stores that sell used copies of works, etc.

The duration should be whatever, in conjunction with the other aspects of copyright (e.g. the breadth of the rights) produces the greatest overall public benefit. Due to the peculiarities of the markets for copyrighted works (they typically make the vast majority of all the copyright-related money they ever will make very shortly after being published in a given medium), long terms don't provide much of an incentive for authors, and thus ought not to be granted. A grand total of 20-25 years would be 99.44% as good for most authors as a term of a million years would be. Since a copyright is a grant of something public (a right to assert exclusivity against the public) to a private author, there's nothing wrong with the public setting the terms to suit itself. If the author doesn't like it, he's free to get a job at McDonald's.

And also life estates are far from uncommon in the world of real property.

No, the previous poster was right: patents and copyrights don't overlap. That doesn't mean that a single thing might not posses some qualities which are copyrightable and some other qualities which are patentable, however.

For example, in the case of software, a patent can protect the functional aspects of the program (so long as they're novel, non obvious, useful, etc.) while a copyright protects literal copying of the particular program as it has been written. If one wrote a totally different program from scratch which reimplemented the same functionality, it might infringe on the patent, but not the copyright. If one literally copied the nonpatented portions of the software (the parts that aren't novel, nonobvious, useful, etc.), that might infringe on the copyright, but not the patent.

That's less clear. But before, you said you printed the document. The GPLed font file is a program that outputs a public domain typeface. All that's present in the hard copy is the public domain typeface. Since no action occurred for which the GPL would be triggered (using the font to output the typeface doesn't copy the font), why would the GPL apply to the hard copy? On what would it hang its hat?

If its a tangible, three dimensional object, in which the allegedly copyrightable aspects of it are embodied in the shape of its overall physical form, it's got to be either a sculptural or architectural work. Since most people aren't printing houses or other buildings yet, it's not likely to be the latter. This means that the printed output must be a sculptural work.

Making a copy of the plans may be prohibited, but there's no grounds in copyright law alone to prohibit their use, so long as the output is not copyrightable, due to, for example, the utility doctrine as applied to sculptural works.

Creating a work which is identical to another copyrighted work is only infringing if you copied the latter to get the former. If it's just a coincidence, or due to outside constraints such as efficiency, it's not infringing. Of course the more complex the work is, the harder it'll be in practice to convince a court that it wasn't copying, but careful record keeping can help. Is the IBM bios identical in any part to the compatible BIOSes first written by Columbia, Eagle, and Compaq? I don't know, but if so, their careful methodology to prove independent creation protected them.

In the US, the answer is no. Typefaces are not copyrightable. A computer program that can be used to output a typeface can be copyrightable. So something like a PostScript font file could be protected, but the letter shapes it outputs cannot be, and if you traced the output to make a new font file, you'd be in the clear. The name may be trademarked, however, so be prepared to change it. And specific typefaces may be eligible for design patents, which can be infringed on no matter how copied, so watch out for that. Here's the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Southern_Software,_Inc.

Even if it's original and creative, the utility doctrine still applies to sculptural works: only the non-useful portions are copyrightable, and that's only if they're separable from the useful portions. If the gear had a decorative pattern on the side, the pattern might be protectable, but not the gear.