Urgent Reform Of Copyrights

Prologue

I have previously blogged about intellectual property rights here, here, and here. My opinion is to start over. Abolish any intellectual property rights going forward, preserve existing ones until they expire. This should be a worthwhile experiment to accelerate human progress.

Copyright Protections Are Way Too Long

“In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years.” (Wikipedia). Thus, if an author at the age of 15 wrote something it would be protected for up to 85 years!

Fair use does not compensate for that.

Consequences

You can not read a book or listen to music online in digital form before that copyright has expired. Thus many recent works are only available through purchase (e.g. if they are still in print) or via old fashioned libraries.

Research and utilizing these works in new and different ways is seriously hampered! Our gain of knowledge is seriously encumbered! The hurdles are too high!

Socrates

This important philosopher lived well before any intellectual property rights were defined (he died in 399 BC). Good for us!

He left no written works. Only through few of his students, e.g. Plato and Xenophon, was his wisdom conveyed to us because Plato wrote down what he remembered or what he liked. Well, Socrates had three sons. Had these sons or even Socrates enforced copyrights as we know them, perhaps his wisdom would have been lost. This is, of course, highly speculative and one can also apply the argument to achieve the opposite result.

A Service Not A Property Right

I strongly believe, the authorship of a literary or musical work is more like a service than a property right. Not much different than when a hairdresser cuts your hair perhaps in a unique way by the hairdresser’s intuition or experience.

Of course, one can argue that mental work and ingenuity are different from more physical work, but are they so different that they deserve such extraordinary protections? Why should not a plumber have his little personal trick he conceived protected in a similar way by which the plumber fixes a certain problem more efficient than others?

Many literary works are personal or trivial, such as e.g. autobiographies or pulp magazines or many prose narratives. Pop music is often not much different.

Novel ideas or observations etc. often spring not from a single mind. Many times, they are the product of human collaboration or generations of humans. Just because one person writes it down first does not justify such extensive protections.

Condemned To Poverty

One may object that so many artists have died in poverty and that intellectual property rights help to prevent poverty of authors or musicians. Or similar, so many great artists had to work full time in a different capacity, because their artistic work would not cover their cost of living.

First, I would suggest that e.g. publishers of music, literature etc. have been perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of the system not the author.

Authors can make money in different ways, e.g. merchandising, live presentations, frequent production of new works etc. To be successful you have to be enterprising like any other business owner.