You return to the original concept of (American) copyright.
Encourage more creative work by exchanging a temporary government granted monopoly now for the promise of it becoming available to society's benefit later.
Current copyright terms are too long. Not everything needs to be monetizable to the nth degree in perpetuity in order for sustainable livelihoods to exist.
> The Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be protected for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection.
This is not an American thing.
And the Berne convention was four decades before Disney was founded.
From your article:
> The United States became a party in 1989.
The person you are responding to is writing about American Copyright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St.... The first american copyright law is from 1790, which does in fact predate the bern convention, and our life of the author plus 50 years rule is from the copyright act of 1976, 13 years before the US ratified the bern convention.
So yes, it is an 'American thing' as are all issues of law in the US. And if you think that this kind of convention is meaningfully binding, just checkout the history of the US and other major powers with regards to various other international treaties, like the ICC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court.
Kinda irrelevant if it's an American thing or not. The US didn't become a party to the Berne Convention treaty until 1989, over 100 years later, but had been increasing copyright terms long before that[0]. We (and others) could just as easily withdraw from it, and make our own rules for works that originate in the US. We could even be nice and honor the copyright terms placed on works that originate in Berne Convention countries.
I think the original terms of American copyright are fine to use as a model: 14 years for all works, period. And certainly that's open for debate; even 25 or 50 years would be much more kind to the commons than what we have now. We could even do like we do for patents, and have a relatively short term, with a one-time renewal option for creators who continue to benefit from a work and still care to keep it protected.
> We could even do like we do for patents, and have a relatively short term, with a one-time renewal option for creators who continue to benefit from a work and still care to keep it protected.
As qyph mentions, I am referencing the American Copyright Act of 1790. It described itself as
"An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, Charts, And books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned."
or, in more modern english
"This is a law that aims to encourage learning by granting authors and owners of maps, charts, and books exclusive rights to their copies for a specified period."
this is important since in developing countries e.g. India, China with regards to DMCA it is commonplace to pirate Americanly-copyrighted media. so much so that it is not even frowned upon. relatively speaking, imagine a choice between paying tensfold what you pay in developed nations vs paying nothing
similarly, for 'freer' countries e.g. France, Sweden, Netherlands - it is very difficult to enforce a law not created by the state whose laws you do obide by
Encourage more creative work by exchanging a temporary government granted monopoly now for the promise of it becoming available to society's benefit later.
Current copyright terms are too long. Not everything needs to be monetizable to the nth degree in perpetuity in order for sustainable livelihoods to exist.