Comments for The economics of copyright protection

messad
Copyright protects works of the mind, literary and artistic creations. This denomination brings together various categories, from photography, from plays to pieces of music, from novels to masterpieces. For a work to be protected by copyright, it is sufficient that it is original creation, that is to say it bears the imprint of the…
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Copyright protects works of the mind, literary and artistic creations. This denomination brings together various categories, from photography, from plays to pieces of music, from novels to masterpieces.
For a work to be protected by copyright, it is sufficient that it is original creation, that is to say it bears the imprint of the personality of the author. But can the relative narrowness of copyright explain this long duration? This is indeed fixed in the TRIPS agreements 70 years after the death of the author, and put the justifications that can be advanced: the success of a work is uncertain, and can happen well after the first edition , a long-term copyright is then an additional guarantee for the author to obtain the profits of his work even if it would be late.

The appropriation of the innovation is the subject of today quite lively challenge. copyright is questioned on the internet in the name of the freedom of diffusion of the culture especially with the craze raised by the sites of exchange of musical files; patent law is accused of preventing the access of the poorest people to AIDS drugs and blocking the spread of generics in third world countries such as South Africa or Brazil, as well as elsewhere controversies broke out over the patentability of the living, in the name of philosophical principles and the laws of freedom of expression; Intellectual property; it’s theft we could write. A famous scientist had proclaimed well before innovations were to be patented, because it was to take them away from the happiness of the people.

And yet, despite these criticisms, all of which are not groundless, intellectual property is enjoying growing success, owing to the entry of the developed countries into the “knowledge economy” and their concern to protect the results of globalization. research to stimulate activity and guarantee the competitiveness of their companies in the face of the technological challenge.

Sources :
• Francois Lévéque ; Yann Meniére économie de la propriété intellectuelle 2003 p 86.
http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/fr/articles/2017/article_0002.html
• 1 TGI Paris, 18 juin 2015, Orange c. Free Jurisprudence / Innovation / logiciel
Publié le 4 septembre 2015 Par Juriscom.net.
• ² Nombre recorde de demandes internationales de brevet en 2016 forte demande en faveur de la protection des marque et des dessins et modèles industriels

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Ivaldi Léa  
Pour commencer, parler de droit d’auteur se résume avant tout à parler des artistes qui se trouvent derrière leur création mettant parfois des mois voir des années à être façonné. De ce point de vue, je trouve l’omniprésence des lobbies quel qu’il soit abusif d’autant plus quand il devient un facteur déterminant dans des secteurs qui auraient dû en toute…
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Pour commencer, parler de droit d’auteur se résume avant tout à parler des artistes qui se trouvent derrière leur création mettant parfois des mois voir des années à être façonné.
De ce point de vue, je trouve l’omniprésence des lobbies quel qu’il soit abusif d’autant plus quand il devient un facteur déterminant dans des secteurs qui auraient dû en toute logique leur échapper comme il est le cas pour les lobbies pharmaceutiques.
En ce sens, je pense que l’intérêt commun de la société à savoir l’accès à la Culture artistique devrait prévaloir sans oublier l’artiste.

Le fait de créer une extension pour les doits d’auteur peut nous faire déceler plusieurs avantages, mais également quelques inconvénients.

Tout d’abord, cette extension pose un réel avantage puisqu’elle permet de sauvegarder sur une période plus longue des œuvres qui sont le fruit de nombreuses heures de travail ; de plus prétendre aux droits d’auteur peut assurer une vie prospère à un grand nombre d’artistes, l’extension permettrait donc de rallonger cette prospérité remise en cause aujourd’hui dans certains secteurs artistique avec l’arrivée des nouvelles technologies.
Nous pouvons donc imaginer que cette extension, ainsi que le droit d’auteur en général permettra le développement des artistes au sein du pays, car ces derniers se sachant assurés d’un profit économique sur leur travail auront plus envie de développer leur art et surtout leurs œuvres.

Mais cet avantage peut rapidement devenir un inconvénient pour le développement de la culture au sein d’une société, effectivement certains auteurs sachant leurs œuvres protégé plus longtemps n’auront pas envie de développer et de créer de nouvelle œuvre se reposant ainsi sur leurs acquis.
Un second inconvénient mené par cette extension serait de créer une sorte de « monopole » de longue durée, c’est-à-dire que les œuvres une fois créés ne pourront plus être exploitées, développées d’un point de vue artistique, cela reviendrait donc à « endiguer » l’art.
Heureusement pour l’art, cette notion de droit d’auteur n’est que contemporaine, car si nous remontons le temps, nous pouvons voir que de nombreuses tendances artistiques on vue le jour grâce à de multiples inspirations et emprunt. Nous pouvons prendre pour exemple la naissance de la peinture de la monarchie catholique d’Espagne qui ne fut crée que tardivement en 1556 sous le règne de Philippe II la première peinture dites espagnoles a dû mélanger l’art pictural italien et ses modèles, les détails de la peinture flamande ainsi que sa propre spécificité le registre de la dévotion en accord avec la foi du monarque.

Pour conclure, les droits d’auteur et plus précisément l’extension des droits d’auteur comporte des avantages comme des inconvénients qui peuvent être source de différent débat. Néanmoins nous pouvons tout de même nous interroger sur la condition de l’artiste dans notre société à savoir si l’art est un métier, dont les créations doivent être génératrice d’argent ou avant tout une passion symbole de partage et d’amour de l’art.

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Paul Belleflamme

Très bonne analyse. Pour les commentaires suivants, n’oubliez pas de citer vos sources!

Anastasia  
The original idea of copyright law is to protect the creators of new works from unauthorised duplication. Only the author has the right to reproduce a work and make profit from it. On one hand, I think it is a good idea because it takes time and effort to create something and by …
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The original idea of copyright law is to protect the creators of new works from unauthorised duplication. Only the author has the right to reproduce a work and make profit from it. On one hand, I think it is a good idea because it takes time and effort to create something and by protecting the author as well as its creation, it also preserves the incentive to create more. On the other hand, I must agree with the author of the blog American Thinker, Mike Konrad, when he says that « copyright law’s exaggerated length and scope actually chokes off artistic genius ». In my opinion, the extension of copyright is not such a good thing. When an author dies, it doesn’t make sense to keep protecting him and prevent other creators to improve or develop the work. Also, nowadays, with the evolution of technology, everything is on the internet. Most of the works are accessible to everyone and everywhere and you can easily download them.
To conclude, I think that this idea of protection gives value to a creator’s work because the creation process is long. However, there should be a limit to copyright protection in order to let new creators take a risk and show what they are worth.

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Paul Belleflamme

Thanks for giving your opinion. For you next comment, try to strengthen your arguments by quoting some existing analyses.

William Follet  
A mon sens, adopter une approche purement économique face à la questions des droits d’auteur, limite la compréhension et l’analyse des enjeux soulevés par l’extension de leur durée. En effet, comme le montre l’article les droits d’auteurs concernent principalement l’industrie culturelle (cinéma, musique, édition,...). Dès lors plutôt que de s’interroger sur le bien-fondé d’une…
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A mon sens, adopter une approche purement économique face à la questions des droits d’auteur, limite la compréhension et l’analyse des enjeux soulevés par l’extension de leur durée. En effet, comme le montre l’article les droits d’auteurs concernent principalement l’industrie culturelle (cinéma, musique, édition,…).
Dès lors plutôt que de s’interroger sur le bien-fondé d’une extension de sa durée dans la globalité du ce secteur j’essaierais plutôt de mettre en exergue les raisons poussant l’industrie culturelle à revendiquer une telle extension et ce , particulièrement au regard de l’évolution du marché musical au cours des 20 dernières années conjointement à la “révolution numérique”.

En premier lieu il peut sembler légitime que l’industrie culturelle demande une extension des droits d’auteurs afin de compenser les pertes continues de revenue que connaît le secteur depuis les 20 dernières années, notamment avec l’essor du téléchargement et de la diffusion illégale via le web (streaming, P2P, Torrents, …).
Selon une étude du cabinet Tera (1) datant de 2010, en 2008 le manque à gagner pour l’industrie culturelle en Europe dû au téléchargement illégal s’élevait à plus de 10 milliards d’euros de recette et la perte à près de 200 000 emplois. L’extension des droits d’auteurs serait donc une juste compensation pour le préjudice subi sans pour autant avoir à (ré)inventer un nouveau modèle économique plus pérenne pour l’industrie culturelle.

Aujourd’hui, certains considèrent que cette transition est déjà faite, notamment dans l’industrie musicale. En effet, depuis un dizaine d’années les majors multiplient les partenariats avec les acteurs numériques spécialisés dans la diffusion web, VEVO pour la diffusion sur la plateforme YouTube et Spotify, Deezer, Apple music pour le streaming et téléchargement audio (2). Les résultats parlent d’eux même: au premier trimestre 2017 le streaming avait rapporté 467 millions d’euros à UMG (Universal Music Group), soit 75 % de ses ventes numériques, et 36 % de son chiffre d’affaires total (3).
Cependant on ne peut toujours pas parler de modèle économique viable à proprement parler: si la massification du volume d’écoute est une réalité, les revenus générés par la musique dématérialisée en streaming restent marginaux par rapport au format payant unitaire téléchargeable ou physique. Pour un abonnement à un service musical en streaming de 9,90€ par mois les droits d’auteurs représentent environ 1 euros et ce indépendamment du volume de musique écouté (4).
De plus afin de proposer un catalogue et un niveau de service élevé, les entreprises de streaming se sont lancées dans une course à l’investissement et affichent des résultats financiers décevants après près de dix années d’existence: Spotify leader du Marché avec plus de 140 millions d’utilisateurs affiche une perte nette de plus d’un demi milliard de dollars (3).

Dès lors, dans un contexte de nouveaux mode de consommation de produit culturels couplé à un cycle de renouvellement toujours plus court de l’offre culturelle (massification de sa consommation) , la question de l’extension de la durée des droits d’auteurs me semble secondaire tant l’importance de changements structurels au sein de cette industrie semble urgent et nécessaire en vue d’assurer sa pérennité.

Sources:

(1)
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2010/03/19/le-piratage-fera-t-il-1-2-million-de-chomeurs-en-europe-en-2015_1321210_651865.html

(2) http://archives-lepost.huffingtonpost.fr/article/2011/06/15/2523855_les-majors-musicales-sony-emi-warner-universal-decident-enfin-de-s-associer-aux-acteurs-du-web-spotify-deezer-apple.html

(3)
https://www.nextinpact.com/news/104572-spotify-539-millions-deuros-pertes-en-2016-malgre-explosion-nombre-dabonnes.htm

(4)
http://www.multiroom.fr/remuneration-des-artistes-par-les-services-de-streaming-en-2017/

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Paul Belleflamme

Très bien! Nous aurons l’occasion de reparler de tout cela (piratage, streaming, …) plus en détail dans la suite du cours.

Chachki  
Though the idea of a copyright comes from a good place (the necessity to protect the content creator, the artist, let the artist have the monopoly of the incomes of his creation), I feel like it has become a way to create art while making sure you get every penny you can from it. And with the the continuous extension…
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Though the idea of a copyright comes from a good place (the necessity to protect the content creator, the artist, let the artist have the monopoly of the incomes of his creation), I feel like it has become a way to create art while making sure you get every penny you can from it. And with the the continuous extension of the copyright’s term under the influence of the artistic industry, it makes me wonder, does the copyright influence the pace at which art is created ? Would art be created the same way, at the same pace, if copyrighting wasn’t a thing ? Would nowadays artists have the same taste for art and interest in what they’re creating if they didn’t have the monopoly of the incomes generated by their art and know it from the start ? By that I mean that, way before being a way of making a living, art is a passion, a way a living, something vital to an artist along with eating, breathing and sleeping. “Art is not a thing, it is a way” said Elbert Hubbard. A singer sings because he’s passionate about it, a writer writes because he feels the needs to, not because he needs to make money out of it. In someway, copyright has distorted the way we see and use art. We share our art, but we want no one to use it because when the amount of money that can be gained from placing a copyright on a our art is superior to the idea of sharing your art with the rest of the world, regardless of what others make of it, it becomes a business just like any other. It is a vicious circle because no matter how much time and effort your spend on trying to protect your content, others will find a way to use it against your will, the only way to make sure others aren’t making profit out of it is to hide it from the public eye. For instance, youtubers that want to use a famous song as a background music will choose a cover of that song instead out of fear of facing a copyrigh strike. I once myself have faced a copyright strike from a small french glam metal from Paris. I bought their album on itunes and their songs were impossible to find on youtube, so I uploaded their full album and got a copyright strike on each and each and every video I posted. At that time I viewed that as a way of sharing that hidden gem (the album) with friends and other music lovers.
Oscar Wilde once said “imitation is the highest form of flattery”. Artists should see people sharing and using their art as a way of them enjoying what they’ve created, but copyright has in a way perverted the art, and the way artists view and create content. Maybe art stops being art, and starts being a business like any other when money is involved. To sum up my idea, here’s a great saying from Walt Disney himself : “People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check or an autograph.”

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LARCHER Julie
I'm going to present my comment in two part. The first one concentrates on the artistic point of view. I do not share totally the opinon of this article which says that "the law on the copyright in America gives to the individuals and to the societies a paralysing seizure by our culture". Indeed a too strong copyright can kill of news…
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I’m going to present my comment in two part.

The first one concentrates on the artistic point of view.
I do not share totally the opinon of this article which says that “the law on the copyright in America gives to the individuals and to the societies a paralysing seizure by our culture”.
Indeed a too strong copyright can kill of news creation. The problem which puts the extention of copyright is that it makes impossible the extension of an artistic work. I am going to take back the example set in the video of this article : star wars. Fans were inspired by this saga and would like to propose different versions (with different characters,..), what is not possible because the person who have the copyright refuse to negociete their rights. It becomes obvious that the strenghtening of the duration of the copyright does not encourage the new creation, and favors even a monopoly. Some theorists, as David K.Levine, present the copyright as an obsolete cnocept, in particular within the society of information.
The real problem to my mind is that the new generations are limited from now on to build on previous works, what is not fair. Indeed, we know that Walt Disney is inspired by some books bought during his trip in Europe and now these stories are protected. So he froze the use of important works producted since 1923. The future generations deserve a commun good, to have access to the old creations too. I’ll nuanced this argument because to my mind, numerous stories can be create without being inspired by already written stories, the immagination is infinite. In this sens, the copyright allows the creation of innovative works, which we have never seen between and that do not look like that it exists. There should be an incitement to be the first one to create something, the copyright has to encourage of new story creation, what is good for the consumers.
Furthemore, without presence of copyright, the artists could not create is security, without risk of being copied.

In the second part of my comment I am going to appraoch the economic point of view.
According to me, it is normal that the people who creates a song or other one can protects its work, and can be protected from the profits of his works, and not an other person who does not participate in its elaboration. Be inspired by existing works is for me a sort of piracy. The idea is : the authors have to benefit from a return on investiment for time and the resources spending during the realization, it is the salary of the authors for their work. However according to me, the duration became too long because the protection lasts 70 years after the death of the artist, so it seem that the increase of the duration of the copyright benefits in the industry and not the authors. We forget the very foundation.

To conclude, copyright is usefulin encouraging and protecting creativity. However it is currently too long. We must find the right balance on the conception of copyright protection

“What’s Intellectual Property Good for ?” Michele Boldrin et David K.Levine
Bogle, D. (2002). Copyright extension “threatens creativity”. L’extension du droit d’auteur «menace la créativité».

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Antoine Van Der Haegen
I am pretty sure most of the subject has already been discussed, but in my comment I will especially point out the incoherence between the increased duration of the copyright protection and the initial objective of it, that was to encourage people of being innovative. First of all, since the dawn of time we are living in a society of…
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I am pretty sure most of the subject has already been discussed, but in my comment I will especially point out the incoherence between the increased duration of the copyright protection and the initial objective of it, that was to encourage people of being innovative.

First of all, since the dawn of time we are living in a society of appropriation. Every nation, every person, … tries to imitate the others. For example, Shakespeare, a well-known artist, based his work on preexisting works. Borrowing, imitating and improving things are part of our culture. It’s due to this appropriation behavior that we constantly progressed through time. Thus, why continually increasing the length of the copyright protection if it affects progress? I agree that there must be an incentive to be the first one to create something new, but it should be reasonable. If you compare the length of copyrights with those of the other intellectual properties, it’s suprisingly how important they are. A patent, for example, grant protection during maximum 25 years comparing to the copyright protection that could last till 75 years after the author’s death. Isn’t that senseless? Why should an artist profit from a longer protection period compared to a patent holder?

Another important aspect is the fact that the copyright protection is still valid after the author’s death. The main reason is that it represents a legacy for the author’s children, but do they deserve this protection and the rewards coming from it? They have nothing to do with their parents’ work. Aren’t we missing the point by thinking about rewarding the author’s next generation instead of thinking about the further developments that could flourish out of the existing ones?
We need to give newcomers the opportunity to innovate and they should not be blocked by the endless copyright protections.

To conclude, I totally agree with the fact that an artist needs to live from his work and that he needs to be rewarded for the time and money he spent creating something new. But, we should reconsider the copyright protection period and reduce it drastically. Also, we should abolish the validity of the copyright after the author’s death.
In my opinion, we lost sight of the initial objective that was to encourage people to invent new things. We wanted to support the competition between the artists, but we created an intellectual monopoly instead due to the excessive duration of the copyright protection.

http://lawblog.usfca.edu/iplb/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Ruiz_Comment-2.pdf
http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/what.html
https://source.wustl.edu/2009/03/economists-say-copyright-and-patent-laws-are-killing-innovation-hurting-economy/

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Ncunganyi Bejo
The original idea of copyright law was to secure the author exclusive rights to compensate the costs of production by earning a monopolist revenue for a limited period of time. The initial goal, was to “balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has in free access to knowledge and art.” Extending that time might be beneficial as…
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The original idea of copyright law was to secure the author exclusive rights to compensate the costs of production by earning a monopolist revenue for a limited period of time. The initial goal, was to “balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has in free access to knowledge and art.”
Extending that time might be beneficial as the incentive to create new material. Also authors might want more protection as the technology evolves because digital technology makes it easier to copy. According to Posner, another benefit of a longer period of protection is that it prevent from congestion. It prevents too much new material based on the same idea from entering and confectioning the culture.
However, we can argue that sometimes, too long copyright protection limits the incentive to innovate and create new material for the author as long as it has a positive revenue. It also limits a work’s influence since others can’t base on it to create new material. Also, digital technology reduces the cost of production, thus, the duration of copyright protection should be smaller.
One solution would be to extend exemptions to copyrighted material such as fair use so that people can build upon it without infringing copyright law. Fair use “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner”.

Sources: http://www.economist.com/node/15868004
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Courses/StratTech09/Lectures/IP/Papers/posner05.pdf

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/

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Anne-Sophie Ries
Before reading this article, my opinion was clear : it's quite normal that people who create a song (or everything else) have the right to reap the benefits of his works and be protected for that. It's your work, your baby, you don't want others steal you that ! In the first paragraph, the question is about how long the…
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Before reading this article, my opinion was clear : it’s quite normal that people who create a song (or everything else) have the right to reap the benefits of his works and be protected for that. It’s your work, your baby, you don’t want others steal you that !

In the first paragraph, the question is about how long the copyright last, here again, before reading this article I was convinced that the copyright lasts until the death of the author. Actually, maybe it’s a better idea, because after your death you d’ont need any money so your work doesn’t need to be protected anymore.

I really want to write a comment on this article because I learned a lot of things but now I realize that it’s really complicated to give my opinion on it. I’m not against the copyright because like i said above, it protects your work and your creation. In the article, author says that people cannot work on older composition and it freeze the creativity of new generation, but i don’t agree ! This is not copyright who freeze creativity but people who don’t want to put too much effort on composition.

As regards costs, article is not clear about. So I cannot give my opinion. They say costs are higher today than 10 or 20 years ago, but maybe people now have more money than people in 10 or 20 years ago. We need to make a comparison to be sure that costs are higher or not.

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charlotte
The duration of protection of texts, films, music, films, plays, pictures etc grows in the same idea that humans live longer than in the past. Some are opposed to this long duration of copyright. They believe that works are part of a common good that everyone should benefit from. The author's law allows writers, composers, musicians, etc. to…
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The duration of protection of texts, films, music, films, plays, pictures etc grows in the same idea that humans live longer than in the past. Some are opposed to this long duration of copyright. They believe that works are part of a common good that everyone should benefit from.

The author’s law allows writers, composers, musicians, etc. to be paid for the exploitation of their creations. However, some consider this right as a brake on creativity and innovation. Other designers should be able to refer to them without having to worry to this rights. A better balance must therefore be struck between copyright and freedom of creation. On the one hand, copyright must be sufficiently efficient to ensure honest income for authors, and on the other hand copyright must allow freedom of expression artistic.

This is why the Creative Commons hopes to reinforce the public domain, which seems too restricted due to the excessive duration of the copyright. Creative Commons proposes licenses to authors wishing to make their work freely available to the public. These licenses protect their rights. These licenses, originally conceived in US law, have been adapted and translated into several national laws, including Belgian law.

Creative Commons require users to mention the author’s name. The author have different motivations to grant a free license on a work in which he invested so much soul, energy and money.

In conclusion, it may be interesting to limit the term of copyright protection to favour the freedom of creation. Moreover, the possibilities of broadcasting and adapting texts, music and images are today infinite. Copyright is often perceived as unhelpful and, on the contrary, detrimental to freedom of information and expression.

sources: http://www2.cfwb.be/lartmeme/no027/pages/page7.htm
http://smartbe.be/media/uploads/2016/09/Les-cahiers-Dirk-Vervenne.pdf

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Brice Van Eeckhout
Copyright protection in terms of duration has increased during the past years. And this is the case for all kind of copyrights from author to movie protection. When going through the information made available by the European Commission about the copyright on audio recordings, an important argument used in favor of the increase of protection duration in 2011 was the idea…
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Copyright protection in terms of duration has increased during the past years. And this is the case for all kind of copyrights from author to movie protection.
When going through the information made available by the European Commission about the copyright on audio recordings, an important argument used in favor of the increase of protection duration in 2011 was the idea of bringing the current legislation at that time (copyright for the life of the artist + 50 years) in line with the legislation on author copyrights (life time of the author + 70 years). In light of this I would like to base my comment on the author copyright, which seem to be the source of this increase in protection.
I will go through the different arguments in favor of the increase in duration and discuss their legitimacy.

The first question I want to address is who is benefiting from this new legislation.
A lot of the arguments brought by the “authors defenders” are based on the idea that authors should continue to benefit from the success of their stories in order to get a return on investment for the time and resources they spent while writing. Nobody could actually be against that because it is the only salary authors can get from their work. But which authors are we actually speaking about when the duration of the protection is 70 years after their death? The only writers who could possibly still receive money at that time are authors who made breakthrough success such as the British JK Rowling with her “Harry Potter” saga or J. R. R. Tolkien, the British author of “The Lords of the Rings”. We are speaking about the 1% over-successful authors in Europe and even in the world. But of course they are also the more powerful and thus have the biggest voice when it comes to legislate. The majority of the authors sell their books in the first years of their release (when they are on display) and sometimes they are rediscovered way after their death. Thus when coming back to our question, this new legislation is only helping a small percentage of the author’s heirs.

My second question is what are the incentives for authors to write new books.
As said in the article above, the aim for the society behind protection of author’s work is to incentivize them to write new stories by giving them the opportunity to win money from their art. I think though, that most of the authors don’t write books with the idea of becoming millionaires from it. JK Rowling for example repeated several times that she wrote her books on Harry Potter without thinking anytime that it would be such a success and even in that state of mind, she wrote them. In most of the job sectors, you find very few people becoming extremely rich, but all the others don’t wake up every morning to go to work with the idea of making a fortune. And yet, they go to work.
Most of the authors write stories because this is what they like to do. And they would do it even if they can protect their work for only 50 years. Because very few of them could imagine that their work could become that successful.

My last question is why copyrights have such an extended protection in duration while inventors publishing a patent can profit from their work for a maximum of 20 years. Why is there such a difference although it can take as much time to develop a patentable innovation as to right a book? I think that the answer to that question can be found in the fact that it is more likely that publishers instead of actual writers have pushed this increase in copyright protection. Thus the ones really enjoying the new legislation are the people buying the rights for the stories written by authors. This is thus not incentivizing authors to write more, which was the official aim of the new protection legislation.

To conclude, it appears to me that the aim of extending the ownership rights is not really to give a longer protection to the author of a story, but to the big company, which has bought those rights for the film industry.
Indeed, a book is never re-written. But a film with a good story can have more than one life. With the fast evolution of techniques and special effects, it can be interesting to offer a remake to each new generation.
If MGM or Disney had existed in the period Homer has written The Ilias or The Odissey, they surely should have bought the rights, and should still be happy to make new filmed versions 2800 years later, not to speak about the rights for selling reductions of the Troian Horse at Toys“R”Us…

Sources:

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/term-protection/index_en.htm

https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/ip/resources/ip_dissertations/2002-03/SkiltonDissetation.doc

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2669729

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Hattori Tatsuaki
From where I stand, as a Japanese, I disagree with extend term of copyrights. In Japan, Karaoke place (karaoke) where we can enjoy singing songs is very popular. We can enjoy it very low price, approximately lower than 1000 yen (less than 10 euro) to use that place for 2 hours. The construction of this business is very simple. A…
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From where I stand, as a Japanese, I disagree with extend term of copyrights. In Japan, Karaoke place (karaoke) where we can enjoy singing songs is very popular. We can enjoy it very low price, approximately lower than 1000 yen (less than 10 euro) to use that place for 2 hours. The construction of this business is very simple. A manager of karaoke pays fare of copyrights to Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC), who is in commission of copyrights of author, composer and publisher in Japan. And get the facility rental fee from consumers. Usually, the manager of karaoke pays fare monthly. The fare is shown by JASRAC (http://www.jasrac.or.jp/info/play/pdf/inst.pdf), but it seems to be high. Why? That is because JASRAC is the only owner of copyrights of songs in Japan. Thus, it is kind of monopolist. Such a condition allow it to set the high price. In addition to this condition, the terms of copyrights is very long, all the karaoke managers have to pay that fare so as to provide songs. If there isn’t such a long copyrights term, we can enjoy karaoke lower price. In other words, long copyrights makes dead weight loss. Off course, this fare is substituted to the original rightful claimants, so copyrights gives them to incentives to create new songs. However, as a whole, too long copyright terms enhances the monopoly power of JASRAC and decreasing consumers’ surplus in the end. Thus, I disagree with extension of copyrights term.
This case seems to be little bit narrow case to discuss whether copyrights extension is good or bad. However, from an above examples, I can say extension of rights too much may allow the particular organization to have a monopolistic power rather than gives creator to incentive. As Landes and Posner said “Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law”[1], the important thing is what to extent copyrights gives author to incentives, but in my opinion, 50 years is too enough and we don’t have to extend it.

[1] Landes and Posner “An Economic Analysis of Copyright low” Journal of Legal Studies, 1989
References
JASRAC
-http://www.jasrac.or.jp/profile/intro/index.html
-http://www.jasrac.or.jp/bunpai/karaoke/detail1.html
-http://www.jasrac.or.jp/info/play/pdf/inst.pdf

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Giada Garofalo
Copyright is a legal right that protects the use of someone’s work once their idea has been physically expressed. In other words, copyright ensures that authors, composers, artists, film makers and other creators receive recognition, payment and protection for their works. It aims, in fact, to reward creativity and to stimulate investment in the creative sector. Although Copyright is…
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Copyright is a legal right that protects the use of someone’s work once their idea has been physically expressed. In other words, copyright ensures that authors, composers, artists, film makers and other creators receive recognition, payment and protection for their works. It aims, in fact, to reward creativity and to stimulate investment in the creative sector.
Although Copyright is extremely important under both its economic and cultural aspects, it is relevant to mention that its duration has been extended over the years. Today, Copyright protects a work for the entire life of its author plus 70 years after their death.
Without any doubt, copyright ensures a wide range of benefits, not only for the author, but for the society as a whole. Expressions and creations that have been realized until now have contributed to create the culture we live in. Paintings, books and famous expressions, for example, could be considered as unique and authentic as nobody has used them for reproduction or improvement. And it is also thanks to their authenticity that most famous works are today of inestimable value. Furthermore, copyright could oblige people who use the protected expressions to mention the author too, and this allows this one to be remembered over the time. In that way, our culture not only has sounds, art and memorable words, but it also has names, faces and identities that deserve to be remembered even after their death.
Nevertheless, the drawbacks of copyright could outweigh the benefits. In fact, although copyright promoters claim that it protects creativity, it is undeniable that it also paralyses new creations.
In fact, the exaggerate length of copyright leads to too elevate costs for using protected works even years after the author’s death, preventing new creators from publishing their ideas and creating new works. In other words, copyright inhibits creativity rather than protecting it.
Moreover, in the music field, for example, on the surface, copyright is largely beneficial to artists. However, that is only true if the artist actually owns their sound recordings. Typically, the artists who were recording 50 years ago who would theoretically benefit from the copyright extension, belonged to a record label who owned the sound recording. So effectively, it probably most often just means a longer continuing income stream for record labels. Whether the labels’ performing artists see a cut of these additional royalties depends on specific contracts and recoupment status, so in the end, it is possible that the performing artists are seeing income continue to come in. Some artists would prefer the recordings to go into public domain so they can reprint copies and sell them without going through the label they belonged to.
In conclusion, in my opinion, the right balance should be found between the profits coming from copyright and the possibility for new creators to take inspiration from protected works without paying unthinkable amounts to use them. For sure, the author has the complete right to benefit for protection during the whole of their life, but according to me, the duration of the protection after the author’s death should be drastically reduced.

Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/copyrightaware/what-is
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/copyright
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/09/copyright_strangulation.html#ixzz2euJwfxHT
https://www.quora.com/The-EU-Council-voted-to-extend-the-copyright-on-sound-recordings-from-50-to-70-years-what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-musicians-and-music-users

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Minet Paul-Henri
The logic behind the copyright extension is to guarantee a longer period of time when the copyright’s owner can make profits with his work which gives incentives to produce. It is logical that what someone produces belongs to him/her. A copyright protection is a trade-off between “the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to…
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The logic behind the copyright extension is to guarantee a longer period of time when the copyright’s owner can make profits with his work which gives incentives to produce. It is logical that what someone produces belongs to him/her.
A copyright protection is a trade-off between “the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place.” An economical approach must maximize the welfare and reach an optimum.
Concerning the extension of the copyright length, I don’t get the point of raising it to 70 years. 50 years was clearly enough to give incentives to produce. As said in the article, the extra revenues earned during the 20 additional years are heavily discounted (1€ in the future worth less than 1€ now) while there are immediate deadweight losses due to the extension of the copyright length.
However as mentioned in the video, the copyright can last after the death of the author which is very surprising but copyright is like another propriety or asset, it can be transferred after the death of the owner. The business post mortem is a reality: Just look for example at how many albums of artists are sold when they die. The post mortem extension can make sense if the artist is old : His/her children will benefit of the work which gives incentives to continue to produce even if he/her is old.

Let’s look at a modern problem of the copyright. Think of youtube, a website used by everyone. Musicians have agreements to release songs on it, protected by strong copyright. When you post a video on youtube that you have made, an analysis of the video is starting to see if there is copyright violation. Even just putting few seconds of a song (protected by copyright) that you like, can block the video. This is really frustrating and this gives less incentives to make a creative content because of the fear of a copyright violation.
Another example is the case of Finebros, a youtube channel produced by 2 brothers which release video where they film people watching and reacting to a video for the first time. Seeing that it worked very well and that the audience got bigger, they decided to trademark the concept/name of their videos such as “teens react to” or “elders react to”. What is really frustrating is that now nobody else can make videos with this title without their permission. There is thus a deadweight loss because one “firm” has the monopole on that kind of video and raise the cost of producing more products of that style. The copyright law has to adapt to our area where we can all produce something via internet.

In some cases there is entry barrier such as notoriety that can take precedence over copyright: Imagine there is no more copyright on harry potter books and that I want to produce a new movie. If I don’t have the support of the author J.K Rowling there is a big chance that my movie will not have a great success because fans will not come see the movie. So even without copyright, notions of notoriety or brand recognition that are intangible assets could be enough.

To conclude, I think that it was not a good decision to extend the duration of a copyright from 50 to 70 years. As a lot of things in economy there is no perfect solution but the situation of excessive copyright looks like a strong monopoly and a monopoly is rarely good for consumers and for society.

Sources : http://www.newmediarights.org/business_models/artist/what_happens_copyright_when_copyright_holder_dies
http://www.nextinpact.com/archive/71493-youtube-musique-accord-publicites.htm
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/6/10926230/fine-bros-react-world-controversy

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César de los Ríos
I would like to introduce my comment with my verdict: in my opinion, due to many reasons that I will explain next, I would recommend not to grant additional copyright extensions. I will try to demonstrate, using intuition, quotes from professionals and empirical studies, that the costs of increasing copyright protection clearly outweigh the benefits of doing so. First, we must…
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I would like to introduce my comment with my verdict: in my opinion, due to many reasons that I will explain next, I would recommend not to grant additional copyright extensions. I will try to demonstrate, using intuition, quotes from professionals and empirical studies, that the costs of increasing copyright protection clearly outweigh the benefits of doing so.
First, we must turn to intuition. It is clear that the benefit flow generated from a particular innovative work follows a decreasing trend over time in the long haul (although, in the short run, one cannot predict a certain a priori trend), because as time goes by, the work becomes relatively less innovative. Thus, I propose a curve time-benefits for an innovative work, which has a decreasing slope and is called “curve 1”. Then, we must assess the concaveness of the curve “granted time of protection vs. incentives to innovative”. We can propose a concave curve, considering that no protection means no innovation (so, a marginal increase in protection time generates a more than one-to-one response in the incentives to innovate) and whilst the protection increases, the incentives to innovate increase, but less and less each time. We call this curve “curve 2”. If we consider the existence of both curves and the fact that the discount factor is exponentially decreasing over time, it does not seem logical to increase the duration of copyright protection; it is even more illogical to do so considering the author already has after-death protection. The incentives to create new innovative works, generated by an additional protection reach, are, presumptuously, outweighed by the opportunity cost of said protection: more creative people are not allowed to improve the previous ideas (this is different in the patents scenario) and the number of consumption goods (in the entertainment industry) is limited, which tends to reduce social welfare.
Next, we must consider that the law trying to increase the time of copyright protection is retrospective, which has serious implications of the concept of the “social contract”. Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford University, argues that “(…) in exchange for this monopoly right you’re going to produce something for the public. And extending copyright over existing works is not inducing any new creativity. So this is a monopoly that’s being granted for nothing” (Bogle, 2002). In effect, why would additional protection be granted, making someone a monopolist, if there is no immediate social benefit from doing so?
Next and finally, we must turn to empirical studies to validate our views. Buccafusco and Heald (2013) use the audiobook market, a considerably profitable one, to generalize their results on the effect of additional copyright protection on social welfare. They find that the private benefits obtained from this protection are not large enough to compensate the social costs driven by it. They refuse the arguments of the entertainment industry lobby, that indicates, among other things, that without the extension of copyright protection, pieces of work can be either underused or overused (overexploited). The lobby’s argument for the first case is that without additional protection, the pieces of work “tend to disappear” and thus a copyright extension guarantees a higher useful life for innovative works. The authors test this hypothesis in the audiobook market and reject it: “audiobooks were (statistically) significantly more likely to be made from older bestselling public domain works than from bestselling copyrighted works from the same era”. On the other hand, the lobby’s argument for the second case is that without additional protection, the works would be overused or overexploited, because of the tragedy of the commons argument. Nevertheless, the authors find no statistically significant difference between the recordings made for public domain audiobooks and copyrighted ones.
In synthesis, there are many indicators, theoretical and empirical, that make us believe that additional copyright protection would be really harmful for social welfare and, hence, it should not be granted. The current state of copyright protection is enough, and could even be more than enough.
Sources:
– Bogle, D. (2002). Copyright extension “threatens creativity”. Online: Information Management & Computer Security.
– Buccafusco, C., & Heald, P. (2013). DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WORKS ENTER THE PUBLIC DOMAIN?: EMPIRICAL TESTS OF COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION. California: BERKELEY TECHNOLOGY LAW JOURNAL.

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Katarzyna Jagielnicka
Intellectual property rights deeply influence both economic development as well as technological progress, and therefore their appropriate design should be considered to be a particularly important matter. Most research around this topic has been focused on patent protection rather than on other kinds of IPRs, such as copyright protection. The latter plays an especially significant role in protecting people from…
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Intellectual property rights deeply influence both economic development as well as technological progress, and therefore their appropriate design should be considered to be a particularly important matter. Most research around this topic has been focused on patent protection rather than on other kinds of IPRs, such as copyright protection. The latter plays an especially significant role in protecting people from the creative industry and is considered to be an increasingly more important part of the economy. Copyrights generate both costs and benefits to the society as a whole, thus the economic rationale for a copyright system is such that those advantages ought to ultimately outweigh all the potential costs. The extension of copyright terms has become an especially controversial issue due to the fact that it is difficult to explicitly evaluate its potential outcome.

Almost all of the artistic and creative disciplines are being protected, more or less, by copyrights. However, there is one exception to this rule that I do believe deserves to be mentioned here as it might constitute an argument in favor of the shorter copyright term. The aforementioned exception is the fashion industry. While it is true that copyright protection can be granted to original patterns, prints, and design elements such as embellishments, the clothing itself is not being legally protected in the majority of the Western countries.

The rationale behind it is that fashion is considered to be purely utilitarian, despite the fact that it might be viewed as an art form by some individuals. This logic leaves fashion designers unable to fight for the rights to their original designs, nonetheless it could also be considered as this industry’s driving force. In the bigger picture sense fashion industry has become indeed extremely vibrant, innovative and continues to expand at quite an impressive rate. If it is doing so well with little or no copyright protection, it makes me wonder what is the sense of extending the term any more? Would it not be more economically efficient to actually do the opposite and make it shorter?

One of the main issues with the copyright extension debate is the lack of solid empirical grounds that would firmly support one side of the argument. The reason for this situation is that it is really challenging and difficult to measure the creative activity, as the registration for the copyright protection is not a prequisite for obtaining such a right. As a consequence, empirical research on copyrights has a more limited choice of criteria for measuring its implications. One of the very few examples of researches in this matter is a study of the movie industry conducted by Png and Wang that used a variable yes/no as to whether a country has extended the copyright terms. The main finding was such that copyright extension is not significantly correlated with an increased supply of movies. One might argue that the study did not take into considerations all the relevant variables and thus cannot be considered as enough of an evidence supporting extending the copyright term.

To sum up, I personally do believe that given the lack of strong empirical evidence the best option would be to settle with a copyright term that is neither too long nor too short, and rather something in between. Copyrights do have different effects on creativity and they do affect the human capital in numerous ways and as a consequence it is really difficult to truly asses their impact. However, as long as we strive for greater amount of innovation and creativity in our economy we need to keep challenging our laws and regulations frequently in order to avoid any potential inefficiencies.

References:
1. Reed N., Fashion Licensing, The Licensing Journal April 2016, pp. 1-2.
2. Park WG., The Copyright Dilemma: Copyright Systems, Innovation and Economic Development, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 64, 2010.

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Martina De Luca
Answering the question we are addressed, I would like to focus on the definition of copyright: it protects any production of the human mind, such as literary and artistic works, as far as this is a real expression and not a mere idea and provided it is original. To me, this implies that the artist has the right to be…
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Answering the question we are addressed, I would like to focus on the definition of copyright: it protects any production of the human mind, such as literary and artistic works, as far as this is a real expression and not a mere idea and provided it is original. To me, this implies that the artist has the right to be protected from plagiarism and from someone else using her works. In this sense, it is absolutely fair to restrict copyright and to extend it at least as far as the artist is alive, so she can better take advantage of her efforts and her work. It is legitimate to ask what should happen after her death: is it still right to impede others to use the work invented by a dead artist? It can be, because the works of an artist don’t die with her and it is essential not to forget the people who had brilliant ideas in the past. It is also important to guarantee that the heirs of that artist can take advantage of their parent’s work, and protection in this sense is correct.
However, I believe that 70 years after an artist’s death is not a reasonable period to prevent others from using an invented work, play, song, film, book etc. Considering that the life expectancy is now 71 years, a copyright can reach a shocking number of years without the artist taking advantage of it for the half time. There’s no need for a work to be protected for, let’s say, 100 years, while it could be exploited differently: Many times ideas generate ideas and taking a work and transform it in some other brilliant idea is art too.
Moreover, I think that the war against plagiarism is sometimes driven by the wish of even more gains, and not by the necessity for the society to invent new works. Here is an example. In civil law Countries such as Italy copyright is represented by a juridical institution (SIAE) protecting authors and editors that pays right to artist only if they are still alive. To register to SIAE, a share must be deposited so as to perceive money when other people want to use an artist’s songs, books etc. It happens though that more than a half of the enrolled in this institution, at the end of the year, get less money than what they have paid at its beginning.
Moreover, controls of SIAE sometimes reach levels of absurdity: some years ago, the owner of a shop was fined because he had a downloaded song on his phone and, when it rang, since he hadn’t paid his annual share, he was accused of diffusing protected music inside a public area. We could think of being fined in a public square just because our telephone has rung and we didn’t pay the rights. This goes beyond protection of artists’ works, ideas, expressions; this implies the willingness to enrich without considering neither the benefits for society, nor the artist’s.
As a conclusion, I don’t think that copyrights should be eliminated, nor that their length is reduced to the life of an artist; I strongly believe, though, that a copyright must be focused on protection, and not on prevention from others. As far as the society creates and stimulates ideas without undermining a creator copyrights work perfectly; when they are used to gain more and more and live behind an artist’s shoulders they should be cut.

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Margot Detollenaere
Although it may vary from one country to another, copyright can be defined as a form of legal protection that aims to “encourage the development of culture, science and innovation, while providing a financial benefit to copyright holders for their works, and to facilitate access to knowledge and entertainment for the public” (Copyright Clearance Center). Nowadays, copyright laws automatically protect…
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Although it may vary from one country to another, copyright can be defined as a form of legal protection that aims to “encourage the development of culture, science and innovation, while providing a financial benefit to copyright holders for their works, and to facilitate access to knowledge and entertainment for the public” (Copyright Clearance Center). Nowadays, copyright laws automatically protect all information goods, which are fixed in a tangible form.

As highlighted in the article, there are two dimensions of copyright : the benefits and the costs dimension. On one hand, copyright offers different advantages to individuals and businesses that produce creative works. It stimulates new ideas and encourages creativity in that people have the ability to protect their works. Also, creators have the sole right to benefit from their creations. On the other hand, copyright has some limitations. It may discourage creativity. Indeed, it prevents people from creating derivative works from existing ones. Moreover, many small or short items cannot be copyrighted such as facts, ideas, and titles.

After turning an innovation into a commercial success, innovators need to capture the value from their works. They certainly can use copyright laws, but there exist other solutions. For example, Apple “[…] supports a community for the development of third-party software and hardware products and digital content that complement the Company’s offerings” (Annual Report, 2015). To put it another way, Apple makes sure that users who bought one of its tablets will buy a computer of the brand later.

One may wonder how does it work in the music industry in that people does not always respect copyright on other people’s work. The rise of digital distribution became a real challenge for many companies. Consequently, organizations face new consumer needs and must adapt their business model. For example, artists make more concerts in order to maximize their profits. In this context, creators maybe should take into account innovative solutions such as creative commons licenses or copyleft in order to be profitable and competitive.

SOURCES :

Bailey, J. (s.d.). Limitations of Copyright. Online
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stopping-internet-plagiarism/your-copyrights-online/limitations-of-copyright/, consulted on 15/11/16.

Copyright Clearance Center. (s.d.). About Copyright. Online
http://www.copyright.com/learn/about-copyright/, consulted on 15/11/16.

Creative Commons. (s.d.). Creative Commons Kiwi. Online. https://creativecommons.org/videos/creative-commons-kiwi/, consulted on 15/11/16.

Hamel, G. (s.d.). Pros & Cons of Copyright Laws. Online
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pros-cons-copyright-laws-52554.html, consulted on 15/11/16.

King, T. (s.d.). The Disadvantages of Copyrights. Online
http://info.legalzoom.com/disadvantages-copyrights-23119.html, consulted on 15/11/16.

Novagraaf. (2016). Purpose of copyright : protecting the creator against infringement. Online http://www.novagraaf.com/en/services/copyright-covers-a-wide-area/purpose-of-copyright-protecting-the-creator-against-infringement, consulted on 15/11/16.

Coeurderoy, R., & Bernard, P. (2016). Management Stratégique de la Technologie et de l’Innovation (LSMF2015 slideshow). Louvain School of Management.

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Nicholas Chin
Copyright, like patents, empowers creators to create and subsequently protects their output from others who do not go through the entire process of ideation to execution. Over the years the length of copyright protection has increased to what is now an unreasonable amount of time that hinders growth in whatever industry it is in. The fact that a copyright can extend…
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Copyright, like patents, empowers creators to create and subsequently protects their output from others who do not go through the entire process of ideation to execution. Over the years the length of copyright protection has increased to what is now an unreasonable amount of time that hinders growth in whatever industry it is in.

The fact that a copyright can extend to 50 years beyond the creators death is sad, as those that will be reaping the benefits from that do not necessarily have the same interests that the first mover does. That is the real problem. Currently, there is too much emphasis on protecting the “first mover” in comparison to incentivizing their successors. The world, especially the digital world, is moving to a shared knowledge economy whereby people collaboratively work together as opposed to independently. However, these copyright laws hinder that progression and dissuades creators to build on these ideas.

The original intent of copyright was to reward creators for their contribution to society, and thereby society would protect them for X amount of time (originally 23 years) – a reasonable number of years. It can be acceptable or understandable to even extend that to 50 years as it was, but the notion to have a copyright extend beyond a person’s expiry date is rather ludicrous. The first mover is no longer creating and can no longer contribute to society, therefore they do not need society’s protection – copyright. Raise the barriers and allow the next generation of creators (who could very well be the next Shakespeare) to stretch their imagination and not live in fear of violating an ex-creator’s copyright.

Another important factor to take into consideration is the amount of mediums that are now available for content creation. Youtube is a great example that allows creators to directly communicate with their communicate and remove the middleman, which is likely corporations. They can amass their own following and have people relate to their creative projects. However, it is known within the YouTube community to not use certain materials in their productions as they could be violating a copyright from decades ago. And this is a shame because it is hindering their creative freedom and limiting the impact of their works.

This is not to downplay the importance of copyright, but there needs to be a better balance that allows creators to create and limit the power of corporations on their respective process. With more transparent content sharing platforms, there needs to be that same level of transparency with copyright. Although the original creator should be notified if somebody has used their material, there does also need to be an element of subjectivity whereby the content of each creation is taken into play. Only then will there be a balance between content creation and content protection.

Sources: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/02/29/youtubes-new-copyright-innovation-oversight-by.html
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.502210.de/diw_econ_bull_2015-16-1.pdf

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Emeline Picard
I cannot disagree with the fact that protecting one’s work is important. It is not only an incentive for the inventor to produce something new but it enables a financial reward through the exclusivity it sets up. As we can easily see, copyright comes from a good intention. However, the extents are putting creativity in jeopardy. Copyrights laws are being…
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I cannot disagree with the fact that protecting one’s work is important. It is not only an incentive for the inventor to produce something new but it enables a financial reward through the exclusivity it sets up. As we can easily see, copyright comes from a good intention. However, the extents are putting creativity in jeopardy. Copyrights laws are being even more complexified with the rise of internet. I feel like the extent in time has already been well explain and criticized, this is why I want here open a debate about another type of extent copyrights are facing: the digital area of copyright and infringement related.

In this field, copyrights may avoid cloning problems. To take again the example of the game industry, those clone games can be harmful for the first firm who launched the original one. Indeed, consumers can be confuse but also annoyed to see that the trend is widespread so they may lose interest in such games. On the inventor side, they may lose from the success cloners steal and capitalize. Here I want to take the concrete example of Candy Crush Saga. As King’s CEO said itself: “Like any responsible company, we take appropriate steps to protect our IP, including our look-and-feel and trademarks. Our goals are simple: to ensure that our employees’ hard work is not simply copied elsewhere, that we avoid player confusion and that the integrity of our brands remains.” However, many clones of the game were created such as Crush Rush Saga, Sweet Saga, Bubble Crush Saga, Candy Blast Saga, to only name a few. (Longer list available at http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/30/19-games-that-candy-crush-saga-developer-king-would-like-to-crush/)

Nevertheless, copyrights are not always as beneficial.

It happens that copyright are given to works that truly don’t deserve any law protections. [1] In such cases, it may endanger innovation because no one wants to infringe copyright on purpose. For example, in the US game industry copyrights are putting some firms in trouble. In some situations, a game can be copied but not the design that goes with it due to its copyright. There are some cases where a gaming firm has to sue another one for using a similar design. Even though sometimes they know it is quite ridiculous, they need to do that in order to protect themselves from bigger copyright infringement that may happen if they let those kinds of things go. They rather prevent themselves now from having troubles proving their rights later.

Another issue related with digital copyright is that, under the three key assumptions that (1) copyright owners apply full enforcement, (2) courts are assessing the maximum statutory damages per instance of infringement and that (3) there is no mitigating effect of copyright exceptions and limitations, infringement fees we should pay for our normal digital behaviour may skyrocket to millions only in one day. Indeed, simply retweeting something can be seen as an unauthorized text reproduction as thus copyright infringement. Same thing happens while posting a picture on a social media if there is an artwork in the background for example. Everyday life examples are a lot. Even with a tattoo of a character’s we can be sued for public display of an infringement work. Nevertheless, digital area of nowadays is making it easier but also unknown to infringe IP rights. According to Professor Ian Hargreaves : “the copyright regime cannot be considered fit for the digital age when millions of citizens are in daily breach of copyright simply for shifting a piece of music or video from one device to another.” Indeed, as far as I am concerned I think that this is unbelievable to consider that almost everyone is a copyright infringer regarding the wideness of the law. It is too difficult to pay attention to all the digital actions we do mechanically on a daily basis and this is why the legitimacy of the law is being questioned. Fortunately there are some exceptions and limitations that give legitimacy and also provide a legal exit door to copyrighted things such as fair use to only quote the best known one. [2]

One last issue I want to briefly point out about digital copyright infringement is about the suits and more specially the people who are being sued for digital copyright infringement. The concern is that companies prefer suing facilitators of copyright infringement than infringers themselves, because on one side they are fewer and on the other side they can pay a greater damage fee than individuals who are often charged, if sued, with the minimum damage fee. Of course, alternatives have been implemented. However, none of them are perfect and this is why the digital copyright laws have to be improved and re-think constantly. [3]

To summary, even though copyrights are not that bad, issues are taking more and more place also with the rise of digital contents. On top of all, the limits of copyright are not clear. Let’s holp up as an example the case where we have a copyrighted poem about nature. Here it is clear that the copyright is about the poem and not the theme of nature. However, what happen about notes from lectures for instance? Is the student who has taken notes allowed to sell them? Is there some copyright laws that can apply in that case? Debate about copyright infringement remains thus opened…

[1] https://www.backofficepro.com/blog/intellectual-property-rights-pros-and-cons/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_9O8J9skL0
[3] Mark A. Lemley and R. Anthony Reese, Reducing Digital Copyright Infringement without Restricting Innovation, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 6 (May, 2004), pp. 1345-1434
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40040194

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Céline de Vos
I don’t think that an extension of the copyright term for music recording from 50 years to 70 years is necessary. Firstly I think that this extension will create more barriers to new creation from new people. Old creations should be accessible to new creators to create new stuff on basis of old creation. The access to the culture should be…
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I don’t think that an extension of the copyright term for music recording from 50 years to 70 years is necessary.

Firstly I think that this extension will create more barriers to new creation from new people. Old creations should be accessible to new creators to create new stuff on basis of old creation. The access to the culture should be encouraged from government to create more, given inspiration rather than privatize it.
some organisation claims the right of knowledge. “This will provide the ethical principles which allow the individual to spread his/her knowledge, to help him/herself, to help his/her community and the whole world, with the aim of making society ever more free, more equal, more sustainable, and with greater solidarity.”[1]
Two exemple show us the importance of sharing the culture: the “fifty shade of grey trilogy” which began as a twilight fan fiction, and “Spirou et Fantasio” that had passed by various authors to continue their adventures.

Secondly the real problem today of all cultural industry are facing copyright infringement. I think that rethink copyright definition should be a priority. Given an easier access to music copyright could decrease illegal download rate and recover the losses incurred. in my opinion extend copyright time will encourage piracy.

To conclude my opinion is that copyright extension will be harmfull for the cultural economy in both way it will create more barriers to new creation and increase copyright infringement. Government should redefined copyrighting and find a way to encourage new creators and protect authors in the same way. It won’t be easy but I think that with the digital it will be necessary.

[1] http://www.hipatia.info/index.php?id=manifesto2_en

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Myriam Estefania ARAUJO
Copyright is an intellectual property right that aims at “Promoting the progress of science and useful arts”. As a contract between the creator and society, allowing to give incentives for creation as it brings protection from copying. It is nonetheless important to say that copyright protects the expression of an idea and not the idea as such. Based on this…
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Copyright is an intellectual property right that aims at “Promoting the progress of science and useful arts”. As a contract between the creator and society, allowing to give incentives for creation as it brings protection from copying. It is nonetheless important to say that copyright protects the expression of an idea and not the idea as such. Based on this initial characteristics of copyright, I would like to analyze the implications of copyright extension. As this article presented it, the copyright duration has been increased over the years through different acts, The Sonny Bono Act being the most recent one. Currently in Europe, a work is protected for its author’s lifetime plus 70 years, which in my opinion is far too much. Let me take you through my analysis of pros and cons that backs up this opinion.

To get a better understanding on the issue I wanted to know WHY the debate started. What are the drivers for people asking for an extension, and who are they? Unsurprisingly, the owners of copyright are the ones behind these extensions, for the following reasons:
1. Life expectancy has increased over the years.
2. There are works that would be created only with an extended copyright coverage.
3. Extended copyright protects better and enhances innovation (specially of original ideas).

These reasons ought to be put in perspective.
1. Even though life expectancy has increased, the idea behind copyright is to allow the creator to enjoy of the retributions of his work without the fear of being copied, thus giving an incentive to innovate. So, what is the point of extending the protection after his death, when he won’t be able to enjoy the economical recognition nor will he be able to keep on creating. Moreover, if we compare the situation to other Intellectual Property rights such as patents we can see the incredible difference between the scope of their protection. A maximum of 25 years of protection is granted for patent holders, who actually have the same life expectancy than artistic creators. Besides, isn’t the purpose of patents the same than for copyright? It is of common knowledge that the limited time of a patent allows to keep a healthy competition instead of allowing a single company to use a given innovation forever. In this perspective, we shouldn’t forget that Copyright owners aren’t only the creators of a work but also their heirs or companies, who will still enjoy the profits after the creator’s death.
c As we have been able to see, what you can get from an extended copyright is mainly economic benefits, which will most probably decrease over time. One of the reasons to support an extension of copyright is that some creations would exist if there is a longer protection coverage: is this really what we want as a society? Creations that are exclusively driven by the motivation of having an economical retribution? In that case they would only be created with a commercial purpose, hence lacking of true personal meaning or artistical value for the creator? Or do we want USEFUL art? Note that the latter is completely compatible with profitability. Moreover, we need to take into account all the work that isn’t being created because of an excessive protection with copyright. The length of copyright may be repealing more creations (because creators can’t afford to pay copyright to the original author) than being an incentive for people ready to create only if their work can be protected for a longer time. To take this argument even further, creation would become a merely economic activity lacking of emotion and authenticity. Thus, only trying to maximize economic profits and misaddressing the total public demand for innovation. Society could actually be enjoying of innovative expressions that take existing creations even further, for the common welfare and not as a selfish, self-interested act of creation. Too much protection may kill the first intention of IP rights.
Finally, from a cost/benefit point of view, the benefits from the extension aren’t worthy of the costs incurred by society (loss of potential creative works, loss of consumer surplus because of the monopolistic environment, etc.)

2. Completely new ideas are impossible to have; we are all affected by our environment and things we have seen before. Isn’t it more interesting to spur creativity through incremental innovation? If we take a different point of view, prolonging the life of copyright might be translated by forcing every creative mind to start from 0, when there has already been a development on the subject. What if it was the matter of a powerful vaccine that was invented by someone and another person took it as a basis to create a better one? Would we force the latter to choose between paying a high amount for the rights, and waiting until the death of the inventor + 70 years? It’s almost the same than forcing him to start with a completely different procedure.
With the current state of the art, only big companies can afford to pay the rights to use a given creation, therefore this measure could be seen as a non-inclusive clause that only strengthens inequality of opportunities to find success. This also affects the collectivity who isn’t able to enjoy the creation of people like Andy Warhol (would pop-art have ever existed if this clause was used back then?). Furthermore, the limit between “idea” and “expression” being very ambiguous the fear of transcending that frontier is bigger than the risk propensity of a potential creator. I think that the copyright extension is leading to the inhibition of the progress of useful arts rather than contributing to the original purpose of copyright.

In conclusion, as I see it, extended copyright protection may be a tool to ease the accumulation of wealth and catalyze the existence of monopolies, without a worthy counterpart for the social welfare. Therefore, I don’t agree with the current length of copyright protection. I think copyright lifetime should actually be shortened in order to be an incentive for creative minds to express freely. Maybe the copyright extension allows to protect original ideas, but I think that a shorter length for copyright could be an incentive for the originators of such successful ideas to produce new works. So instead of relying on the profits of a single creation, society could benefit from their creative capabilities, which would still be rewarded. I would recommend to keep the copyright lifetime at the same level of a patent’s duration, to use its initial length, or to determine the amount of time usually needed to generate most of the profit (for example 80%) of such a creation. A span of 20-30 years from the date of creation could be, in my opinion, a good way to ensure the progress of science and useful arts, while bringing protection to creators.

http://economie.fgov.be/en/entreprises/Intellectual_property/Copyright/#.VjpaOIQzLdk
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/09/copyright_strangulation.html#ixzz2euJwfxHT
https://cyber.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html
https://techliberation.com/2009/08/06/copyright-duration-and-the-mickey-mouse-curve/
https://web.archive.org/web/20150402164457/http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/supct/amici/economists.pdf

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Jean Seyll
The copyright invention is not a new and an easy business. We have to go back on the early eighteenth century to find the first kind of copyright that protects creative people of plagiarism and assure them to not do all the work and the preparation for nothing, for another one. But since that time, loads of things changed and…
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The copyright invention is not a new and an easy business. We have to go back on the early eighteenth century to find the first kind of copyright that protects creative people of plagiarism and assure them to not do all the work and the preparation for nothing, for another one. But since that time, loads of things changed and not always for the best. The issue here is to find out if the fact that the EU parliament approved an extension of the ‘’protection time’’ is a good and healthy decision for the creativity and the economical aspect of the artistic world.

In 2009, the EU parliament decided to approve the extension of the copyright term for music recordings from 50 years to 70 years in order to be a little bit closer to the US version of copyright, which is 95 years of protection. What’s the purpose behind that ? What can be the motivation for the parliament to extend the copyright protection time ? Here are some arguments from both sides, pros and cons
.
The extension can be a good thing for artists that are afraid of losing the control of their work, to see people making a business around a thing that doesn’t belong to them. If we consider that the global life expectancy is now 71.5 years, a copyright can protect an artist during all is life so his work will probably not be modified by anyone while he is alive. This can be considered as a good point for artists that want to enjoy their work until the end. The copyright extension also provides incentive to creativity. Thanks to this protection, people have more desire to create new things in order to take full advantage of it and that for a longer period. It can be for the pecuniary aspect (you are the only one that can have benefits from your findings) and for the artistic aspect (you are recognized as the only author of your findings). The copyright can also assure you that nobody will steal your work and prevent you from making all the work done previously profitable for anyone else and this, thanks to the extension, for a longer time. Short, the positive side is that people will be able to enjoy their work for a longer time and be sure that not anybody can do something unwanted with it.

On the other hand, an extension of the copyright protection period can be negative for the creativity in some points. New ideas based on old ideas have no places here and it’s a shame. Back to 1998, the Disney Company was one of the supporters of the extension of the copyright protection period in the US. But if you look closer, Walt Disney reputation is mainly based on old stories remakes, stories that were no longer under the protection of a copyright. This strategy has not to be considered as machiavellian because it allowed many generations to dream, laugh, cry, … and permitted the building of a new way of thinking in a business that is now an important part of the entertainment world. So my point here is to point out the fact that an extension can be bad for the creativity because it can prevent some good ideas based on old ones to exist. Sometimes, ideas like songs or movies are still under the protection of a copyright but are no longer profitable for their author. We can see there a potential way to make money for other people (i.e. remixed versions) but the extension will not allow them to use this kind of artistic expression. It’s a pity for the pecuniary aspect (it will not allow someone to use this useless idea to do something profitable) and for the creativity aspect (sometimes remixed songs are better than originals).

Answering to the question is the extension of the copyright period good or bad is not easy, we can find pros and cons (and this is not an exhaustive list of them). We have to find a way (a length here) to conciliate two things : the protection of all the benefits possible for the owner of the copyright and avoid a monopolistic situation that will avoid creativity for all the other actors.

Sources : http://artlawjournal.com/mickey-mouse-keeps-changing-copyright-law/
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esp%C3%A9rance_de_vie_humaine#Monde
http://djtechtools.com/2012/03/25/legal-concerns-for-digital-djs-should-i-worry-about-copyright/

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Chahine Mohsine
In my opinion copyright law has a main goal which is to create economic incentives and social progress. The problem is because of the length which become more and more long. Let me explain about that. First, due to the copyright, people who create something like a music or a movie or other thing that could be protected by copyright…
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In my opinion copyright law has a main goal which is to create economic incentives and social progress. The problem is because of the length which become more and more long.
Let me explain about that. First, due to the copyright, people who create something like a music or a movie or other thing that could be protected by copyright law receive a protection during a limited time. This protection allows them to earn some money during the limited time if someone else want to copy it. Due to this revenue for the author the incentive to create one more thing is present because this new creation will pay the author. So people are incentive to create again and again to get paid. For that point of view that is good for the social welfare because the multiplication of the author’s creation allow the society new art, culture and so on. This multiple creations allow also the progress of science and arts,… to the society.

Due to another point of view we can say that copyright limits the social welfare. Indeed if we talk about the length of copyrights we can understand that if the length is bigger, the author will have the control of his creation during more time. The consequence is that the progress of the science is made only by people who are protected by the copyright and others cannot be inspired by them to help the progress until the length is over.

Due to these facts I would recommend to limit the legal length of copyright in order to allow the possibility to more people to share their ideas. The progress will be bigger and faster as the social welfare.

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Charles Heymans
The copyright protection laws have been invented a long time before the creation of internet and the other means of communication. It has therefore to be changed since the world we are living in evolved. To me, the drawbacks of extending the length of copyrights outweigh the benefits of it. The first argument defending the extension of copyrights is related to…
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The copyright protection laws have been invented a long time before the creation of internet and the other means of communication. It has therefore to be changed since the world we are living in evolved. To me, the drawbacks of extending the length of copyrights outweigh the benefits of it.

The first argument defending the extension of copyrights is related to the creative character of it. Indeed, protecting new ideas for a certain amount of time will encourage innovativeness and a wider panel of products will come on the market. The second one is linked to the reward of it. The inventor wants to get something back for his innovation and the time and money he has invested on it.

I don’t agree fully with those two arguments…

As 17 economists supported by petitioners explained, it’s seems “unlikely that an extension of 20 years in the copyright protection would lead to more new works. The discounted value of the upcoming cash-flows would be so low that it wouldn’t have any influence on the artist’s decision to produce.” To me, it would even reduce the panel of products available to the whole society. An example of it comes from a famous Belgian DJ whose name is Lost Frequencies. Most of his new remixes, which are most of the time even better than the famous songs we all know, are never played on the radio. The reason for that is that they are too close from old songs which are protected, although nobody even knows about the existence of those old songs. In the movie industry we observe a similar phenomenon. Some big companies have rights on a lot of stories which will never been produced a day. Although a smaller one would like to do something with a particular story, it’s impossible. A shorter period of protection (not a complete cancellation of them since the author has to been somehow rewarded) would thus stimulate more creative works and provide a wider panel of products on the market.

I want to question as well the second argument regarding the reward for the inventor. Sadly enough authorship doesn’t always imply ownership. An example of it is the Happy Birthday song which has been claimed by Warner-Chappell however it was initially invented by two sisters in the mid 90’s. US district judge George H King finally ruled end of last year, however, that the lyrics would go in public domain after many years of many making by Warner-Chappell.

I think an article which appeared in the Telegraph of September 13th 2011 summarizes really well to who it benefits; “Copyright extensions are bad for innovation, bad for the economy and bad for our culture. The only people they are good for are those who collect the royalties and according to research that’s far more likely to be record labels and already-rich stars than it is to be struggling musicians.” Moreover it requires time and effort to register. Small musicians are mostly not aware of the process. Bigger firms, however, know how to proceed and they are the ones that influence the rules.

The main issue remains finding the right copyright length in order to minimize the losses due monopolistic situations and limitations of new potential works on the one hand, and the maximizations of incentives to create new works on the other hand.

The best way to tackle the different issues would be to regulate the big firms that tend to abuse while also finding other incentives than the direct returns on the author’s works in some industries. Popularity of being the first with something new and artistic recognition could allow some people to become celebrities. They make will make most of their money out of concerts and advertisements than by directing selling songs. The world has changed and it’s now difficult to control all the piracy regarding illegal downloading. There is crucial need to rethink an obsolete system that is not from our time anymore since the environment has changed.

Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8759524/Will-copyright-extensions-ever-end.html
https://cyber.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/supct/amici/economists.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/10/happy-birthday-to-you-song-public-domain-warner-chappell-relinquish-copyright

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Stephanie Rodriguez
In this comment, I will explain mi personal view against extended copyrights. First, I will comment the article “A great idea lives forever. Shouldn’t its copyrights?” by Mark Helprin. Where the author takes the sides of those who are in favor of extending copyright even to a perpetual point. In this part, I will give the cons of a copyright…
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In this comment, I will explain mi personal view against extended copyrights. First, I will comment the article “A great idea lives forever. Shouldn’t its copyrights?” by Mark Helprin. Where the author takes the sides of those who are in favor of extending copyright even to a perpetual point. In this part, I will give the cons of a copyright extension. At the end I will give my recommendations.

As said on the video, “the whole purpose of copyright is to promote the creation of more books and movies not to give companies the power to stop people making new creatives works based on the efforts on their long-dead founders”. I personally incline more to this definition of copyrights. Mark Helprin, on the contrary, advocate that copyrights should be extended forever by comparing intellectual property to physical property. Yet, physical and intellectual property cannot be compare, it would led us think that the end of a copyright would be like confiscating to your grandchildren the house you bought 70 years ago.

Indeed, if we recall the definition of physical property – For one person to gain some tangible item, another person must lose it— we are dealing with rivalrous goods. On the contrary intellectual works are non-rivalrous. Indeed, our professor can teach us Economics of innovation without unlearning it himself.

If we speak now about justice and fairness — “Would it not be just and fair for those who try to extract a living from the uncertain arts of writing and composing to be freed from a form of confiscation not visited upon anyone else?” — Here, Helprin totally forgets about the main objective of copyright according to Supreme Court justice which is “not to reward the labor of authors, but to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

At first, I was inclined to agree with Helprin, having some artist friends, I know how hard it could be. However, I don’t agree that the royalties they received from their work should be extended forever, it just doesn’t seem fair that a dead person claim for something that she or he already profited from. Furthermore, I would not recommend to eliminate copyright but to try to make it as fair as possible by fixing and defining correctly the length of copyright.

Sources:

http://wiki.lessig.org/Against_perpetual_copyright#Differences_between_physical_property_and_intellectual_works

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20helprin.html?ex=1337313600&en=3571064d77055f41&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/promote_progess.htm

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Sparenberg Antoine
Copyright extension: a dangerous trend I would recommend to limit as much as possible copyright extension because it goes against social welfare and only serves the companies owning the copyrights. At first I will justify this thesis by toning down famous arguments used by advocates of copyright extensions. Secondly, I will add to the debate by introducing a loophole that is…
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Copyright extension: a dangerous trend

I would recommend to limit as much as possible copyright extension because it goes against social welfare and only serves the companies owning the copyrights. At first I will justify this thesis by toning down famous arguments used by advocates of copyright extensions. Secondly, I will add to the debate by introducing a loophole that is increasingly used by companies to keep control of their products even after copyright expiration.

The two main arguments in favor of copyright extension are that the public domain suffers from congestion and that intellectual property rights provide incentives to maintain existing works that would otherwise disappear.

Let’s first have a look at the congestion problem. The claim is that letting ideas enter the public domain will enable so much persons using them that they would deteriorate because of overuse. This concept is called “tragedy of the commons” and is often illustrated with the fishing issue. Indeed, if a lot of people have access to a fishing pond, each person will fish from it without caring about its impact on others and it would ultimately empty the pond. This is due to the fact that fishes are rival goods: fishing them would deny someone else the right to fish it, diminishing welfare.
However, it seems obvious that we can’t consider intellect to be a common. Indeed, consuming it will not destroy it or prevent others from using it. On the contrary, social welfare is increased when more people are authorized of using a brilliant idea.

Nevertheless, although intellectual property falling in the public sphere doesn’t prevent one to use it, it does makes one less able to sell it! If I have the right to fish in the pond and then sell my fishes to a customer, I would decrease the demand for fish and prevent competitors to sell fishes to the same client. It goes the same with intellectual property: if everyone may use and a sell an idea, it plays the competitive game, decreases the prices and makes the consumer better off.

Finally, some argue that there is another side to this congestion issue: overflowing the market with variants of the idea, sometimes of poor quality, would confuse the consumer and impair the demand for the original concept. But the competitive market is full of examples of products of various qualities and prices and there is no reason to consider intellectual properties expressed in movies, books or characters to be different from fishes or cars.

The second argument often raised to justify copyright extensions is that companies would be reluctant to maintain existing works and keep exploiting the original idea if it would also benefit others through spill overs. Indeed, would the Walt Disney Company keep producing Star Wars movies if it would at the same time promote a Star Wars cartoon produced by competitors? The fact is that those products are complementary goods and that each of them would raise the demand for the other. The key point here is that it is a reciprocal mechanism: the cartoon would also raise demand for the movie.

In conclusion, it seems clear that, although copyrighting is useful to encourage and protect creativity, the trend for entertainment companies (e.g. Walt Disney, Sony) to extend their copyrights should be stopped or it will have the opposite negative effects. Unfortunately, because a lot of money is at stake, those companies mobilize great means in order the preserve their exclusivity and this brings us to the last part of my comment.

A lot of companies try to avoid copyright expiration by using another branch of the Intellectual Property: trademarks. Trademarks have a limited validity but can be renewed, giving a potentially eternal ownership. The rights for some famous characters such as Popeye, Zorro, Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes have already been trademarked and the trend is speeding up as more and more copyrights approach expiration (e.g. Tintin).

Although the Supreme Court of the United States already stated that trademarks can’t be used as “mutant copyrights” (Dastar Corp. v.Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.), there is still no clear legislation on the matter resulting in a bunch of trials with different outcomes. In France, this practice has been accepted by precedents (http://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/le-droit-des-personnages-pas-si-elementaire) , opening the gates to uncontrolled trademarks on works supposed to enter the public domain…

Bibliography:

https://www.eff.org/fr/node/90076
http://www.copyrightextension.com/page12.html
http://www.slate.fr/story/79200/societe-moulinsart-empecher-tintin-entreref-domaine-public
http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/musique/enregistrements-de-bob-dylan-l-attitude-de-sony-est-choquante_1207765.html
https://scinfolex.com/2014/04/05/la-malediction-du-petit-prince-ou-le-domaine-public-un-jour-dissous-dans-le-droit-des-marques/
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5888791/can-you-trademark-a-character-whos-in-the-public-domain/all

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Amandine Bolle
Copyright is a good system but it has some restrictions. I’ll specially focus on the copyright protection in the music industry because I think it is the part where there are the most to discuss. First of all, I totally agree with the fact that every work has to be protected. Effectively we cannot copy…
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Copyright is a good system but it has some restrictions. I’ll specially focus on the copyright protection in the music industry because I think it is the part where there are the most to discuss.

First of all, I totally agree with the fact that every work has to be protected. Effectively we cannot copy someone or use someone’s work without asking his permission first. Otherwise nobody would want to create anymore so this protection increases creativity. The artists feel freer to create because they know their works will be safe.
Unfortunately, the copyright protection is useful only if the work is good. If nobody knows the artist or the work it is useless to protected it. But, some new rules will maybe appear about YouTube and Dailymotion to protect every work that is used on these websites. Indeed there are some problems to control it so it can maybe help the artists to make more money and for the new artists it can help them become famous.

Thirdly, the length of the copyright protection increased since the last 300 years. I think that 70 years is too much. Maybe it would be better if the copyright protection stops 20 years after the death of the creator. For example Michael Jackson is dead 7 years ago and he still has a lot of success. His children win lots of money thanks to the copyright protection so it is good that it continues after the death of the creator but not that long. 70 years means that another generation is born and that the children of the artist have enjoyed from this money all their life. In addition, the patents for the technology last for 20 years so why the work of musicians can be protected such a long time compared to engineers ‘work?

To conclude the copyright protection is a good idea because it increases the creativity but the work needs to have success to be protected and the length of the protection should decrease to 20 years after the death otherwise it’s unfair for the patents.

http://www.pdinfo.com/copyright-law/copyright-and-public-domain.php
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/09/copyright_strangulation.html#ixzz2euJwfxHT
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/14/eu-copyright-rules-media-youtube-google-news-facebook
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/sep/13/copyright-extension

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Thibault Hannesse
Much has already been written about the copyright debate. However, in his comment I will try to explain why I believe the protection period should be shortened. The main purpose of copyrights is to give an incentive to create works of art. They are supposed to encourage creativity, in the way that they give some kind of insurance to the artists…
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Much has already been written about the copyright debate. However, in his comment I will try to explain why I believe the protection period should be shortened.

The main purpose of copyrights is to give an incentive to create works of art. They are supposed to encourage creativity, in the way that they give some kind of insurance to the artists that they can make money out of their creation. I must say that I can find myself in this reasoning. But when it comes to the debate to extend that copyright from 50 years to 70 years, I have some questions coming up. I ask myself in which way an extension of 20 more years of copyright would further increase the incentive of artists to create new works. I do not believe that any individual consults the law and makes sure his future work will be protected from copying after his death, before taking the decision whether or not to innovate. Furthermore, the biggest amount of income for books and movies is gained immediately after publication. Artists who still gain incomes for their work after more than 50 years usually don’t need that income anymore to survive. Therefore, copyright is not crucial for them anymore.

In the case a work of art still benefits from a copyright protection after the death of the artist, the given reason is that it represents a legacy to the artist’s children. Again, I have some trouble understanding how locking up a work and, therefore, possibly prevent the creation of new valuable ideas, can be beneficial for the society as a whole. Do these children actually deserve any protection for their parents’ work? It seems like it’s rather all about the music industry that wants to keep raising money for as long as possible. Could it be that governments have been extending copyright as a result of corporate lobbying? I don’t know, but the question deserves to be asked.

To conclude, I will say that I do stand by the fact that it’s necessary to make sure an artist can live from his work. But, knowing that this work will be locked up during the entire copyright protection period, I do not think it is to society’s advantage to continue protecting it after more than 50 years. In my opinion, the copyright should be shortened in general, while longer terms could still be granted on a renewal basis. That would be beneficial for the artists, as well as for the consumers who would benefit from more creativity and lower prices.

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Emilie Vanderseypen
In this comment, I will try to analyze the pros and cons from copyright extension through different arguments as well as economical, ethical or personal. First of all, from an economic point of view, there are two points that have to be balanced. On the one hand, copyright protection gives a right to prevent others from copying the work of someone.…
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In this comment, I will try to analyze the pros and cons from copyright extension through different arguments as well as economical, ethical or personal.

First of all, from an economic point of view, there are two points that have to be balanced.
On the one hand, copyright protection gives a right to prevent others from copying the work of someone. Actually, without copyright protection, every piece of work could be considered like a public good. One of the main characteristics of a public good is that even if someone uses it, it does not reduce the ability of someone else to consume it. But if there is no monetary compensation for the use it leads to a major issue. Indeed, what kind of creator is willing to spend his time if everybody can enjoy the result of this work for free? Copyright protection is one way to create an incentive to innovate because the work is protected against duplication and he can even gets a pecuniary reward.
On the other hand, copyright protection leads to inefficiencies like deadweight loss since it limits the access to earlier works, as said by Landes and Posner. To put it in other words, people don’t have access to work of their peer freely and it can therefore be seen as an obstacle for their own work and for innovation. Moreover, there are administration costs from making contracts and controlling the application of copyright protection.

In short, the advantage lies in the fact that it protects the creation of someone from duplication and that it gives the incentive to innovate. But there are also drawbacks due to inefficiencies. Therefore, as long as artists earned enough money to generate creation, it should be inefficient to extend copyright protection. Nevertheless, we do not know all the information to correctly balance the pros and cons. It is, consequently, difficult to determine whether we should extend or not copyright protection in economic terms.

I think we should make a distinction between copyright and patent, which are two concepts of intellectual property rights. Patent concerns inventors that produce inventions like machines but copyright is related with creative professionals who create something original. But why should artists receive a protection during their lifetime and even 70 years after while scientists benefit only 20 years of protection? Patents exist because the inventor will not invest in R&D with any reward. However, it is crucial for knowledge not to constraint patent with long period of protection because it reduces innovation. Indeed, inventions use earlier scientist works to improve or to create something new. With a patent duration of 50 years, we would simply slow down all the technological progress.

If we analyse the problem from a more ethical point of view, we could argue that the aim of copyright protection is to allow artists to make a living from their work. They can thereby move from part-time to full-time job. We could then believe that after their death, they do not need copyright protection anymore. However, copyrights are extended even after their death because it represents a legacy to children (I will assume in my comment that legacy goes to children, even if in some cases, it goes to someone else). In fact, artists are like the other independents. For instance, it is generally believed that a dental office of the father will remain to his family after he dies. After all, he worked his entire life to get there and, from my point of view, it is normal that all the efforts accumulated belong to the family.

However, I am in two minds about giving to children the right of deciding whether or not someone can use the creation of their parent. I think this right belongs to the author of the creation but not to someone else. If he dies, then I would suggest that everyone could use it with money compensation, without consulting children. However, when the artist talked about his own life in a song or a book, it could be disturbing that someone else modifies the story of their parent.

Furthermore, we can argue that many artists know a popular success only after their death, what is called a post-mortem success. For instance, some artists like Van Gogh were not famous in his lifetime. His paintings were only famous after his death. The creator did not benefit from this fame but if he knew this success during his lifetime, this money will be a legacy for their children. It is thus obvious that the money from post-mortem success goes to his children. It is the same reasoning when the artist dies when he is still young.

Nevertheless, we can discuss about the length of the legacy. I tend to think that there should be a copyright protection after death since it represents a legacy but it should not, in my opinion, last 70 years after the lifetime. Indeed, authors will not decide to create something for his grandchildren. By extending their protection, it actually benefits to big companies and industries, which use the copyright to earn more money from creations. Another argument to reduce the length of copyright is that when a creation is no longer under copyright protection, it belongs to our shared heritage, which improves the society in terms of culture. If protection were shortened, it would sooner improve our welfare.

From my own experience, I am part of a “kot-à-projet” in Louvain-la-Neuve and we organize on february the “Universatil festival” which is around theatre. It consists in four plays during four weeks. Each year, directors of these plays have to declare each music played and to pay an amount of money to the SABAM but we also have to declare it to the SACD, which deals with authors’ rights. This time, some comedians would not only play but also sing. However, this organization refused allowing them to use the songs because they would take the same music as the original. We tried to negotiate but even if we adapted the songs, they did not wanted to let them sing since we ask the spectators to pay for the plays. I find it absurd because directors do not even earn money of it and, since we are an ASBL, we do not make a real profit of it; it simply allows us to cover our costs. Directors and comedians do it freely, to promote the arts. It is very disappointing to stop them from performing their adaptation. Since it is clearly mentioned and if we pay to use it, I do not see any problem. If I were in their shoes, I would be glad that students all over the world cover my creation. This is an example where copyright protection constraints further creations. Now, artistic creations are too much dealing with financial and legal concepts, which reduce all the creativity, leading to a reduction in social welfare.

A problem of copyright protection is when an artist uses the creation of another one in order to improve his work. In other words, artists have to create something completely new but I think we should allow them to use some creations like songs as a complement of their work. For instance, there are many humourists on youtube who wrote a text and cannot help them to make people laugh with popular songs. It constitutes thus an obstacle to their own work. I do not think that using a song in a such way represents a real “copy” because it is only one element of a whole creation. It is the same issue if someone describes the film industry in the 90s. He will illustrate it with film clips but it is very different from simply post a copy of the clip without modifications.

Taking everything into consideration, I believe it remains a strong debate between increasing and reducing copyright protection length. However, I tend to think that it reduces the number of creations and that it should not be extended ad infinitum.

Sources:

1. http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/liebowitz-study-aug2007.pdf
2. https://www.legalzoom.com/business/intellectual-property/compare.html
3. http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2012/03/22/injustes-droits-d-auteurs_1673723_3232.html

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Nicolas Juckler
The Copyright law were created to grant the author of an original work the exclusive rights for the use and the distribution of his work. This law protect the inventor’s work and prevent others from making copies of the work. Since 1790, the Copyright’s terms are constantly increasing. The original length of the Copyright was only 14 years. That was of…
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The Copyright law were created to grant the author of an original work the exclusive rights for the use and the distribution of his work. This law protect the inventor’s work and prevent others from making copies of the work.
Since 1790, the Copyright’s terms are constantly increasing. The original length of the Copyright was only 14 years. That was of course a bit too short. Since that, many acts were passed and the length of the Copyright period was increased many times. In 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act lengthening the Copyright period for works created after January 1978 to “life of the author + 70 years”. That’s the current length of the Copyright law.
I think that a shorter copyright period will encourage creativity and innovation. The current duration of the Copyright is a bit too much. “Life of the author + 70 years” is very much and can inhibit innovation by fear of imitation. Creativity and inventiveness are built upon the work of other inventors, but with a too long Copyright period this creativity is limited.
Another point is that economics say that the revenues earned during the last 20 years of the Copyright protection are so heavily discounted that they lose all their value. So, this give the confirmation that the current Copyright protection may be too long.
To go further, a shorter copyright period will encourage more competition and innovation. With a long period of protection, the copyright give monopoly to the creator of the work for all the benefits of his work during the period of protection. With a shorter period of protection, the creator will have to innovate more quickly to add more value at his work to be more competitive with as result, more added value for the consumers and more innovation on the market.
The current copyright period may be a bit too long, I think that a Copyright period of “life of the author + 50 years” is enough to allow the creator of a work to generate significant revenues for his work. A longer period would be unexplained.

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Jan Kock
In his article, Paul Belleflamme summarizes different analyses and opinions on the increasing lengths of copyright protection, both in the US and in Europe. In the following, I relate to some of these considerations. At first, I put the current debate in a somewhat abstractive historical context. Second, I relate to possible cost-benefit perspectives underlying copyright considerations. Third, I condensate…
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In his article, Paul Belleflamme summarizes different analyses and opinions on the increasing lengths of copyright protection, both in the US and in Europe. In the following, I relate to some of these considerations. At first, I put the current debate in a somewhat abstractive historical context. Second, I relate to possible cost-benefit perspectives underlying copyright considerations. Third, I condensate the two former argumentative lines into my overall conclusion, which is that I believe that copyright duration should substantially decrease to pre-20th century levels instead of further increasing.

To begin with, culture and art have been part of humanity since its inception. From archaic cave-painting, the pyramids and Greek sculptures in more ancient times to Mozart, Michelangelo and Van Gogh more or less recently, culture was evolving constantly, undergoing cycles of artistic sophistication and depression probably as much as business cycles nowadays. What always rendered these testimonies of human creativity quite distinct, however, from common products of the real economy, was the almost near impossibility to definitely estimate their concrete value, already recognized by Baumol (1969). For instance, while the output of agricultural production can be concretely quantified and technological progress thus readily assessed, playing Beethoven’s 9th symphony at double speed probably does not lead to a greater enjoyment of this beautiful piece of art. Luckily, the Neoclassical revolution in economic thought, as exemplified by its prime leaders Carl Menger and Vilfredo Pareto, theoretically even liberated economists from these epistemological inconsistencies in value definition by simply considering the utility derived from a particular good, such as for example a song. But here, one might actually doubt whether this concept is actually accurate in (even only approximately) revealing its objective underlying value (if there exists objectivity in arts). If almost 40 million people watch and like the South Korean interpret “PSY” interpret his song “Gangnam Style”, can one possibly claim any artistic equivalence to Beethoven’s 9th symphony, even though it attracts about the same number of spectators? Not even to mention the price bubbles on contemporary art markets, which seem to be rather due to wealth investors’ excess liquidity than due to any well-reasoned contemplation about the innate value of certain unquestionable master pieces.

What is true is that the real economy actually always had an impact on the fine arts in human history. Ancient and middle age painters and sculptors were guaranteed their livelihood as long as they increased the prestige of their respective patron. However, plenty of artists also lived under depressingly poor conditions, be it Stone Age cave painters or famous painters like Paul Gauguin or Van Gogh. Money might have been a motivator to them in terms of assuring their daily bread and housing. However, it seems like true artistry can be borne under any circumstances, and the expectation of pure monetary profit may be among the things least appreciated by most artists, at least in comparison with other human needs, such as social recognition, public attention, or maybe even the pure inclination to do what one loves to do!

Hence, to me the debate about the economic reasoning behind copyright protection is built on truly truncated epistemological grounds right from the start. Additionally, it is mentioned also in the author’s text, and especially in Tom Bell’s comment on the so-called “Mickey Mouse Curve”, that certain interest groups naturally influence copyright legislation in their own favor. These groups often stem less from an artistic than a business background. Indeed, the ever-prolonged duration periods of copyrights since 1820 may have become by now somewhat disconnected from what the artists themselves might actually consider as necessary incentives to follow their passion. Most of them will actually not even be profiting from these prolongations, since they prevent them from reshaping existing art in the exact ways in which it was always done in the history of humanity.

Admittedly, there also exist economic necessities to artists. In modern market economies, becoming an artist may even start by going to university, and hence investing considerable life-time into the build-up of one’s human capital, if one wants to coin it that way. Particularly in the US, the decision to take a student loan to pay the high tuition fees may thus actually be the result of a necessarily imperfect accounting procedure due to the, especially with artistic professions, highly uncertain future prospects. Additionally, certain artistic projects, for example making movies, may require some form of physical investment (staff, technical equipment, transport costs etc.), which need to stand in a certain cost-benefit relationship with expected returns. However, at least in comparison with the R&D efforts undertaken by large companies, I believe that true artistry exists in spite of material profitability. Admittedly, some so-called artistic ventures (e.g. the majority of blockbuster movies) may indeed be quite cost-intensive. Still, besides my conviction that these undertakings usually fall merely in the category of pure commercial entertainment instead of true art, I also believe that a shorter duration period of copyright laws, say thirty years as in 1820, will likely still be enough that the resulting profits from the diffusion of the final products and the ensuing royalties equalize the incurred initial costs.

References:

Baumol, W. J. & Bowen, W. G. (1967) – “Performing Arts – The Economic Dilemma. A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance.” College Music Symposium, Vol. 7 (Fall 19967), pp. 127-142
Bell, T. W. (August 6th, 2009) – “Copyright duration and the Mickey Mouse Curve”. The Technology Liberation Front (Blog)

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Auguste Debroise
This comment will be more focus on the ethical point of view. Of course copyright is essential, because it protects the artist’s work, no matter in which field he is. But what about the numerous extent of the copyright’s length? Like they said in the video (which I found very interesting): What is the purpose for an artist to have…
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This comment will be more focus on the ethical point of view. Of course copyright is essential, because it protects the artist’s work, no matter in which field he is. But what about the numerous extent of the copyright’s length? Like they said in the video (which I found very interesting): What is the purpose for an artist to have protection for his work after his death? He will not anymore enjoy the gains he could win, so what is the purpose? We could say that it is for protect his legacy for his children. Let us assume that if an artist releases an amazing artwork 3 years before he dies, it’s true that if the copyright end at his death, his children will have no inheritance. So in some case, a protection after the death of an artist could be desirable. But only in certain case. If the artist already enjoys and make money on something he did for 30 years, he may have enough money for him, and for several future generations. So in this case, why protect his work after his death?
Maybe we should then come back to a fix time of protection like 40 years. If the artist creates something when he is young, he could derive income of it for the rest of his life, and give a part of it to his children. If he makes a work just before he dies, his children will have the time when they will be adult to derive income or interest of it. So to conclude, for me copyright are necessary of course, but I don’t think we have to extend more and more the length of the protection.

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Laurence Vanhove
As explained by the European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonization in the International Market, “Copyrights protect any production of the human mind, provided that this production is an expression, and not a mere idea, process or discovery. This expression must be original. Copyright confers both economic and moral rights on the owner.” Copyrights are generally set to last…
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As explained by the European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonization in the International Market, “Copyrights protect any production of the human mind, provided that this production is an expression, and not a mere idea, process or discovery. This expression must be original. Copyright confers both economic and moral rights on the owner.”

Copyrights are generally set to last during the author’s life and 70 years after his death. Nevertheless, many copyright-owners are pleading for the extension of copyright duration. As explained in this article, this type of protection has considerably been lengthened over the years thanks to the “Mickey Mouse protection act” and the “Sonny Bono copyright act” for example.

As mentioned in the above definition, copyrights protect production of the human mind and confer both economic and moral rights to the owner. When it comes to extend their length however, I believe their purpose is somehow altered.

In this comment I will express my meaning regarding long-term copyrights. I will give my opinion on their impact on creativity as well as how they are influenced by the economic rights and on the moral rights they confer. Finally, I will share my recommendations in terms of the ideal copyright-length.

Some argue that long-term copyrights encourage creativity by forcing individuals to produce something “new”. Although this is in some ways true, I generally disagree with this vision. Indeed, who has never read a book, seen a piece of art, listened to a song, watched a movie and never imagined another version afterwards? We are all somehow inspired by what surrounds us and by what we witness and experience in a way or another. Listen to the (oh-so-many) existing music covers and remixes. Watch a Disney movie or any other movie based on an existing book. Our imagination is so often influenced by others! If copyrights “last forever” we will pass by much more creativity than is generated by long-term copyrights.

In addition, it’s important to remember that we’re living in a fast changing environment. The evolution of today and tomorrow are great sources of creativity for renewing the ideas of yesterday. In my opinion, “ever-lasting” copyrights thus reduce the possibilities for making creative adjustments.

Finally, I believe that extended copyrights could even inhibit their holder’s creativity when they relay too much on the royalties that they already earn.

Creativity having been analysed, let’s now focus more on the economic rights conferred by copyrights and analyse them on the long-term:

It seems legitimate to me that when you create something, you like your work to be rewarded. If it’s possible for you to earn some money thanks to it, or even to make a business out of it, you should be able to receive it.

What about on the long-term? “Time is money”. According to me, this famous sentence, although taken away from its first meaning, sums it all. When it comes to extending copyright duration, big firms are always the ones taking the plea. Even by giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’m convinced that the reason they’re striving for extension is purely to lengthen their economic rights and gain more profit thanks to the royalties they can earn and not (so much) about their moral rights. Of course these economic rights can assure the creator’s inheritors legacy. The very famous “Tintin” created by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé perfectly illustrates the battle led by his inheritors to never let Tintin fall within public domain (even after 2053). Nevertheless as inheritors aren’t the ones who masterminded the works, in my sense after a certain amount of time these economic rights should cease.

When it comes to moral rights however, my opinion is quite different. Indeed, every creator is entitled to be recognized and identified for his work. It is thus comprehensible that they want to preserve the authenticity of their accomplishment. Moral rights are unlimited in time, which I can only agree on. Hergé’s Tintin, even when/if he falls in public domain, will be very restricted. Third parties will thus have to respect the name and integrity of Tintin, and will only be able to use the character under certain conditions.

To conclude, my opinion in terms of copyright extension is that on one side moral rights should remain unlimited, while on the other side, the economic rights should be shortened since the economic impact of long-term copyrights on the production of any derivative only benefits to a small amount of people. The economic copyrights could last for instance 35 years instead of 70 after the author’s death. This would prevent economic abuses and promote creativity, innovation and modernization.

References:

• EPO/OHIM: Intellectual Property Teaching Kit – IP Basics; Slides 37-39
• SUCCESSION ET DROITS D’AUTEUR – Un dossier du Service juridique de la Maison des Auteurs, Tanguy ROOSEN and Amélie GENIN, 2012.
http://economie.fgov.be/en/entreprises/Intellectual_property/Copyright/#.VjpaOIQzLdk
http://www.copyrighthub.co.uk/protect/find_out
http://www.sgdl.org/juridique/la-minute-juridique-de-la-sgdl-sur-webtv/759-la-morale-du-droit-dauteur
http://falkvinge.net/2013/10/24/tintin-and-the-copyright-sharks/
http://www.slate.fr/story/79200/societe-moulinsart-empecher-tintin-entreref-domaine-public
http://www.rfi.fr/europe/20150609-tintin-ayant-droits-perdent-une-bataille-fans-exultent-moulinsart-bd

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Antoine Mounzer
Likewise the patent industry, copyrights have more or less the same concept. It was introduced by authorities as a contract between creative people and society in order to promote creative art such as music and movies. Although the purpose is similar, copyrights have narrower specificity but last longer through time. However, the latter has led to many discussions since it…
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Likewise the patent industry, copyrights have more or less the same concept. It was introduced by authorities as a contract between creative people and society in order to promote creative art such as music and movies. Although the purpose is similar, copyrights have narrower specificity but last longer through time. However, the latter has led to many discussions since it has been accepted by authorities to extend over the years the application of the copyrights. Starting from 28 years to eventually last 70 years after the author’s death. As a result, people become more and more perplex regarding the incentive to be creative and offer society new master piece. It is believed that copyright is no longer profitable for society as a whole but to big large companies to help them maintaining great amounts of incomes. Here are some of my thoughts about copyright extension

The first concern evoked by companies is piracy. They want to extend their rights because they claim that their activity is less and less profitable because of internet piracy. In my point of view, this argument is valid in a way but not completely relevant. Although there are people that really enjoy the “additional package” when buying the original product (such as sound quality, extra video clips, warranties,…) we tend to be a society where everything is requested as quickly as possible. We don’t want to wait for a great movie or favorite TV show to come out. We want to see them as quickly as possible and that’s why we stream these product instead of waiting to buy for them. The society in which we live made us impatient. So personally thinking, piracy is a real problem concerning profits but I don’t think copyright extension will fill the losses due to internet piracy. Moreover, the heavily discounted additional profits following copyright result in a marginally decreasing profit.

In addition to that, there might be a misconception on how extended copyright generate more profits. Endless copyrights on Star Wars aren’t the main cause for greater profits. Or at least it is not as direct as “more time = more money for George”. Indeed as stated in the video, George Lucas made enough profit for several lifetimes in less than 28 years. In my opinion though, extended copyrights allowed the master piece that it was to be protected by true artists. The 3 following films were disappointing but if the phenomenon was not protected by copyrights, it would have allowed a countless amount of poor copies. In my opinion, thing could have gone worse and star wars would have lost its credibility. Now that Disney bought the rights and that the latter were well protected, millions of people are buying tickets and following incomes will be great. So to sum up this point, significant additional profits aren’t made because Lucas was the only one to benefit from his movies but because the copyright protect the name and allowed quality stories to be told again. And yes, it is very profitable for companies behind those copyrights, but it is also a chance for audience to have the proper artists behind the scenes.

As a conclusion I’d say that it kind of limits creativity but creativity isn’t worth anything if there is no follow-through. Having said that, there are two kinds of creativity. There is good creativity, the one that lasts, that takes time and has quality in it. Copyright barriers make people go further than a simple idea. They make sure their idea is flawless. Then, there is bad creativity. Ideas mixed with hastiness where you don’t take the time needed to flourish it.

Sources:
Industrial organization: Markets and strategies P. Belflamme, M. Peitz, p530-534.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/25/15-years-ago-congress-kept-mickey-mouse-out-of-the-public-domain-will-they-do-it-again/
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/12/musicians-copyright-extension
http://techliberation.com/2009/08/06/copyright-duration-and-the-mickey-mouse-curve/

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Ysaline Nobels
First of all, the notions of copyright and intellectual property have always engendered a lot of debates. But what do we actually mean by copyright? “Copyright protects any production of the human mind, provided that this production is an expression, and not a mere idea, process or discovery. This expression must be original.“ [1] We find works which are protected…
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First of all, the notions of copyright and intellectual property have always engendered a lot of debates. But what do we actually mean by copyright? “Copyright protects any production of the human mind, provided that this production is an expression, and not a mere idea, process or discovery. This expression must be original.“ [1] We find works which are protected by copyright in fields such as the literature, the art or the sciences. Music is thus a field where copyright is applied. In my opinion, copyright is an important concept and its existence is not to be contested.
Now, should a music recording remain protected for 70 years or even 95 years to prevent others to copy it? My opinion is quite mixed on this subject.

On the one hand, copyright is necessary to avoid continuous copying of works of artists and authors. In fact, it would be unthinkable that once an artist releases a piece of work, the minute after, someone reuses it and makes it his. Furthermore, we live nowadays in a world where everyone continuously shares information. With the Internet and other new technologies, people are able to listen or to download music without paying anything. The copyright enables them to earn still some money.

On the other hand, besides the purpose of protection, copyrights have also another goal, which is the incentive to innovate. In fact, the European Commission mention that “copyright and related rights provide an incentive for the creation of and investment in new works and other protected matter (music, films, print media, software, performances, broadcasts, etc.) and their exploitation, thereby contributing to improved competitiveness, employment and innovation.” [2] Having his own work protected from copying gives a feeling of reward and this is a motivation for people to create new things.
However, I think this is true up to a point. In fact, some people sometimes do not dare to release some of their works because they are afraid of copying something already existing but released almost a century ago and which is still protected and have to have to pay royalties to the artist. Therefore, I think that copyright and especially long term copyright are sometimes a brake to innovations.

In conclusion, I think that copyrights are very important to protect people’s work on the one hand and to create innovation on the other hand. People should be recognised for their creativity and originality. But I think there should be a limit to this protection and I am therefore not in favour of the extension. Like I said earlier, copyrights are also, besides the protection, a way for the authors to earn money and I don’t see the point to pay royalties to a dead artist.

[1] Belleflamme, P. (2015). A primer on intellectual properties (slides). Not published, Louvain School of Management, Louvain-la-Neuve.
[2]European Commission. (2012). Copyright and neighbouring rights. On line http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/index_en.htm

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Lambillon Camille
“The primary purpose of copyright law is to protect the creators of new works from unauthorized duplication. The U.S. Copyright Office says that a copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce a work, prepare derivative works based upon a work and sell a work. In other words, copyright gives the creator the opportunity to profit from its work, which…
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“The primary purpose of copyright law is to protect the creators of new works from unauthorized duplication. The U.S. Copyright Office says that a copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce a work, prepare derivative works based upon a work and sell a work. In other words, copyright gives the creator the opportunity to profit from its work, which can be beneficial to the artists, writers, musicians and other business owners who produce creative works.”[1]
While offering advantages, such as protecting creators, copyright laws also have some disadvantages. Let’s talk about them below.

First of all, as copyright laws have major impacts on innovation. Let’s redefine this term in simple words. An innovation is not only about having new ideas or finding a breakthrough. Innovation is “the process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that create value or for which customers will pay”.[2] And as this term is sometimes misunderstood, innovation doesn’t only mean coming up with totally new ideas. It can also mean discovering new ways of doing things, more efficient processes. For example in the case of music industry: using a song in a movie, remixing a song in a more trendy way.

I am personally convinced that copyrights are good for society. From an ethical point of view, copyright can encourage innovation by providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Indeed, as mentioned below, those laws have protected innovators from investing huge amounts of time and money into a project, only to have it stolen. As music is above all a kind of art created by human people, it’s essential to give them the same treatment given to many owners of other unique assets with similar efficiency characteristics elsewhere in the economy. Besides nowadays music authors/producers don’t enjoy as much profit as they expected because of the downward trend in illegal downloadings. From that point of view the copyright extension is in a way understandable. But is it really the case after their deaths ? Who will benefit from those rights after that ?

Then, looking more closely at the economic point of view, the conclusions are not the same. Unfortunately, copyright laws most often benefit large corporations and businesses, rather than individuals. The music industry is nowadays well managed by big firms rather than being composed by full of artists. Moreover by inhibiting mimic or remake, the protection might limit the creator ‘s ability to borrow from, or build upon, earlier work, and thereby increase the cost of producing new ideas. Therefore, a copyright extension would constraint the freedom and the welfare of the society in both ways by creating direct deadweight losses. Firstly it involves a higher cost for the production of derivative products for the innovators. And secondly it makes this product less affordable for society because we are no more in a perfect competition situation.

In the light of the above information, I am not for a copyright extension. However I think that this right should be given to the author until his death or at least 50 years. In this way, both individual and collective right could be respected. The creator could enjoy his creation (almost) his all live, and then other people could build upon earlier work and be innovative as their own way.

References

– [1] http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pros-cons-copyright-laws-52554.html

– [2] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/innovation.html

http://www.tunecore.com/guides/sixrights

– Belleflamme, P. and Peitz, M. (2010) Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Loïc de Liedekerke
Back in 1776, the copyrights allows protection for 28 years. With the time this duration growth with different laws. One of the last modification is the “Mickey Mouse Protection act” voted by the American Congress. It says that copyrights have a duration of the lifetime of the author plus seventy years. But why a so long time of protection?…
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Back in 1776, the copyrights allows protection for 28 years. With the time this duration growth with different laws. One of the last modification is the “Mickey Mouse Protection act” voted by the American Congress. It says that copyrights have a duration of the lifetime of the author plus seventy years. But why a so long time of protection? Some argues that otherwise the author cannot benefit from the revenue of his work. But does this act is always a positive decision? A so long protection could also have negatives impacts on the society. In this comment I will discuss the pros and cons of the copyright extension.

It is true that those acts have a crucial impact on the behavior of the authors. If they know that their work will be protected by exclusivity, so that they cannot be copied, it will encourage them to produce more ideas which is a good thing for the society. The copyrights allow them to win more money for their creations. With that money they are able to work on new projects. The problem with all those copyrights that last longer and longer is the fact that it becomes extremely expensive to create new things. For example if I want to remake a new version of a previous movie or book, I need to ask the permission to the copyright holder, negotiate with him, and so on. It is why some people are against the copyright extension because it is an inhibitor to new creation by the fact that it became more difficult and expensive to produce new ideas.

Another aspect that is really important is the economic one. This extension needs to bring more money than it cost. Nowadays it is not the case anymore because the money suffers from high devaluation, so in some cases it might be no longer profitable. In my point of view another point need to be taken in consideration. If I produce something today, how can I be sure that it will be still use in 70 years? The world is now changing so fast that a lot of productions made in the last century are not adapted anymore. All those works that are protected but not used created a lot of losses instead of profits. If the copyright is shorter somebody might rebuild the previous idea to adapt it to her new environment.

In conclusion the copyright extension is not a so good thing because it inhibits creation and there is no certainty that my idea will be still use in seventy years. There is therefore a high risk to make more losses than money. I don’t say that we should delete copyright because everybody has the right to protect his creation but maybe reduce the duration to the author life.

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Castadot Mathilde
And you? What do you think? If you had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, what would you recommend? The intellectual property has been seen as a controversial issue for a thousand years. How can we protect someone who does something new without slowing the economics sector around this product? Does “encouraging creativity” come at the expense of…
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And you? What do you think? If you had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, what would you recommend?

The intellectual property has been seen as a controversial issue for a thousand years. How can we protect someone who does something new without slowing the economics sector around this product? Does “encouraging creativity” come at the expense of public access or does allowing uncompensated access to existing works reduce the incentive to create future works? These questions have different and equivalent answers.

The economics point of view has an answer to this issue too. The economists “are disturbed by efforts to expand copyright, especially in cases in which that expansion comes at the expense of other overriding societal interests.” [2].
First of all, the effect of copyright are antagonists. Some researchers think that the intellectual property can increase and decrease the innovation.

On the one hand, the intellectual property gives more revenues to those who innovate but the costs for innovation increase also. As we have seen in our “innovation management” class given by Mister Benoît Gailly, an innovation is per definition based on thousand previous other innovations. “While each individual innovator may earn more if he has an intellectual monopoly, he also faces a higher cost: he must pay off all those other monopolists owning rights to existing innovations.” [2]. For some economists, the copyright is a question of definition. “Well defined and protected private property in one’s own ideas does not require monopoly over them, pretty much in the same way that private property in our own cars does not require the two of us becoming the only motorized citizens of the usa.” [2].
Professor Gordon’s argument that “to propose that fair use be used whenever the `social value […] outweighs any detriment to the artist. I’ would be to propose depriving copyright owners of their right in the property precisely when they encounter those users who could afford to pay for it.”.[1] He is the professor of the Social Sciences at Northwestern University and studied in Harvard.

On the other hand, if the number of firms in the innovative sector becomes too large, the revenue who come from the innovative product is not enough to cover the research and development costs. That could lead to a deceleration of the innovation.

Finally, the question is not only an economical one. We can also analyze the copyright problematic from the ethical views of each. The copyright, according to Oxford Dictionary is “The exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material”. In my opinion, and due to my own experience, I think the copyright should have a limitation of 15 years. It would be my recommendation and my conclusion. With all the articles I have read I think it would be a good duration, for the innovator and for the public. The government cannot fix more. My position is thus against the copyright extension. After 15 years, the inventor himself will probably not enjoy his previous innovation anymore.
Of course, you have the example of Georges Lucas who is alive and who still enjoys the “Star Wars monopole”. But the world is changing so fast that the interests and the attempts change each month. The duration of 15 years seems to be well balanced between the inventor and the social interest.

[1] Raymond Shih Ray Ku. “The creative destruction of copyright: Napster and the new economics of digital technology”. The University of Chicago Law Review 69.1 , 2002. Pages 263-324

[2] Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine “What’s Intellectual Property Good for?” Review of Law & Economics. Volume 64, 2013. Pages 29–53

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Melissa Boels
When I weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, my conclusion is not to support this extension. First of all, in my opinion, copyright is a very good think as a whole. There is always a tension between copyright and freedom of speech because copyright restricts the ability of people to propagate speech. Indeed, when material is protected by copyright,…
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When I weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, my conclusion is not to support this extension.

First of all, in my opinion, copyright is a very good think as a whole. There is always a tension between copyright and freedom of speech because copyright restricts the ability of people to propagate speech. Indeed, when material is protected by copyright, there are legal limits on who can circulate or sell it.
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the US wants to maximize the dissemination of information. Even in a society that deeply values freedom of speech, copyrights laws are permitted because they encourage enhancing expression. It means that without copyright protections, less speech would occur.
For example, if there are no more copyright laws, authors in the future would have less incentive to write books and certainly publishers would be less inclined to produce them because there is no protection and anybody can use them. When there is encroachment upon freedom of speech, it is justified by the greater public good in the copyright encouragement of creative works. « The Supreme Court described copyright laws as « the engine of free expression » which provides the economic incentives for speech activities. »

Copyright protection encourages speech. Extending copyright does not serve the same purpose. Extending the term for copyrights does not offer an incentive for creating or distributing speech but limits it by preventing expression that otherwise would occur. And this is why, the CTEA (Copyright Term Extension Act) should be deemed to fail and violates the First Amendment.

Another purpose of copyright protection is the upholding the moral rights of the creator of a work. « The idea is that those who produce creative works deserve to be the ones to profit from them. » In the real world, the beneficiary of copyright extension is rarely the author who created the work. The CTEA focuses on protecting studios and publishers who have the copyright, but not all about upholding the moral rights of the creator as such.

« We can also say that copyright extension is constitutional because it provides the resources for producers to engage in more speech activity. » In fact, if studios have longer time with copyright protection, they can do additional profits. But there are problems with this argument because it is purely speculative. They might use the funds that they gain for more speech but they also might use it for lots of other ways and there is no manner to know that. They can use it for additional revenues for another movie, or for higher salaries and dividends,… Furthermore, it is not possible to evaluate whether the speech that is gained by extension of copyright protection exceeds the speech that is lost. « Therefore, there is no reason to believe that copyright extension will cause net increase in speech compared to what would occur without the extension. »

To conclude, we can say that there are still some troubles with the question of the copyright versus the freedom of speech. There are plenty of legal instruments that regulate the matter, but we can still observe that there are more and more conflicts between the people who create the works and those who publish them. The moral element is at stake, and therefore, we can consider the fact that it is quite possible that the publishers want to get as much dividends as they can, without taking consideration of the initial work and idea of the creator. We can often be confronted to a major ethical issue when it comes to copyright and freedom of speech.

E Chemerinsky – Loy. LAL Rev., 2002, online : http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2338&context=llr

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Brieuc Tollenaere
My opinion regarding the Copyright protection is mitigated. One the one hand, I believe that a person should obviously have the right to enjoy an economic revenue on its work. It is indeed the basis of our civilization today. And on the other hand, I would argue by saying that a person should not sit on what he’s done and…
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My opinion regarding the Copyright protection is mitigated. One the one hand, I believe that a person should obviously have the right to enjoy an economic revenue on its work. It is indeed the basis of our civilization today. And on the other hand, I would argue by saying that a person should not sit on what he’s done and use it until the end of its life. This argument hold even more in my opinion for art and creative work.
One argument in favor of the copyright protection says that it would encourage creativity on the creator’s side. Indeed, if their work is protected, they would be able to have a monopoly on it and then it gives them more incentive to create. But on the other hand, if this copyright lasts for a long time, it will maybe encourage the creator to produce new content but it will discourage 10 other creative minds to use that work in order to improve it or to reach another public by changing it. In other word, I believe that it would discourage more than it would encourage creativity.

Moreover, why should an artist receive money during all its life for a song he wrote 40 years ago when a builder won’t receive any money after this building is done? Or a surgeon won’t receive any money from its patients when this patient is cured?
I believe that art is a very particular market and some master pieces took years to be created. I would then argue in favor of a particular new protection that is proportional to the amount of time that it took to create the masterpiece. Even if it would probably be difficult to determine, my idea would go that direction. In addition of that, I would suggest that the extend of the copyright protection would only last 20 years, enough for the creator to think of lots of idea related to his creation. In my opinion, like I said above, it would encourage other to use the idea after a while in order to improve it. I would also enlarge the scope of fair use in order for creative engaged people not to be afraid to use some other’s work to give a message.

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
— Howard Aiken

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pros-cons-copyright-laws-52554.html
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/
– Belleflamme, P. and Peitz, M. (2010) Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Faizan Rasool
The fact that copyright protection lasts for so long sheds light on the incentive to create. As highlighted in the article: the ex ante and ex post efficiencies must be increased to their maximum. However, in doing so, the article comes back to the main point: the stranglehold created from excessively long copyrights. The problem is thus that old content is…
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The fact that copyright protection lasts for so long sheds light on the incentive to create. As

highlighted in the article: the ex ante and ex post efficiencies must be increased to their maximum.

However, in doing so, the article comes back to the main point: the stranglehold created from

excessively long copyrights. The problem is thus that old content is inaccessible, and therefore not

able to be used for derivative works as inspiration etc. Ex ante, the view is clear: the recoupment of

the costs of creation is the primary objective, but once we go to the ex post situation, things are not

so clear (as indicated by the article).

Ex post, the dead weight losses created from a very long copyright are far more injurious to society

than are the initial costs of administration and inaccessibility. In fact, the extension of the copyright

length for EU may damage the creativity and innovation than previously thought: the world today is

far more dynamic and complex than that of 20 or even 10 years ago. In such a world, long copyright

periods would at best inhibit creativity, and at worst, actively go against the vary aim of copyrights

themselves: to enhance creativity while protecting the creator of information content.

Be that as it may, it is recommended that we work against anymore extension of copyright periods.

The pace of creation of information and multimedia content in the world today is such that long

copyright periods are becoming increasingly obsolete, particularly in technological advances. A

technological advance can be rendered obsolete in increasingly shorter periods of times. hence,

shorter periods of copyright protection, but not drastically shorter periods, should be the way

forward.

Also, the lack of empirical evidence and the glut of theoretical underpinnings of sound economic

reasoning is not helping the problem. The way forward should encompass the scientific study of the

costs of creation, the study of the revenues and costs of old copyright content. The aim of this study

would be to firmly establish the empirical base of this field and allow, therefore, for better

policymaking.

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Alexia Guilbert
Since 1919 copyrights terms have been extended through time. As copyright protection is « the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies » it is important that these rights are constently reviewed to the changing world we are living in. Indeed, in the new technological world it has become harder for artists to live from their…
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Since 1919 copyrights terms have been extended through time. As copyright protection is « the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies » it is important that these rights are constently reviewed to the changing world we are living in.
Indeed, in the new technological world it has become harder for artists to live from their work. Copies can be found on the internet. For the music industry the most : why would I buy CDs when I can listen to the musics on Spotify or Youtube ? It is also easy to download the musics for free. Therefore, we must find ways to encourage artists to perseverate. Certain incentives may help make this profession sustainable. Copyright is the most important. So without any stronger knowledge we might think that the copyriht extensions through time can only be benefic. However after reading some articles and thinking more over this subject I think the copyright extension is going to far and isn’t as beneficial as it should. After reading more about this subject I think that the extension of copyright protection is the result of hard lobbying.

One reason often highlighted for the extend from 50 to 95 years of protection was that it increased income of the Creator and promotes the production of literary and other copyrightable works. This argument has been dismantled by analytics. In fact, the per capital number of literary works should have increase as the copyright protection have risen but some data show it is not the case. The increased income for the creator is also very small as it is in the very long run and the value is discounted.

The one benefiting the most from it are the record labels and multimillionaire mega acts. This attest the power of lobbying. In fact 80% of the artists still earn less than 50£ per year from this extension. Moreover, only few artists continue to sell 50 years after their work has been published as for exemple The Beatles or the Rolling Stones. The majority of the money earned by the artists is coming during the first couple of years of their work release. I think this extensions are not as beneficial as we think for artists but mostly for music companies and record labels.

Furthermore, the impact of the extension would be felt in the entire economy as it will higher the costs for all businesses that uses music for their work. For exemple hairdressers. Thus, we can think that copyright extension increases inequalities because it boost big music companies and reduces small, independant firms profits.

Taking all this into account I don’t recommend copyright extension. But I think we should find other incentives for artists. For exemple more drastic intervention against illegal downloads.

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/copyrightextension.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/sep/25/copyright-term-extended-music-recordings
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/annual/2000/appendices.pdf

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de Callataÿ Pierre
I really much like the video because it’s based on several examples among which two, Disney and star wars, that I find very representative of the, according to me, biggest problem with copyright: the impossibility to extend an artistic work. Disney stories and the star wars one has certainly inspired fans to make their own versions (for star wars for…
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I really much like the video because it’s based on several examples among which two, Disney and star wars, that I find very representative of the, according to me, biggest problem with copyright: the impossibility to extend an artistic work. Disney stories and the star wars one has certainly inspired fans to make their own versions (for star wars for example, they are a lot of short fan-films on internet and some are very good for the fan I am). Nevertheless, instead of let people make some non-official versions of the story (where you will have another principal character for example) who will participate to the glory of the story if the version is good or be forgotten if it is not good (as people will know that it’s a non-official movie), the authors have to propose the scenarios to the owners of the copyright (who may just refuse) and negotiate the rights. That’s clearly a barrier to the extension of the artistic work. It’s particularly revolting in the case of Disney. Walt Disney who is a brilliant artist, inspired himself a lot of pre-existent stories. It’s not a secret that he bought a very large number of books during his travels in Europe. As it I said in the video: he inspired himself of previous versions to make some more popular. And now Disney (the firm) “protect” its own stories … That’s why from the artistic point of view I’m really irritated that copyrights term has been extended.

From an economical point of view, it’s a bit different. In the one hand, Economy invite us to thing at incentives. To make artistic work can be really expensive and so authors may have to ask to someone to produce the work (like the house of edition) and this agent will react on expected earns. The more they are, the more he’ll be incited to produce and the longer are the terms of copyrights the more you have expected returns. In the other hand, as said before: copyrights prevents for extension of the work. Thus there is no clear theoretic consequence of copyrights on the number of realisations and by extension on social welfare.

As a conclusion, copyright may be seen, according to me, as a “necessary evil”. The question is thus now: “what is the good equilibrium?” In other word: “what is the best term from a social welfare point of view?” To answer this question it’s obvious that we need empirical studies … However I can say that I, personally, think that seventy years after the dead of the author is too long. Of course I may be wrong but let’s take an example: someone who had watched a star wars movie when he was a child will not be allowed to realize his own version before he will be a pensioner and I find it just unfair …

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Cristina Rujan
After reading into the topic, I am inclined to believe that copyright extensions are the product of strong lobbying efforts by major players in the interested industries and that they are not likely to increase social welfare. The need for copyrights is under no question here: there is a general agreement that they are required in order to provide proper…
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After reading into the topic, I am inclined to believe that copyright extensions are the product of strong lobbying efforts by major players in the interested industries and that they are not likely to increase social welfare. The need for copyrights is under no question here: there is a general agreement that they are required in order to provide proper incentives for developing new creative works. A basic argument in favor of copyright extensions for future creations stems exactly from this basic principle: the longer the term of copyrights, the longer the period creators can benefit from the royalties received, thus increasing their incentive to create in the first place (Buccafusco & Heald, 2013). But this argument does not really work for already existing works, especially for those whose creators are not alive anymore. This is where the role of film, music and publishing industries come in: they make sure to find alternative explanations for the need of copyrights extensions, of course without mentioning the “couple” of millions of dollars in revenues that are at stake for their businesses. There are numerous voices who try to increase awareness regarding the fact that copyright extensions can only benefit those who collect royalties (e.g. record labels), and not so much the struggling creators [3,5]. According to Buccafusco and Heald (2013), key players in the creating industries fear that when entering the public domain, works are either underused (no incentive to publish old pieces – classic public good kind of argument), overused (too much use of a piece can decrease its appeal) or even damaged (lower quality versions/derivatives) in ways that can reduce their economic and cultural value. These are the arguments they use in support of extensions. However, the researchers show empirically that these hypotheses are not supported by data (they base their study on data from the audiobook market of bestselling novels): basically, their findings suggest that no such negative consequences take place when works enter the public domain, but rather that the benefits of doing so clearly outweigh the costs. As mentioned in the blog post above, this finding is not new in the academic field and had been supported before as well.

One should not overlook the disadvantages that term extensions can bring about: there are of course costs for consumers that materialize into higher prices of copyright works compared to the public domain, or into diminished availability of such works [1]. For example, this would be the case for libraries or students who would particularly benefit from works entering the public domain. However, the effect on new creators should also not be neglected. One the one hand, the cost of creating something brand new is increased with an extension [2]. On the other hand, there are artists who might not engage in the creative process simply because they would like to use a copyrighted material but would not be able to pay the royalty fees. If such a material would only be subject to copyright protection because of the term extension, society loses from the hindered creative process, loses the value of new derivatives that could be created. Andrew Hunton (Canadian film maker), while expressing his opposition copyright extensions, argues that “the foundations of culture is our ability to share, re-tell and rework stories” [3]. Re-telling stories played a significant role in building the Disney Empire, but this however did not seem to matter when they forcefully lobbied for the change in the US legislation in 1998, fearing the “loss” of Mickey Mouse. Imagine that the classical fairytales were copyright protected and a term extension would have prevented Disney from creating the beautiful Disney classics that many generations of children worldwide have been enjoying. That would have been quite a loss, right? Therefore, it is not over the top to believe that some creative endeavors would be completely hindered by copyright extensions, generating a loss to society. Many studies seem to indicate that these disadvantages are high enough to outweigh the royalty-incentives that extensions provide to creators [5].

How can is this topic relevant today? The issue of copyright extension has received quite some attention in the past year in what regards the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that had just been signed last month following years of negotiations. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation [6], the TPP requires signatory countries to standardize copyright terms length to life plus 70 years, which is the current level in the US. For several countries that took part in the negotiations, this implied a copyright extension of 20 years and was received with opposition (e.g. Japan, Canada, Malaysia). The resistance was built on the idea that an extension would imply a large outflow of money towards big foreign corporations, and that it would harm people by restricting their access to their own cultural heritage [4]. Moreover, it appears that in 2018 important works of art are going to enter the public domain, thus it is expected that a new wave of efforts will be made to extend the copyright terms even further [1]. Will there ever be a discussion of unlimited copyrights? The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides a brief and clear answer to why this cannot be: “current creators draw on a global commons in their artistic creations, and future generations of artists deserve a commons too ”[2]. Will such an argument ever be enough though?

Sources:

[1] Buccafusco, C., & Heald, P. (2013). “Do Bad Things Happen When Works Enter the Public Domain?: Empirical Tests of Copyright Term Extension”. Berkley Technology Law Journal, 28(1).
[2] Sutton, M. (2015, Sept. 1). “Why shouldn’t copyright be infinite?” Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/why-shouldnt-copyright-be-infinite
[3] Sutton, M. (2015, Aug. 15). “TTP’s Copyright term extension isn’t made for artists – it’s made by and for big content companies”. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved from: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/tpps-copyright-term-extension-isnt-made-artists-its-made-and-big-content-companies
[4] Electronic Frontier Foundation. TTP Copyright Trap. Retrieved from: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpps-copyright-trap
[5] Richmond, S. (2011, Sept. 13). “Will copyright extensions ever end?”. The Telepgraph. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8759524/Will-copyright-extensions-ever-end.html
[6] Konrad, M. (2013, Sept 13). “Copyright Strangulation”. American Thinker. Retrieved from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/09/copyright_strangulation.html#ixzz2euJwfxHT

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Diana Munster
As far as the copyright duration is concerned and, more particularly, the repeatedly extended lengthened over years, I see both benefits and drawbacks. I would firstly argue that long-term copyrights can benefit to the society as a whole. Indeed, creativity is spurred. Considering that copyrighted works cannot be replicated, artists do not have other options than developing new ideas. We can…
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As far as the copyright duration is concerned and, more particularly, the repeatedly extended lengthened over years, I see both benefits and drawbacks.

I would firstly argue that long-term copyrights can benefit to the society as a whole. Indeed, creativity is spurred. Considering that copyrighted works cannot be replicated, artists do not have other options than developing new ideas. We can therefore state that copyrighted works can be considered as an incentive for the artist community to develop and produce new (art)works, new styles, new contents. Lets focus on movies to rely on a concrete example. If they entered the public domain earlier, it can be assumed that there would have been less creativity and as a consequence, less movies available.

Before copyright establishment, individuals were more secretive as they feared that by publicizing their works, they would have been stolen or replicated without permission. Since copyrights’ existence, artists feel more protected and are therefore keener on sharing their work with the public. Furthermore, the financial aspect of the copyright fosters the artist to develop new ideas and to make it available. In this respect, money rewards constitute a strong incentive to encourage artists in pursuing these efforts. Therefore, it can be said that copyright laws definitively spur individuals to be creative and to share their ideas with society, which indirectly increases the number of work available in the market and, as a result, extends the knowledge for the society.

Lets bear in mind that Copyrights are fundamental to protect the authenticity of the work. Long-term copyrights can be vital to keep the author’s vision and way of thinking. Sometimes, authors absolutely want to keep their work intact, without any influence of other artists or culture. Long-term copyrights constitute a guarantee that the work will be intact until, at least, their death (except in case of author’s permission). It can also be a guaranty for the author’s future generation that the initial work will not be spoiled. In other words, the author and descendants can keep a certain level of control over the copyrighted work and its creative aspect.

However, there are also drawbacks to the long-term copyrights. First of all, if it is true that it can foster creativity, copyright law can also slow it down. By preventing artists to not derivate or duplicate copyrighted work, it can also reduce the available work or, make them less famous. For instance, Molière or Shakespeare’s works would not be as famous without the various theatrical representations that have been played so far. I discovered the entire play of Romeo and Juliet myself at the age of 12 by watching the famous movie of Baz Luhrmann. I had the chance to discover excellent actors, a famous writer (Shakespeare) and a famous play, which would not have been possible with a copyright. Without the movie version, I would not have been attracted for sure by this famous play of Shakespeare. The original version would have seemed boring to me. Moreover, the movie provides another angle of analysis and a different point of view. In fact, some producers focused on certain aspects while some focused on others.

Then, copyrights can appear to be confusing especially when it comes to music. For instance, the situation of the Beatles’ music was a bit strange to me. Some of their songs were indeed granted a copyright extension. Since Michael Jackson used to own most of the Beatles library, members of the band, and more specifically Paul McCartney, was required to pay royalties to him while playing or singing songs he created with his Beatles’ friends. In my opinion, such a situation is a total non-sense and demonstrates that extensive copyrights can appear to be harmful.

Finally, I would say that when an author or artist decides to not share his work and to take benefit from the copyright to protect his work, both the State and the author create a monopolistic situation. They can together control the work and decide to restrain or totally avoid the public’s access to it.

To conclude, I have a mixed feeling about extension of the copyrights’ duration. On the one hand, I understand that writers, authors, artists and creators want to be protected and save their work from derivative works. I also understand that they want to fully benefit from the money generated by their work and that they should be able to keep control over their works and to have access to it. On the other hand, I think that extending the duration of copyrights can be harmful to the society as far as they can decrease creativity and discovery. Having new arrivals into the public domain is crucial to facilitate access to the knowledge, create and maintain the culture and make memories. In my view, we should not extend the copyright duration considering that 70 years represents already a huge time period. It would be more judicious to underline and to focus on the existence of other alternatives that just come up such as “creative commons”, which favors information and knowledge sharing thanks to free legal tools. Creators can choose the degree of protection of their work and individuals can enjoy them. I believe that such initiatives would be more positive for both the society and the artists.

Sources :
HAMEL, G. Pros & Cons of Copyright Laws. Chron. Online on http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pros-cons-copyright-laws-52554.html See the 26th of October 2015.

O’MALLEY GREENBURG, Z. (2014). Buying The Beatles: Inside Michael Jackson’s Best Business Bet. Forbes. Online on http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/06/02/buying-the-beatles-inside-michael-jacksons-best-business-bet/ See the 26th of October 2015.

Raquel. (2007). Public domain : what is it ? Copyrighteous. Online on http://copyrighteous.blogspot.be/2007/06/public-domain-what-is-it.html. See the 26th of October 2015.

Raquel. (2007). Proponents and Opponents to the CTEA, and Changes to CopyRighteous. Copyrighteous. Online on http://copyrighteous.blogspot.be/search/label/CTEA. See the 26th of October 2015.

SAM, A. Pros & Cons of Copyright Law. Ehow. Online on http://www.ehow.com/list_6960466_pros-cons-copyright-laws.html. See the 26th of October 2015.

SHERIDAN, E. (2013). Get Back To Where You Once Belonged: Sir Paul McCartney set to regain rights to Beatles back catalogue. Daylimail. Online on http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2394325/Sir-Paul-McCartney-set-win-rights-Beatles-catalogue.html See the 26th of October 2015.
Website: http://creativecommons.org/about

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Gabrielle van Outryve
The question of the extension of copyright is in my view an unequal battle between big firms that have enough money to be heard, and the other ones. If you compare the advantages and disadvantages of this case as an innovator, the former outweigh the latter. Of course, you would prefer having a certainty as to the potential return…
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The question of the extension of copyright is in my view an unequal battle between big firms that have enough money to be heard, and the other ones. If you compare the advantages and disadvantages of this case as an innovator, the former outweigh the latter. Of course, you would prefer having a certainty as to the potential return on your invention. Big firms are ready to invest a lot to make laws pass that will assure this, which makes extension of copyright a lucrative business. The intensity of lobbying becomes increasingly huge. “There was not a single argument that actually can stand up to any kind of reasonable analysis,” says Dennis Karjala, a law professor at Arizona State who emerged as a de facto leader of the opposition to the law. The supporters of the law, Karjala says, were “basically the Gershwin family trust, grandchildren of Oscar Hammerstein, Disney, others of that ilk”—that is, holders of copyrights in old works that were on the verge of expiring.”

So what about the social point of view? Granting longer terms till decades after the death of some inventors is not wealth improving. As Sprigman says: “The only reason to extend the term is to give private benefits to companies like Disney or Time Warner that have valuable properties like Mickey Mouse or famous films.” If we consider Beethoven (whose works are in the public domain) we can see that he’s an integral part of our culture, decades after his dead, but above all, that the exploitation of his works has allowed to revive his music while allowing artists to express their creativity and be rewarded for it. Extending copyright after an artist’s death will not cause him to make a new invention/innovation. Their author doesn’t exploit most of all, a lot of works after some time. With such laws, we just prevent innovation in favour of a small group of privileged. The benefits aren’t outweighing the costs that such laws impose on the society as a whole. I’m in favour of copyright, but not such long extensions. In my opinion, a reconsideration of the actual law is needed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/25/15-years-ago-congress-kept-mickey-mouse-out-of-the-public-domain-will-they-do-it-again/

http://www.techpolicydaily.com/technology/copyright-extension-changing-economics-public-domain/

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Delphine Struyf
First, it should be said that copyright assures revenue to the authors of books, screenplays, musics... but it also gives them other important protection. Indeed, this recognition of right allows presumption of ownership in law but also provides a criminal-law protection (e.g.: against defamation). This is why it's important, from my point of view, to keep a copyright duration that…
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First, it should be said that copyright assures revenue to the authors of books, screenplays, musics… but it also gives them other important protection. Indeed, this recognition of right allows presumption of ownership in law but also provides a criminal-law protection (e.g.: against defamation). This is why it’s important, from my point of view, to keep a copyright duration that lasts even after the author’s death.
However, economically speaking, copyright protection doesn’t seem to be something beneficial for society. This is due to too low benefits for society (because of a small present value due to a long discount time) and/or too high costs (because of the monopoly created by this protection). A solution could be to lower the length of the duration. If the copyright protection lasts for one generation after the author’s death (i.e. 25 to 35 years), it should be enough to prevent main defamation and to provide an adequate revenue for the work. I therefore defend the existence of copyright, but argue that the duration of protection should be adapted.

Second, I think copyright protection provides a higher incentive to create new works. If you have to pay for using an existing work to develop your creation, you’ll be more inclined to develop something totally new. This will lead to a raise in the overall outflow of ideas.
Moreover, most economic papers say that the copyright’s longer protection will not foster new creations much (because the present value doesn’t increase much). As a consequence, a decrease in the length of protection would not disincentive creation much. I totally agree with their reasoning but think there’s more than an economic reason behind this. I believe authors and other artists create because they want to create, they have a passion for what they do; and not because they receive money for it. Sometimes they even write books, screenplays, songs… beside their actual job. Therefore, I think that a reduction of the protection via copyright won’t lead to a huge fall of new creations.

Finally, the extra benefits of the copyright can also be showed more intuitively through an example. Consider a movie director that needs music for his last movie. He has two evident choices: (1) use existing successful music but pay the price for it (due to the copyright) or (2) make a new music. If he chooses the first option, he’ll be sure people know the music and this can possibly be a factor of success. But if he chooses the second option, the cost of production of his movie will be lower, the music is specific to his movie (which could also be a factor of success) and he gives the possibility to another artist to become famous. This increases thus the creation process because it motivates the new artist and the movie director.

As a conclusion, I think it is true the copyright protection doesn’t bring much benefits for society if we look only economically at this matter. That’s why I’m in favour of reducing the length of protection (that won’t influence the incentives to create). But, as everyone that makes something original has access to this protection, the benefit for society increases with the number of new creations. And concerning the high costs for society, as everyone has the choice to create, everyone has the opportunity to become a “monopolist”. This could partially compensate the inefficiency created by other similar monopolies.
In the end, I think the copyright brings enough benefits to be maintained. I’m convinced it would even be a loss to suppress this protection.

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Grégoire Leplat
I support the extension of copyright. But my agreement has a limit. I will try to explain my opinion below as clearly as possible. First, each creator must have the right to do as it pleases with his work. Without such protection, there would be no incentive to create anything, because people will steal ideas from each other. However the issue…
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I support the extension of copyright. But my agreement has a limit. I will try to explain my opinion below as clearly as possible.

First, each creator must have the right to do as it pleases with his work. Without such protection, there would be no incentive to create anything, because people will steal ideas from each other. However the issue raised in this article is the duration of copyright.

It is difficult to judge how long a work must be protected. But I think the current situation; the life of the creator added 70 years is fine. This not only allows the creator to be master of his work and to enjoy what he has created until his death but it also allows its descendants not to see their ancestor’s work turn into something contrary to his will. In that context, the present terms seems to me perfectly justified.

In a context where copyright is held by companies, the above-mentioned duration seems completely unjustified to me. Companies, unlike the creators and his descendants, have no sentimental attachment to the work in question. All that interested these companies is to turn this work into profit. Deprive people of the use of a work only for profit of big companies seems unjust.

There are a multitude of opinions regarding this subject. The extension of the term of copyrights motivates people to create something new what drives creativity. Economically, new works are more profitable than derivatives of existing works. But in opposition; this prevents creative freedom, reduces competition and it gives a monopoly power to the person holding the right. It is therefore difficult to have an opinion about it. But when we pay attention to context I quickly made my choice. In case the copyright belongs to the creator himself or his family, I am for the extension because it is in order to comply as long as possible the will of the creators. While in case the copyright belongs to a company I am against because it is only in order to make profit and this until the exhaustion of all the possible derivatives of the work.

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Huili He
Generally, I’m against copyright extension, my opinion comes from analysing the purposes of intellectual property protection. As one of intellectual properties, copyright protects production of human mind, mainly on scope of economic rights. Under copyright protection, one is entitled to the economic exploitation of his or her work. Different from ideas that extensions allow authors to extend revenues derived from…
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Generally, I’m against copyright extension, my opinion comes from analysing the purposes of intellectual property protection. As one of intellectual properties, copyright protects production of human mind, mainly on scope of economic rights. Under copyright protection, one is entitled to the economic exploitation of his or her work. Different from ideas that extensions allow authors to extend revenues derived from their work long time ago, but thinking that, economic benefit is only high at time when it is newly known to the public, or when this copyright of human mind is newly granted. As times goes by, economic benefit gained each year is decreasing with high possibility. It is remarkable if one movie can maintain a high box office for a long time. A copyright term of 70 years is obviously long enough to protect its economic right during the time when it is most profitable. Some classic music or novel can maintain high revenue for hundreds of years, but this economic benefit goes to the beneficiaries rather the author or composer who originally owned this idea and expressed it to the public. Award to copyright is once and for all, which is not highly related to time or copyright length. Thus, from the perspective of economic right, copyright extension in length is not necessary.
As for the incentive effect of copyright protection, long copyright term may even hinder the development of human mind and idea. Long term eligible right put authors at a comfortable zone, they can easily gain long time benefit without doing anything more in this area. Since others need to pay to get access to their ideas and it also takes time, copyright blocks constructive ideas from outside to the original idea that is granted, which could otherwise help develop the original idea. In this sense, long copyright terms “paralyze” human mind as it mentioned in article “Copyright Strangulation” and increases the overall cost of producing new ideas. It will create a negative effect if copyright is extended in time term.
As moral rights are always retained by the author, related moral interest is entitled to authors once their work is granted and open to public, copyright extension in length doesn’t really do anything better in this sense.
As for adjusting patent breath, it is more like the problem of ambiguity definition of patentability. It reflects the imperfection of patent mechanism. New inventions keep coming out, the approach to address this problem is to improve the accuracy and precision of the definition of invention and patentability, rather than just broaden the scope of patent to routinely grant any “invention” claimed. Positively setting a formal standard is more important than just negatively adjusting to ongoing changes.

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Stefano Caliò
There has been much debate about the use of copyrights and their effectivity in helping content creators to prevent anyone from copying their work, while keeping a relevant cash flow that would be paid to them, plus the costs of keeping the copyright mechanism active and working. No clear and unambiguous answer has been given to the question of whether copyright…
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There has been much debate about the use of copyrights and their effectivity in helping content creators to prevent anyone from copying their work, while keeping a relevant cash flow that would be paid to them, plus the costs of keeping the copyright mechanism active and working.
No clear and unambiguous answer has been given to the question of whether copyright is good to both remunerate and protect the artists and being cost effective enough in order to not erode all the revenues with its high implementation costs. Therefore, trying to give a comprehensive opinion about it is quite a tough call, but nevertheless an interesting and worthy one. I think the best way to determine if implementing copyright is a good idea is doing it the economists’ way: using a cost-benefits analysis.
Let’s start with the pros of copyright, which are mainly on the artists’ side, as we should expect: first, they protect them from undesired copies of their work; second, they give them full and exclusive rights about their work (ie: a monopoly is created); third, the sum of the first two effects give the copyright holders the chance to gain the revenues coming from their work, being the only people with the right to receive them.
On the other hand, we have the cons: as opposed to what I listed as a pro above, of course a monopoly on the copyrighted work is bad news for anyone but the content creator; secondly, copyrights have clearly a cost, which holders have to pay in order to keep them lasting and being effective in their “mission”. Moreover, they clearly block anyone, but the holder of the copyright, from using the first idea as a starting point for some new creation: this means that any good idea which involve copyrighted material as an ingredient will not be able to become a real thing until the copyright is no longer active.
After pointing out pros and cons, what is the balance? This is clearly hard to say, as establishing whether benefits outweight costs is a tough call. One main problem is due to the long lasting of copyrights: not just from a creative, “artistic” point of view (as pointed out above), but from a financial one as well. Basically, we have to take into account that a long period of time involves discounting for far away cash flows to the author: this could potentially lead to revenues which are substantially lower than expected.
Sure, if we again try to think as economists, we might claim that an author using copyright is rational enough to do it if he/she will be better off doing so (ie: benefits, being these economical or of another type, are greater than costs), but still, a plea for copyrights as an undoubtedly good idea using this argument might be flawed, as it only takes into account the authors’ side. As a matter of fact, several prominent economists have argued that there is no certain proof that copyrights, and especially their (quite frequent) renewal, are beneficial, for both holders and the public: they did so pointing out how they hardly believed that the extension of copyright lasting under the 1998 “CTEA” would provide more benefits than costs, as such a move reduces even further incentives for innovative and new work.
What I personally think is most probably a bad idea is the neverending extensions that end up giving corporations the exclusive use of some ideas, as they work as a simple yet effective way to monopolise them and get the respective revenues over and over, even decades after their first implementation. It seems to me that this is, at the end of the day, just an endless protection to firm’s interests rather than what copyright should be really about: giving credit to the original author.
In this sense, I think that the lasting of copyrights is key to try and give some solution to the dilemma: from my point of view, copyright should have a limited duration and it should be linked all the way to a person, not to firms. In this way, he/she would be able to be recognised as the content creator and benefit from this, other people would still be able, at a certain point not too far in time, to use those ideas and work on something new (again, this is key to avoid a possible clogging and stagnation of the “ideas market”) and there shouldn’t be things such as corporation exploiting ideas just for preventing others to use them, while cashing in revenues for extraordinary long times.

Sources:

• The economics of copyright protection, https://www.ipdigit.eu/2013/10/the-economics-of-copyright-protection/

• “Copyright strangulation”, American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/09/copyright_strangulation.html#ixzz2euJwfxHT

• “The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998: An Economic Analysis”, G. Akerlof et al, AEI-Brookings Joint Center, 2002

• “Copyright: Forever, Less One Day”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

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Lehmann Pierre
The purpose of copyright laws is to protect the intellectual property of a person, for a long time those laws have been at the centre of the debate. Recently, the EU parliament has approved an extension of the copyright term for music. The only reason of this extension was to increase the revenues derived from old music. For the…
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The purpose of copyright laws is to protect the intellectual property of a person, for a long time those laws have been at the centre of the debate. Recently, the EU parliament has approved an extension of the copyright term for music. The only reason of this extension was to increase the revenues derived from old music. For the music industry it represents a great advantages but not everyone agreed with this policy.

There are several cons to the extension of the copyright protection, the two mains are the fact that it will create a monopoly on creation and that it mostly benefit large businesses.
In fact, the copyright owners on intellectual property will benefit of a monopoly on the concerned object. If the copyright never expired, it means that they will limit the public’s access to it. If such a copyright will exist it also means that a lot of work will be unknown because no one can reproduce it. The transmission of culture also takes place in the reproduction of older creation.
The other massive cons are that almost only large firms can afford copyright protection. Those companies buy the patents on intellectual property and try to extend them indefinitely. By acting like that they don’t let access to most of the people. They also prevent new innovations by putting patent on older one that may be use to innovate.

But there are also advantages with the copyright system, it seems right to protect the creator of an invention and such a system will encourage people to innovate.
Protecting the creators will allow them to enjoy the benefits of their innovations for a short period of time. It avoids seeing some innovation stolen just after their creation; most of the creators put a lot of time and money in their researches. The laws in place set a basis in case of disputes between individuals; it is so easier for everyone.
Despite the fact that some holders abuse from copyright protection and use it to avoid other firms to produce new innovations, most of the time it permit to the creators to discuss about their innovations without worrying about the fact that their ideas can be stolen.

According to those pros and cons it seems good to find a middle ground for the system. The “fair use” set in place in different country brings some limitations and expectations to the copyright rights of the authors. It takes into account the interests of the creators but also the public interest. The two main instigators of this practice are the USA and the Canada. All the other countries have based their system on those two. The problem of this use is that it is not really clear what can be done and what cannot be accepted. Most of the cases have to go in front of the tribunal to be solved.

As a conclusion, I think that the copyright laws have to be more flexible in order to let people share and spread creations around the world but also to let other creators use the past innovations to create new one.

https://www.ipdigit.eu/2010/09/what-is-the-optimal-copyright-length/
http://www.ehow.com/list_6960466_pros-cons-copyright-laws.html
http://copyrighteous.blogspot.be/2007/06/public-domain-what-is-it.html
http://educationtech.ca/2011/04/18/long-term-copyrights-and-education/
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1616&context=faculty_scholarship

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Valentine Neudt
The article features the arguments of some people who are clearly against the extensive copyright protection. Next to that the article also tells us that economists haven’t quite figured out how long and broad the copyright protection should be to have the biggest amount of welfare. Personally, I think that a thorough research is needed to adapt the existing copyright…
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The article features the arguments of some people who are clearly against the extensive copyright protection. Next to that the article also tells us that economists haven’t quite figured out how long and broad the copyright protection should be to have the biggest amount of welfare.
Personally, I think that a thorough research is needed to adapt the existing copyright law to the current environment. The main ideas in the European copyright laws stem from the Berne (1896) and Rome conventions (1961) (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/eu-copyright-legislation). The world has changed quite a lot since than if you ask me. Books were only available as ‘books’ and they listened to music discs and CD’s. Nowadays, we can listen to music in several different ways (f.ex: Spotify, iTunes, Youtube,…), each of them using a different payment method. Equally for written artwork, you are no longer obliged to go to a library or the book store, you can just buy an eBook online. Due to technology and the Internet the distribution process is totally changed. And this implies that the industry has become a lot more accessible for just about everyone. Youtube has given everyone with a webcam the power to post his/her music, big investments aren’t needed anymore. (f.ex.: Justin Bieber would never be who he is today if it wasn’t for Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8o7YBY_iaw). Another changing factor in the music industry is that the biggest part of the income of artist doesn’t come from the sales of their music anymore, but from their shows and performance. People want to see the artist in person. If one would perform the same show with just an unknown person, you wouldn’t sell to many tickets. According to me, this limits the importance of the copyright protection.
As mentioned before, in literature as well a lot of things are changing. Blogpost, for example, as they are published they are protected by copyright. However, laws are not explicitly stating to what extend they are protected. Clarity in regulations could be useful here. Fanfiction is another phenomenon that is rather recent. Infringement of copyright is often the basis of the story. For example, ‘writers’ fantasize further over what could happen once the Harry Potter-books are over. The most known fanfiction is probably ’50 shades of Grey’. E.L. James admits openly that she based her story on the ‘Twilightsaga’ of Stephenie Meyer. http://uk.businessinsider.com/fifty-shades-of-grey-started-out-as-twilight-fan-fiction-2015-2?r=US&IR=T. Should E.L. James have to pay a fee to Stephenie Meyer each time she sells a book? (Personally, I don’t think so).
One of the reasons often argued for the need of copyright protection is that people need to be motivated to do the effort to create as it requires a big investment of both time and resources. With the decreasing ‘barriers to enter’ some of the protection should also decrease.
Copyright also protects producers and publisher for the risk they take by signing an artist or a writer. They invest time and money to produce, record/edit, publish and market the music or book, but there is still a chance that the music or book is a big flop. Nowadays, even before signing Justin Bieber or E.L. James, they already were a success. With the decreasing risk some of the protection should (again) decrease.
Don’t understand me wrong. I think there should be copyright regulation and that the ideas and the creativity of people should be compensated by a sufficient reward and protection. Otherwise publisher can just pick up the books of the Internet or producers can just take the music from the artist, but I do think the scope and duration is too long for the current environment. Regulators should do a thorough research about the ‘ideal’ length and scope of copyright without the influence of producers and publishers (t is only logical that producers and publishers will always lobby for a longer protection, it does mean extra income without much effort) and after taking every aspect of the industry into account revise the current regulation to obtain an optimal level of protection.

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Gaetan
Before chosing between the copyright extension and no extension let’s have a look at the pros and cons of copyright extension. For the moment, ‘’Copyright extension is widely supported by writers' associations, artists, societies of composers and lyricists, publishing groups, motion picture studios and producers as well as publishers.’’ (Source 3) The advantages for the extension are the followings : 1) ‘Artists…
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Before chosing between the copyright extension and no extension let’s have a look at the pros and cons of copyright extension. For the moment, ‘’Copyright extension is widely supported by writers’ associations, artists, societies of composers and lyricists, publishing groups, motion picture studios and producers as well as publishers.’’ (Source 3)

The advantages for the extension are the followings :
1) ‘Artists at the start of their careers will benefit from an increased pool of revenue that will be available to invest in new talent. Established artists can benefit from their work throughout their lifetimes.’ (Source 2) Extend the copyright can help them to earn more money to invest more in new talents.
2) ‘’Extending copyright generates more income for the copyright holder and also makes it more profitable for businesses to distribute copyrighted material. The more profit companies can count on, the bigger their incentive to publish books or design new computer programs.’’ (Source 7)
3) Extend the copyright encourages people to create things with a high quality because their work will be safe. (Source 6)

The disadvantages :
1) With the internet, it is more complicated for artists, producers, session players, songwriters, … to earn their life. But the law has to prevent illegal downloading and streaming sites before extend the copyright. (Source 1 & 2)
2) The copyright extension will be more profitable for the record labels and already-rich stars. The copyright struggles the musicians. Then an extension may lead to more inequality in the sector. (Source 2)
3) The copyright has some problems that the extension will not solve. For example, ‘’limited dissemination : Copyright protection may prevent your work from being disseminated as broadly or as quickly as you might like.’’ (Source 4) It offers also a limited protection and it doens’t last forever. The copyright cost a lot of money and time.
4) Allowing a copyright to expire also encourages creativity by putting more material in the public domain. (Source 5) Then if the copyright expires later it will decrease creativity. It only increases the business profit according to the source 5.
5) Some abandoned motion pictures, music songs, television programs, … can become public. (Source 8)
6) The extension of copyright duration provides at most a small additional economic incentive and reduces the public domain. (Source 9)

In conclusion I’m for the copyright extension. It can help artists being to old and still living when the copyright ends to have incomes. It promotes investment in new artists. It will benefit customers by assuring that they would have quality of services in exchange of a small increase of prices. But it still leads to inequality between songwriters and performing artists. It will benefit to the cultural diversity and enables performers to protect their moral rights. (Source 7)

Sources :
1) http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/sep/13/copyright-extension
2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8759524/Will-copyright-extensions-ever-end.html
3) http://www.copyrightextension.com/
4) http://info.legalzoom.com/disadvantages-copyrights-23119.html
5) http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/advantages-disadvantages-longer-copyright-validity-period-11197.html
6) http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/copyrightextension.htm
7) http://www.barrysookman.com/2015/04/21/canada-to-extend-copyright-term-for-artists-and-record-producers/
8) http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/commentary/McDonough.html
9) https://www.google.be/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CGcQFjAJahUKEwitsazfvt3IAhVGOxQKHfFdBiM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kent.ac.uk%2Flaw%2Fip%2Fresources%2Fip_dissertations%2F2002-03%2FSkiltonDissetation.doc&usg=AFQjCNGwE1eWUne2w2zcfvoarsgqPOLceQ&sig2=6E2evJ99rjQxdz96_W6ClQ&bvm=bv.105841590,d.bGQ

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Adwate Kumar
I believe that Copyrights are necessary to provide protection to artists and authors. However, in their current form, they are more like monopolistic tools. The net present economic gains from such copyright laws are negligible due to the discounting of future earnings. Compared to actual property laws, which are in place for efficient utilization of scarce resources, Intellectual property laws are…
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I believe that Copyrights are necessary to provide protection to artists and authors. However, in their current form, they are more like monopolistic tools. The net present economic gains from such copyright laws are negligible due to the discounting of future earnings.

Compared to actual property laws, which are in place for efficient utilization of scarce resources, Intellectual property laws are in place to provide incentive to artists to create new work. The original purpose of such laws was to free the creators from subsidization by powerful patrons and the strings attached with it. However, in its current form, they grant the creators a monopoly right to control how the output is used even after it has been sold. Additionally, the advent of internet has rendered the original function of copyright laws moot.

In its current state, Copyright laws also hinder creation of new content. As pointed out in the video, there are several ideas regarding Star Wars which will never see the light of the day. I believe that instead of the current ridiculously long duration of protection, a period of 10 years from the latest creation, or till the lifetime of creator will safeguard the interests of the creator as well as provide incentive for creation.

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Inês Telles de Abreu Magalhães
In my opinion, copyrights are a barrier to the economic efficiency. However, we should continue to protect them, as we are talking about a constitutional right. We must reduce the protection (very high in our days), in order to achieve a balance: do not damage very much some of the investors, in expense of others (society in general), which could benefit…
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In my opinion, copyrights are a barrier to the economic efficiency. However, we should continue to protect them, as we are talking about a constitutional right.
We must reduce the protection (very high in our days), in order to achieve a balance: do not damage very much some of the investors, in expense of others (society in general), which could benefit from the inventions.

We all know that copyrights have been a controversial issue.
There are some arguments for and against of copyrights:

Cons:
– Theoretically, saying that copyrights generate more losses than gains is something agreed among economics;
– It gives monopoly power to its owner, as they can maintain the prices high (higher than production costs);
– It reduces competitiveness;
– Copyrights bring deadweight losses (losses than no one else gain);
– It protects inventors and creators but avoids others to benefit from it;

Pros:
– If one person has an idea and be sure that it will be successful enough to win something with it, he can take chances. Indeed, copyrights promote the entrepreneurship, the people become entrepreneurs, people to be more creative and take risks;
– The intellectual property in a services economy and even more in a knowledge economy, is a property with rights as striking as a property of tangible good, so it should the preserved;
– Moreover, no empirical studies prove that this is true, as no one has measured the costs of neither the birth of copyrights nor the extending of copyright term.

Copyrights should exist but its breath and extension in time should be debated based on actual measures with concrete examples of its effects on the economy.

Moreover in era of connectivity where we live in, measures to foster the openness of ideas which are interdependent with some principles to rule the value sharing between their creaters or their owners.

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Gonçalo Ciravegna da Fonseca
This article explores the concept of copyright and its framework. Actually, copyrights are an application of intellectual property whose main aim is to preserve the "creations of mind" through the attribution of exclusive and tradable rights so that copyright ,as an intellectual property issue, helps to face the appropriability problem concerning with knowledge. In fact, protecting creators' own ideas is the…
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This article explores the concept of copyright and its framework. Actually, copyrights are an application of intellectual property whose main aim is to preserve the “creations of mind” through the attribution of exclusive and tradable rights so that copyright ,as an intellectual property issue, helps to face the appropriability problem concerning with knowledge.

In fact, protecting creators’ own ideas is the copyright’s main purpose. Besides that, copyrights estimulate innovation for the reason that creators are rewarded according to their work and facilitate transactions.

However, copyrights mustn’t be a source of stagnation. People may not produce new ideas because they fear their projects won’t be able to be protected by a copyright, which leads to a loss for possible creators.
In my point of view, the lenght of copyrights should not be extended to avoid problems concerned with lack of innovation. Monopolies may emerge because companies have the exclusive use of an invention, discouraging others to work on their ideas. I think that creators have to be rewarded for their ideas but in a fair way and with efficiency comparing to other activities. Companies should not look to copyrights as a way to make money but as an incentive to develop their procedures.

To sum up, I believe that copyrights are useful to the economy but should be used with fairness so that they don’t compromise innovation and avoid piracy. Futhermore copyrights should be used according to ethical principles. Without copyrights creators don’t have an incentive to produce knowledge and technology won’t evolute.

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Fanny Delcroix
As mentioned in the article, the EU commission decided to extent copyright’s laws for music recorders as United States did a few years before. Nowadays, every artistic musical work is protected during the life’s artist, added to it, seventy years. This decision was made solely in fairness between musicians/producers and authors. Indeed, copyright’s holders can now benefit from revenues for…
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As mentioned in the article, the EU commission decided to extent copyright’s laws for music recorders as United States did a few years before. Nowadays, every artistic musical work is protected during the life’s artist, added to it, seventy years. This decision was made solely in fairness between musicians/producers and authors. Indeed, copyright’s holders can now benefit from revenues for a longer time. How can this encourage new artists to make new work?
This measure is supposed to protect creation and to promote innovating work.
My opinion on this is the following, the author’s work should be protected as long as this person is still alive. Therefore he can be sure that anyone would violate his work and moreover, he will receive money from his creation. But as soon as the artist isn’t on Earth anymore, the new generation could have the opportunity to inspire their creation from old works. The aim here is not for them to copy the old works but to make it better. That’s why, I think that copyright’s right should be effective for a short time.

Furthermore, it’s not a secret for anyone, life’s expectancy has risen for the past decades. A healthy person may hope to live until 80 – 85 years. This increases the costs for government to keep on distributing copyright’s revenues whereas the extra money could be reinvested to encourage new creators.
In my opinion, copyright is clearly needed in order to show respect to innovating work and artistic work. Although copyright’s laws are set to encourage and promote innovation, I say that copyright’s extension isn’t appropriated anymore.
Work should be protected during life’s author and government should invest the extra money (the revenues for seventy years) in people that are fighting to get funds. There are thousands of genius who need help, who need laboratory, studios, and materials to innovate. They have to be taken into account.

My second argument on the extension of copyright’s laws is about businesses abuses. In most cases, a patent on intellectual property benefits large companies rather than the individual artists and creators. For large corporations, it’s interesting for them to ask for copyright extension as long as possible so they can keep an advantage on its competitors. Those firms are well more interested in the profits they can make thanks to the patent rather than giving funds to help innovators. As a result, nowadays, we have large firms such as Samsung or Apple which sue each other for infringement of intellectual property or design imitations. They spend millions of dollars in court where as all this money could serve to invest in R&D.

To sum up I would say that we live in a world where information spreads out fast and where innovation becomes obsolete very quickly. The talent of innovators has to be appreciated and respected but this respect has a cost for government. Giving protection for a work already done is more expensive than encouraging the new one. It’s difficult to set precisely how length the copyright’s right should be but it’s certain that extending it as long as possible does not promote innovation.

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Florian Barthélemy
The European Commission sets up the scope of the copyright definition as follows: "Copyright and related rights provide an incentive for the creation of and investment in new works and other protected matter (music, films, print media, software, performances, broadcasts, etc.) and their exploitation, thereby contributing to improved competitiveness, employment and innovation." http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/index_en.htm I agree with the…
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The European Commission sets up the scope of the copyright definition as follows: “Copyright and related rights provide an incentive for the creation of and investment in new works and other protected matter (music, films, print media, software, performances, broadcasts, etc.) and their exploitation, thereby contributing to improved competitiveness, employment and innovation.”
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/index_en.htm

I agree with the idea that copyright supports creativity and is not a lock put on something as it has been mentioned in previous reaction. First because an agreement between a user and the original owner can always be found. Secondly, in the music market for example, I’m still surprised by all new hits artists are able to compose despite decades of copyrights on musics.

The definition of the EC is much more controversial about the exploitation of the creation. It is logical that firms which have invested in innovation want to cover their costs. But what is the effect of the extension of the copyright term? Or in other words, to which stakeholder does it profit? To stay in the field of the music industry, we could say that it profits to the author but it would be the case only if the length of the copyright term is not longer than the life of the author unless it profits mainly to the firm.
According to this, the EC, by extending the copyright term, changes part of the initial goal of its definition. The extension pursues now an economical goal which is beneficial to the biggest companies of the music industry. Next to this, we have to search deeper whether the extra profits for big companies generate more economic growth for the entire society than without the extension. Concerning this last point, as the article stressed it, the debate is still open.

Finally, I ask this question: what is the impact of our respective cultures on our opinions about the rightness or not of the copyrights? Because after reading all the comments, I remark that depending on the sector (music, books, softwares…), the opinions change. And it changes also in the time – I know that it was considered as normal 4 centuries ago for an author to copy another one. See the fables of La Fontaine inspired by Esope (Greek author) – . After all, is the debate really an economic one or do we limit it to ethics?

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Cedric Couvreur
First of all, I would like to say I am in favour of a copyright extension. Indeed, I think creators put a lot of time and effort into their work and it would be a shame if they could not reap the maximum benefits out of their own ideas. Would there still be a lot of innovations if the copyright…
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First of all, I would like to say I am in favour of a copyright extension. Indeed, I think creators put a lot of time and effort into their work and it would be a shame if they could not reap the maximum benefits out of their own ideas. Would there still be a lot of innovations if the copyright rules where shorter or even did not exist? I guess not. People will not feel supported and would not see the advantages of creating new content if it can be reproduced so easily by somebody else.

With the changing environment and the advent of Internet, the music industry took a big hit and authors in general earned less money due to illegal streaming or downloading features. Protecting this area and extend the copyright protection helps the compositors. On the other hand, the copyrighted content only benefits a small part of the society, the initial creators. Therefore, as stated in the text, creating new content is expensive and this may inhibit new innovations as well.

Other authors that would like to reuse or work with existing content can do so while paying royalties to the creator. I personally think this is a good way to both protect intellectual property and give the permission to somebody else to exploit content and make something new out of it. He could on his turn benefit from the existing fame of the author or popularity of the music track for instance but this will still be kept in a controlled frame.

The matter will remain a difficult topic and some companies can build big monopolies thanks to this intellectual property protection. This will discourage other companies from entering the market and maybe lead to less innovative content. As always, we have to try and find the good balance between giving too much power to big entities and fostering new innovations while protecting personal content.

As a matter of conclusion I would like to restate that I am in favour of an extended copyright protection. Authors should be protected for their ideas and originality. But, on the other hand other people should be able to reuse part of the content or adapt it slightly to make their own piece of work and this is possible thanks to the royalty fee system. This will lead to an increased satisfaction from all the different stakeholders: be it (1) the initial creator because he receives money by only lending his product, (2) the person that reused the content because he adapts it the way he likes it and earns money out of it, (3) the public because they have access to more diversified content. This is particularly good because we know everybody has different tastes and preferences so there will be more products on the market to try and satisfy most of us.

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Willot Camille
First of all, I my opinion, copyright is a great thing. When you create something, because you worked hardly for it, or you simply had a brilliant idea, it is normal that you earn the benefits of your creation. It is also normal, that your children can benefit from it also, as it is a part of their legacy. Furthermore,…
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First of all, I my opinion, copyright is a great thing. When you create something, because you worked hardly for it, or you simply had a brilliant idea, it is normal that you earn the benefits of your creation. It is also normal, that your children can benefit from it also, as it is a part of their legacy.

Furthermore, some people are saying that copyright is a brake to innovation, but I do not agree with this opinion. When you work for something, it is appropriate to be rewarded for your labour; otherwise there is no more incentive to work. As it is addressed by Landes and Posner, copyright gives incentives to create in the first place. If there weren’t copyrights, people would not be innovative; because they could more easily steal others’ creation as soon as it is public rather than working hardly many years long.

But what about the extension of copyrights? In my opinion, the extension depends on the creation we are talking about, and should be determined on case-by-case. For instance, it is normal that a copyright of a two minutes song doesn’t last the same time as a copyright for a whole film of two hours. The determination of the length of the extension should depend on the investment in time, money and labour. It is actually what differs copyright from author rights, as copyright has a larger scope than the author rights; copyright protects more the investment that the creativity. (Wikipédia).

However, I have to admit that copyrights should not be too long. I find it a bit curious that the copyright is staying for so many years after the death of the author (e.g. copyrights of Star Wars). As it was said in the video, I don’t think J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter aiming to have copyrights for so many years after her death. Moreover, if copyrights are too long, people will not be able to tell or reinvent the stories that matters to them, which is a pity for creativity, fans and for sharing the stories that have build our culture.

In conclusion, I think that copyrights are a great thing, because it is more ethical and it stimulates innovation. They should last a relatively long time, otherwise it wouldn’t stimulate creation, but that time should not be too long and may be shortened in some cases. The length of the copyright should be determined on case-by-case, depending on the investment in time, money and labour which were provided.

Wikipédia. (2014). Copyright. Online http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright, consulted on 6/10/2014.

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Christopher Staudigl
Before sharing my own opinion to the question of this debate, I would like to reflect on one of the main arguments mentioned by my colleagues. There is a key term often used quite self-evident in in this discussion. Incentive. Although it might be obvious what we mean when arguing copyright protection creates incentives, I asked my self what…
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Before sharing my own opinion to the question of this debate, I would like to reflect on one of the main arguments mentioned by my colleagues.

There is a key term often used quite self-evident in in this discussion. Incentive. Although it might be obvious what we mean when arguing copyright protection creates incentives, I asked my self what we actually talk about when we talk about incentives? So I looked it up in Oxford dictionary where it says: ‚a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something’. Somehow this definition didn’t satisfy me. So it is ‘a thing’. But what thing is it in connection with copyright protection?

Reading what my colleague Tiago Fins Joaquim states: ‘IP rights are related to private property rights, which are singled out as being one of the main contributors of economic growth’ it seems that this ‘thing’ should be related to the contribution of economic growth. So I guess we talk about GDP. While I will not elaborate on how to measure GDP here, I just want note that one way is to add all earnings generated within a year, in a country. This ultimately brings me to another frequently used term in our discussion: Profit.

In economic theory I set a price to maximize profits. I differentiate from others and ideally create monopolistic characteristics to gain more profit. I choose a point in time when to introduce a new product, to maximize profits. Importantly to say at this point, I am not arguing that economics is bad. I believe it has been very important to have these considerations in order to create wealth fare. But at the same time, as Easterlin (2013) finds: There is a certain level in each country, where the increase of economic growth does not correlate anymore with an increase in happiness. Not even to talk about the distribution issues of profit we our world is facing.

In conclusion, taking this into considerations, my opinion on extending the period of copyrights is clear cut. As already mentioned by some of my colleagues, I see it as another way of big players and few influential and wealthy people, to generate more profit for themselves. It can be argued that protection is needed to generate economic growth, but at the same time, I think that too much of it is simply counter productive. To end I want to raise a question connected to my starting point: Couldn’t it be also an incentive if someone copies what you did?

Sources:
Easterlin, R. A. (2013). Happiness and economic growth: The evidence (No. 7187). Discussion Paper Series, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/incentive

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Alexandre Germys
After having read the text, I am a bit surprised of the definition and the image that is given to Copyrights. In fact, according to the text, Copyrights are just a lock on musics and inventions to prevent others from making use of them to create new things. I don't agree with that view because copyrights are mainly there to…
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After having read the text, I am a bit surprised of the definition and the image that is given to Copyrights.

In fact, according to the text, Copyrights are just a lock on musics and inventions to prevent others from making use of them to create new things. I don’t agree with that view because copyrights are mainly there to remunerate artists for the use and broadcasting of their work. The goal of the Copyrights is not to block any use of the work to create new things. Beeing in the music industry for 5 years now, I can tell that Copyrights administrations such as “SABAM” in Belgium are not there to detect who is copying who but are only there to distribute royalties to the owners of copyrights on songs and other artistic works in Belgium.
I am not telling that you can deliberately copy or use a song that already exists but as long as you have the permission of the owner and as long as you define a new repartition of the rights on the new product, you can make use of any song or invention existing. For example, let us assume that I want to make a remix of a song, if I get the permission of the owner of the song to publish the remix, I can release it. All we have to do is to sign a new agreement to define the new repartition of copyrights on the remix (for example 80% for the owner and 20% for me).

In that sense, I think that the reuse of other’s music is one of the biggest part in the music industry. Every day we hear songs coming from samples of other songs but there is no trouble because every stakeholders of the songs are receiving their royalties. And that is exactly this reuse of old music that have lead the US and EU to the copyright extension. Even if the songs from the 60’s are no longer very bought or broadcasted, they are still a rich source to exploit to make new music and Majors in the Music Industry want to be sure to earn the profit they diserve from all those musics sampling old stuff on which they have rights.

It is also important to say that the biggest profit in the music industry nowadays comes from royalties and concerts since it has been so easy to find any music on the internet for free.

According to me, nobody would try to create or innovate in any sectors if copyrights did not exist. It would be exactly like if you built a table and somebody came to steal it without giving you any money, from an ethical point of view it would be surrealist. So I am totally for the copyright extension because it incents more to create than it impedes the effort to innovate. Only people who have never created anything could be against the copyright law and copyright extension. If you create something, it is normal for you to be the owner of it, the longer possible.

Concerning the cons of the copyright extension, it is said in the text that “[i]t is highly unlikely that the economic benefits from copyright extension under the CTEA outweigh the costs”. Indeed it costs to the admininistration to manage and distribute all the royalties coming from copyrights and even if some old musics and creations will no more be profitable after 50 years, some others will be and I think it creates a balance which compensates the costs.

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Maxime Vigneron
The question of the copyright seems to be an ambiguous one. Protecting the work of authors and artists sounds logical but today copyrights are often a way for company to make money. For me copyrights clairly should not be cancelled, however some modifications have to be done. As an exemple, if a young author invents a new concept or a new…
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The question of the copyright seems to be an ambiguous one. Protecting the work of authors and artists sounds logical but today copyrights are often a way for company to make money.

For me copyrights clairly should not be cancelled, however some modifications have to be done. As an exemple, if a young author invents a new concept or a new story, the law has to protect his work and give him the opportunity to live thanks his creativity. Moreover after his dead, his children have to keep the benefits of his work as if it was a part of his legacy.
But a too heavy copyright may avoid other people to work from this work and to creat new things, wich could be seen as a real brake to innovation.

From my point of view, the intellectual property laws are very important but the length of copyrights should be shortened and the fees should be tapering if the owner has earned a fixed amount of money. It will avoid the cases of big companies who created some monopoly thanks of these copyrights. But if an invention came from a random guy who doesn’t has a lot of money and whom his creativity need to be protected for him and his family, an extentio of the copyright duration could be a good idea. This is a social aspect.
From a more economical point of view whithout taking account of the situation of the owner, the copyright duration should be shortened because it limit the economy and the innovation. But without any copyright, people will not have any incentive to innovate. So the copyright should be conserved but reduced.

Finally I think there is a conflict, who is not easy to solve, between the protection of intellectual property and the democratisation of knowledge and information.

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Miguel de Raedt
First of all, we must keep in mind that copyright law is not only about big corporations owning million of dollars blocking any single diffusion of the works they own. Such examples of abuses are the ones we often hear about and they are the ones lobbying the most for a reinforcement of the copyright law, making them more visible,…
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First of all, we must keep in mind that copyright law is not only about big corporations owning million of dollars blocking any single diffusion of the works they own. Such examples of abuses are the ones we often hear about and they are the ones lobbying the most for a reinforcement of the copyright law, making them more visible, but it is only a part of the reality. Most of the creators cannot base their living on their work alone. With that said, I do agree that, from an economical point of view, the added length of the copyright protection before the creation falls into the public domain does not make much sense. Only the creator should enjoy the fruits of his work and so 70 years of revenues should suffice to do just that. One can wonder how the heirs of an author have any claim to the works of their parents. Interestingly enough, most abuses of copyright law come not from the authors but from companies or heirs that are worried about their source of income. (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/05/before_watchmen_controversy_alan_moore_is_right_.2.html , http://www.numerama.com/f/99563-t-l39hallucinante-degenerescence-du-34droit-d39auteur34.html ).
Another problem arises when we need to quantify the value lost or added when we compare different regimes of copyright law, for example Europe versus USA. The value of an artistic creation is quite the tricky thing to compute. Proxies could be box-office results, number of albums sold, number of times a book is referenced etc. This gives us only something to measure but does not give any insight regarding the worth of a good. Nevertheless, the system should take into account the incentives needed for new work to exist, whatever it’s worth and the necessary diffusion of that work into the public domain. The second matter creates quite the paradox. Nowadays, everything or almost everything can be found on the internet for free but diffusion will only work for those goods we heard about. So, the goods which have the most impact (the ones who are the most diffused) are the ones with a good communication which are often the one with corporations supporting them. And corporations are the ones wishing to restrain the diffusion to adapt it to their own rules. For example, asking huge royalties for reproduction of literary works can make the price of an anthology unaffordable which in turn stops its diffusion and in the worst case its creation if the producers find it too risky to develop.

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Florent Dauvister
While I agree that a piece of work whether it be music, a blueprint for new motherboard architecture or even a fishing lure with a camera has to benefit its creator. I also think that there is something inherently wrong with the way we protect the works of those who create. The more information travel the world at any point…
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While I agree that a piece of work whether it be music, a blueprint for new motherboard architecture or even a fishing lure with a camera has to benefit its creator. I also think that there is something inherently wrong with the way we protect the works of those who create.
The more information travel the world at any point in time, the better people can access what they want, when they want. I want to emphasis my comment on copyright protection through the invention that has dramatically changed our lives in merely thirty years.

I’m of course talking about the internet; it is such a wonderful invention and has been at the center of innovation for the last three decades. Information can travel the world in milliseconds and knowledge has never been as easily accessible as it is now. However, even if the internet is seen as the best tool for mankind to create value, share ideas and information by many, a few still see it as a hostile place they want to control.

This is the result of two huge issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later:
– The first one being the place of lobbying in everything that is even somewhat related to copyrights, trademarks and intellectual properties. Firms are dumping a huge amount of money in politics to actually have their say in the design process of law making when it comes to intellectual property protection, the main reason being that they are trying to find a way to make more money from what has already been created. The more money they can grab, the better off they are of course. Private money has no place in politics and law creation, especially when it only benefits companies and slows down innovation and information sharing.

– The second one is the apparent lack of competent law makers to deal with new technology; software patents, torrents, … Looking at SOPA and its newer iterations, it is very easy to see that on top of heavy lobbying pushing law makers to protect companies to a ridiculous extent, law makers also have a very clouded vision of what they are talking about. They are misinformed and always acting too slowly despite technology never stopping its evolution course.

Copyright extension can only be a bad thing when the intensions are wrong and the decisions are misinformed.

Source:
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/issuesum.php?id=CPT

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Mario Medina
The one who hits once, hits twice (this is a Mexican say). One of the many problems with the copyright protection is that it is really subjective people just can’t define if one artistic job is a copy of another one that easily. I understand that it is fair to protect your creations from others if one person wants to…
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The one who hits once, hits twice (this is a Mexican say). One of the many problems with the copyright protection is that it is really subjective people just can’t define if one artistic job is a copy of another one that easily. I understand that it is fair to protect your creations from others if one person wants to use your exact same creations and earn money with it it’s not fair and you should receive that profit first. But if anyone create something similar than your job, but it’s not the same (although it is really alike) it’s not that fair to make that person pay you, cause the decision is really subjective.

In the other side, I don’t think that with the copyright laws people will stop to create artistic jobs, the creative will create no matter what because it is in his nature. The artists should be get paid for their jobs and the copyrights if one of those ways for them to receive benefits from their work. However extend the copyright 70 years after the artist´s life is excessive and could mean more losses for the company than profits, that’s why I think that extend the copyright for the author just until his death is more than fair enough.

In the economy branch we have a lot of money involved in the artistic world, and it is good to have another source of profits (copyrights), other than the sale of the artistic work, and that´s because nowadays it is extremely easy to get access to any artistic piece (films, music, books…), and that’s something that the law hasn’t been able to control yet, at the end it’s good to have another way to earn benefits from your work to overcome the losses that you could have for the piracy. Now talking about the piracy, in my opinion a better way to fight against it is to decrease the prices of the art pieces, sometimes the prices are too high that many people don’t have the resources for purchase that kind of goods and prefer to get it for free in the internet for example.

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Alex Angelini
In my humble opinion the standard form of the Copyright (C) - "all rights reserved" - is a partially outdated concept, which is not optimal (by itself) to maximize the different payoffs of authors, emerging authors and society. The main problem is that the traditional Copyright is an inflexible instrument, an "all purpose" defence for property rights that doesn't fit well…
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In my humble opinion the standard form of the Copyright (C) – “all rights reserved” – is a partially outdated concept, which is not optimal (by itself) to maximize the different payoffs of authors, emerging authors and society.

The main problem is that the traditional Copyright is an inflexible instrument, an “all purpose” defence for property rights that doesn’t fit well within today’s evolution of art and society – both much more dynamic and interconnected than in the past – and it’s obvious that in the simple dichotomy “all-or-nothing” that Copyright can provide, much waste is to both authors and society, while firms reap all the benefits of the monopoly-like conditions.
Fortunately, the “all rights reserved” is not the only instrument available, and the ideal would be to develop an hybrid system with other forms of protection: I would suggest to reduce the standard Copyright to 10-20 years at most and then to allow authors to choose for another (less stringent) form of protection for the following years, drawing from the experience of the Creative Commons (CC) and similar experiments.
In that way we could have a multi-layered defence of property rights that would reduce its size every some years, giving more space to the emerging authors, while maintaining some sort of protection. [ For example, an author could choose to benefit for 10 years of standard Copiright and then switch to a “non commercial” Copyright (NC) for the next 20 years].

This won’t necessary reduce the authors’ profits, but it will force them to reflect on how they desire to protect their work, while leaving space for other, emerging and not less important authors and society.

More on Creative Common licences:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en

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Zhang Xiaomeng
Intellectual property production is the method to maximize the benefits from the innovation works and minus the losses from limiting access. It costs a lot to break the copyrights to master the private invention and works in order to strongly product private intellectual wealth. According to the global investigation, more than 80 percentage of market value was made by intellectual…
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Intellectual property production is the method to maximize the benefits from the innovation works and minus the losses from limiting access. It costs a lot to break the copyrights to master the private invention and works in order to strongly product private intellectual wealth. According to the global investigation, more than 80 percentage of market value was made by intellectual property, which illustrate that creative industry is taking a significant position in the society nowadays.

With the increasing market proportion of intellectual property industry, copyright issue becomes an urgent needed debate topic around the worldwide. The idea which was treated as the main point is trying to protect private innovation and intellectual property as long as possible several decades ago. All the efforts were put to extend the protection period of copyright and support the individual liberty. However, as rapid developing of digital industry during these years, whether the copyrighted works limited the innovation becomes a debate issue. There is an idea that overprotect of intellectual property makes excess income for creators which will limited their innovate abilities. These kinds of protection become intellectual property monopoly which border the free competition on the market and block the innovation. Some of the economists, Professor Levine and Boldrin from Washington University in St. Louis as represent, calling for the copyright law reform and changing patent protection system.

With the networking of the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF), U.S. Patent and Trademark office (USPTO) and the National Telecommunications and information Administration (NTIA), on July 31 2013, the U.S. Department of Commerce released a green paper on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and innovation in the Digital Economy (Green Paper) to set an advanced policy critical to economic growth. This report suggests to maintain a balanced and effective copyright system, continuing support the legitimate market for copyright as well as create the platform for innovation in the digital environment.

By considering the society development and economics progress, more innovation needed to be provided with intellectual property. From the above discussion, 70 years copyright term for music recordings provided by EU parliament protect the right of composer to some extent, but it is really such a long time protection for others to innovate new goods based on these copyrights. It will block the development process of society.

Reference:
1. http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/13656.aspx
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-dodd/copyright-empowering-inno_b_3417472.html
3. http://www.uspto.gov/news/publications/copyrightgreenpaper.pdf
4. http://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2013/07/31/us-department-commerce-produces-comprehensive-analysis-addressing-cop

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Thomas Ruelle
I completely agree that people who come up with awesome pieces of work deserve to get rewarded at the height of their talent. Nevertheless I am personally against extending the copyright duration. I would qualify it as both economically and socially counterproductive. First of all, from an economic perspective, I do agree with the specialists who said in 2002: “[i]t…
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I completely agree that people who come up with awesome pieces of work deserve to get rewarded at the height of their talent. Nevertheless I am personally against extending the copyright duration. I would qualify it as both economically and socially counterproductive.

First of all, from an economic perspective, I do agree with the specialists who said in 2002: “[i]t is highly unlikely that the economic benefits from copyright extension under the CTEA outweigh the costs”. I think that we should think in terms of opportunity costs. Does it make sense to allow someone to benefit from his/her artistic work 70 years after creation, whereas within that period someone could come up with an original extension and make good profit from it. The economical value of all the potential works that could have been realized if the law wasn’t that strong, is huge. Obviously we need to protect people’s ideas, and make them benefit from their talent, but freezing a creation for such a long time costs more to the economy than the inventor earns. To support that idea, I would say that the inventor’s earnings are function of the time, I guess that the curve is concave, meaning that up to a point, the earnings coming from an additional year of protection decrease. I would bet, that the second derivative of the earnings equals zero before 70 years… We could maybe find a duration of the copyrights such that every additional year of protection would bring increasing profits to the inventor and stop the protection and let someone else dig further into the idea once the owner’s profits decrease. By doing so, the total economical benefit is bound to increase. The reasoning certainly lacks of concrete arguments, it is just an intuitive thought.

Secondly, the social opportunity costs are significant as well. With longer copyright protections, we prevent other creative and innovative artists to bounce back on previous works and come up with better ideas and chef d’oeuvres that people will like. If we prevent people to entertain themselves with new songs, movies, book, … the social welfare will diminish. It should not be a barrier to innovation.

And finally I’d like to mention a more ethical point of view. People never have enough, they always need more. However, according to me, people such as J.K Rowling, or companies like Walt Disney, got paid enough even if their work was just awesome. Why not let some chance to be successful to someone else, who would improve the existing work and bring some more ideas.

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Yick Tang
When we talk about copyright protection, we need to mention deadweight loss. Now we hypothesize extension of the copyright term that is unlimited. That means there is an only company to have some kind of technology. What will the company become? It will be a monopolistic company. As we all know, Monopoly is low efficiency and harm for essence of…
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When we talk about copyright protection, we need to mention deadweight loss. Now we hypothesize extension of the copyright term that is unlimited. That means there is an only company to have some kind of technology. What will the company become? It will be a monopolistic company. As we all know, Monopoly is low efficiency and harm for essence of the market economy.
Monopoly and competition are naturally a contradiction due to the lack of competitive pressure and momentum. In addition, quality of service of monopoly industries are often unsatisfactory, frequently violate market rules, the right of fair trade and the right of consumers choice. If the extension of the copyright term was unlimited, the economic systems would lose its own efficiency.
However, a coin has two sides, copyright protection efficiently stimulates technology innovation.
Because of patent of innovation system, the industrial revolution was able to happen and became the most influencing historical event through over the world. So, what should we do to balance efficiency to the right of creator? In America, the extension of the copyright term is over 50 years, some of them reach up to 120 years. Those are even more than average of human life.
In my opinion, Extension of the copyright term should decrease to reasonable levels but governments need to protect the right of author in this period of time. Nowadays, there are too much plagiarism in the world, from the internet, we can easily to download movies, music, books, etc. According to marginal benefit, with time pass, less and less people would like to enjoy your creation in legal or illegal way but it will harm for people who need to use your creation to create a new thing. With economic globalization developing, a product could exist hundreds of thousand patented technologies from many countries. Too serious copyright protection laws would not be a good news for technology innovation. The fundamental of copyright protection is that authors are encouraged by patent bonus and societies are shared to the latest technology. So, I think the argument can turn to how to protect intellectual property. Apple is a perfect example. If you download some albums from itunes, you will pay a certain amount of money and cannot listen the music in using other account. Even though many people “jailbreak” their apple devices, it is useless. If we had a complete system for protecting copyright, it would not be necessary to keep the right of patents that long.

Reference: https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

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Laura J. Clarke
First of all, let’s think about the definition of copyright: “The exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material"(source: Oxford dictionaries). Rephrasing, copyright is a right to protect our creation. Naturally, I believe that protecting our work is required and understandably…
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First of all, let’s think about the definition of copyright: “The exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material”(source: Oxford dictionaries). Rephrasing, copyright is a right to protect our creation.

Naturally, I believe that protecting our work is required and understandably fair. Copyright is needed providing it doesn’t implicate obstructing pioneering creations through copyright laws.
As everything in life, a balance needs to be found. How can we decide when it’s impeding creativity and when it’s acceptable to protect it? The fact that the copyright has limited length makes it slightly easier but involves a second question, for how long do you apply the copyright?
Will an extension from 50 to 70 years help, somehow, economic growth or innovative creations?

In my opinion, extending the copyright length won’t help anyhow the creator’s work:

First, copyright will be is beneficial to the person applying for one and not ineludibly the author. As example: the “Happy Birthday” song was made-up by two sisters in mid 90’s but copyright was claimed by Warner-Chappell. Or, the illustrious Walt Disney, which have a thousand of copyrights, although various movies, are drawn from creations no longer protected by copyright laws (Cinderella). Or lastly, Led Zeppelin, freely copied from old blues songs and started crediting the original artists in the late 1980s, when their millions were carefully banked.
So, though the main purpose is to protect one’s creation, we can’t even be sure if the copyright owner is the creator.
Using Walt Disney example again, the copyright laws are a beneficial to induce a monopoly, which we know, usually implies a deadweight loss and is unhealthy for the economy.

Secondly, we are in the 21st century, due to globalization and easy access to information, every data is “on the web” and every creation is seen across the world. With this new century features, new “crimes” have arisen as well: cyber piracy.
Downloading music or movies, has never been easier. Moreover, every person has download at least once in his life, consequently, broken the law and considered as a criminal.
Although, every year there’s new the anti-piracy measure (In 2011, CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) In 2012 SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act – not voted), …), people don’t stop transgressing the law. Will copyright extension change that fact? No, absolutely not.
Although it’s one of the primary goals of the copyright laws: protecting creation. Illegals downloading’s are literally stealing the creations, but the copyright laws are just there to frighten people, and for some, are just a myth.

Thirdly, I’ll stand besides the people who think that copyright laws are breaking the economic growth.
Another definition of “Copyright” says: “Copyright protection was created in order to protect intellectual property and to favour invention and creativity”(source: world trade organization).
I don’t think that extending a copyright to 70 years will favour invention or creativity, on the opposite, it will refrain it. 70 years is too long, it is as if law was allowing the right to innovate once a generation.
As mention in an article of the Telegraph of September 13th 2011; “Copyright extensions are bad for innovation, bad for the economy and bad for our culture. The only people they are good for are those who collect the royalties and according to research that’s far more likely to be record labels and already-rich stars than it is to be struggling musicians.”
Studies has proved that longer copyrights, won’t protect creativity, they will harm it. But yet, copyrights laws still keep growing.

Finally, my last statement will be, if we extended from 50 years to 70 years, then are we going to extend every time a powerful corporation request it? What’s the limit? When will it stop?
As mention, again, in the daily telegraph “the copyright extension is just the latest step in a campaign that is set to continue until copyright never expires”. A limit as to be settled!

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8759524/Will-copyright-extensions-ever-end.html
http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/legc-study.pdf
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/copyright

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Marta de Sousa Lucas Caeiro
Copyrights´extension: economical and ethical dilemmas. Under the existence of the appropriability problem when mention knowledge, information or innovation, a copyright seems to appear as a solution to it, given that it is an intellectual property right. That is Knowledge turns to be, on its essence a pure public good, meaning that it is non-rival ( the consumption of an individual…
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Copyrights´extension: economical and ethical dilemmas.

Under the existence of the appropriability problem when mention knowledge, information or innovation, a copyright seems to appear as a solution to it, given that it is an intellectual property right. That is Knowledge turns to be, on its essence a pure public good, meaning that it is non-rival ( the consumption of an individual does not impede the consumption of others) and non-excludable ( one cannot exclude someone from benefiting from innovation). The establishment of a copyright that fundamentally protects creator´s (writers, novelists,…) owns ideas and/or broadly work would turn knowledge an excludable good, enhancing incentives to copyright´s owners, since they benefit from the returns of their investment. Therefore, the main goal behind the process of a copyright is to avoid piracy or imitation.

Nevertheless, as any intellectual property right, a copyright might also be a tool in innovation systems that can ensure a balance between marginal social return and private returns of investment obtained by creators. Following these reasoning, I would like to expose my consideration about the copyright expansion, based on two points of view – economical and ethnic/moral /social/cultural ones.

In economical terms, efficiency, profitability and sustainability are the main aims behind any business activity. It appears that a copyright extension focus more on profitability than any other considerations mentioned before. This becomes clear in the expression “ (…)copyright confers a monopoly on their translation, adaptation and performance. These three forms of expression are different from mere reproduction in that they involve and additional element of creativity (…)” (in Economics of Patents and Copyright by Lévêque François, Ménière Yann). Copyrights are incentives for creators to innovate and benefit from it without desirable social returns, since, to get access to information in legal terms is costly; moreover as pointed out by Mike Konrad, it impedes people to be creative, since sometimes the owner of a copyright is not well defined and consequently it is risky to be creative. Thus, copyright extension, that has been a reality is not efficient, not only due to the reasons exposed above, but also because the cost of enforcement is too high. This last argument, as noticeable in the following lines, will fall in the scope of ethnic, moral and social issues.

As the legal enforcement of a copyright is costly and simultaneously difficult to pursue, the risk of piracy and copying is in a constant raise, also stimulated by technological and communication improvements, everyone does free downloads of books, music, films. Piracy is legally punished but also ethically or morally questionable. Actually, one could be violating a right, a right of being unique and creative, a right of exclusivity . But a copyright itself is also morally or ethnically questionable. In an utilitarianism way of thinking , the total social utility/benefit should overcome the individual one and by promoting an imperfect competition, copyright extension would lead to beneficial outcomes mostly for its owner. Also, in what concerns fairness – an ethic and moral value, why should a copyright length should be extended further than patents if both agents involved are genius and creative, and assuming that innovation protected through patents entails much more millions of dollars of investment?

Furthermore, as argued by Mike Konrad, the extension of copyrights threats the evolution and adaptation of cultural values, by diminishing the creativity skills.

Ultimately, the final goal of Knowledge would be to be communicable, made accessible because it is the real approach to understand and progress the World, and in part to ensure its sustainability.

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Regina Tukhfatullina
Nowadays it's not easy to determine the length of copyrighting. First of all due to the informatization and globalisation of the world. Because of high-technologies, internet, smartphones etc. the process of downloading, copying and sharing informations among all over the world became incredibly fast and simple. And as a consequence leads to the growth of piracy, to the breaking…
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Nowadays it’s not easy to determine the length of copyrighting. First of all due to the informatization and globalisation of the world. Because of high-technologies, internet, smartphones etc. the process of downloading, copying and sharing informations among all over the world became incredibly fast and simple. And as a consequence leads to the growth of piracy, to the breaking copyrighting laws. This is a well-known fact that plenty of internet-users finding out hundreds ways to download freely movies, music, books etc. Due to the laws, every person, who ever did this, has to be punished. Does this fact tell us that term of copyrighting need to be decreased or at least changed to allow people do what they are doing legally?
Trying to answer this question i will find out the most important advantages and disadvantages of copyrighting.
First of all the copyrighting protection brings profit to the creator. It’s clear that no one would like to share his invention for free without any benefits for himself. Moreover copyrighting allows the author to control the result of his labor. Another positive point of copyrighting due to this article is that it preserves incentives for creation information goods, which are inherently public.
Looking for the negative points we can determine the monopoly situation, which occurs with copyrighting. As we know the monopoly is inefficient and has hight deadweight losses. Furthermore it increases the software piracy and more and more people are breaking the copyrighting law, sometimes even without realizing this.
So, is the stabilized extention of copyrighting is reasonable not in terms of whose who receives profit but in terms of whole society? My answer is – no. I think the too long duration of copyrighting (70 years) only restricts the development of the culture. When an information good is not a public domain only some people can use and benefit it. Again coming back to the piracy. One should understand that without really strict measures, it will continue to grow despite of the term of copyrighting. But what will be reaction of the society if the punishment for piracy will be a prison for example and nobody could avoid it? I think it will cause the mass protest..
To make a long story short, I think that the copyrighting protection has to be decreased or at least become more flexible. As we can see it’s not so effective and actually don’t bring benefits to the society.

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Stefano De Martini
In a world dominated by the Internet the practice of sharing information, music video etc. has become quite easy. A strong copyright protection, therefore, is still needed but I do believe that it needs to be modified. Copyright protection was created in order to protect intellectual property and to favour invention and creativity; from the way that it is…
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In a world dominated by the Internet the practice of sharing information, music video etc. has become quite easy. A strong copyright protection, therefore, is still needed but I do believe that it needs to be modified.
Copyright protection was created in order to protect intellectual property and to favour invention and creativity; from the way that it is structured, though, sometimes copyright protection just limits the possibilities for everyone else and it advantage not the real authors or creators of the invention but whoever is the owner of the copyright. Just to give an example, this is the case for the “Happy Birthday” song, even though two kindergarten teachers created it in 1893, the rights are owned by Warner/Chappel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You. Another example of failure of copyright is what M. Boldrin and D.K. Levine point out in their book “Against intellectual monopoly” http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm. The authors believe that sometimes inventors are able to implement their findings because:
“After getting one step ahead of the pack, they remained ahead not by superior innovation, but by superior exploitation of the legal system.”
From my point of view extending copyright protection from 50 to 70 years is not the right move but it’s just another step in the same direction. I don’t believe that by extending protection the author’s rights are somewhat “safer”. A change like this is only going to have a negative affect on the public; the benefits of having a new invention to implement are only going to be delayed. I believe that copyrights don’t have to become property rights, they are a temporary right and they must remain it like this.
I think that in order to remain true to the real reasons of why copyrights were created, protection should be reduced and not extended.

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Petre Benoît
I don't expect this comment to be considered as one the three we are asked to write during the semester. I just wanted to point out something : Supporters of a longer copyright protection claimed that creativity should be fairly rewarded. In summary, longer copyright protection gives higher rewards to people who desserved it. However, extending the length of the copyright…
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I don’t expect this comment to be considered as one the three we are asked to write during the semester. I just wanted to point out something :
Supporters of a longer copyright protection claimed that creativity should be fairly rewarded. In summary, longer copyright protection gives higher rewards to people who desserved it.

However, extending the length of the copyright protection from 60 to more than 100 years doesn’t give any additionnal rewards to the creators. Indeed, they are likely to be already dead of old age!

I believe that a copyrigh protection of 100 (US) or 70 (Europe) years is a mistake. Those protection were build so that creators/entrepreneurs (=risk-takers) are fairly paid for what they offer to society and not to procure fat annuities to lazy-but-lucky heir.

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Lancelot d'Aubreby
First of all, I think that this topic is one of the most concerning issues of our society. Indeed, the consequences of a copyright extension reflect a real choice of society. On the one hand, I can easily understand the thinking of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850). Monopole profits protected by a copyright should be large enough in order to create an…
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First of all, I think that this topic is one of the most concerning issues of our society. Indeed, the consequences of a copyright extension reflect a real choice of society.

On the one hand, I can easily understand the thinking of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850). Monopole profits protected by a copyright should be large enough in order to create an incentive to reward not only the effective cost of research and development but also the risk related to innovation and its uncertainty. Furthermore, a limited protection pushes inventors to make profits on a short term. Thus, only bad quality products will be created because they need less time to be developed.

On the other hand, I think that the Bentham-thinking of utility (the sum of the benefits that a law provide must be superior to the losses that the society supports) is the best indicator to improve the general living level of the society. This utility-thinking supposes that ethics must be respected. For example, there was a big debate about “Celera Genetics”. This company patented the human genome in order to increase their profits. That shouldn’t be allowed because nobody “owns” the human genome.

I also would like to extend this debate to ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). ACTA is an international multilateral agreement designed to strengthen the intellectual property rights. The aim of this agreement is to avoid generic medicines, counterfeit goods and illegal internet downloading. Europe discussed during a long time to conclude this agreement before cancelling the ratifying of it. Some of the measures were against ethics: internet providers had to report to the national government the users that were illegally downloading.

To conclude, I think that two main aspects have to be respected in this issue. First of all, ethics must be respected. Secondly, copyrights terms must promote economic efficiency while keeping a big enough incentive for the researchers. Thus, I would recommend that in the case of the sound recordings, there must be a minimum term of fifty years in order to keep the incentive, but after that term, the Bentham-thinking must be applied and the copyright protection must stop if it’s beneficial for the society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celera_Corporation
http://fabrice.rochelandet.free.fr/section5.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

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Luís Cabral
In my opinion, copyrights are a matter apart from the other intelectual property rights. I do not think a romance, for example, fits in the definition of innovation, which is what we are trying to foster and protect at the same time. Hence, I believe there should be a division between the type of creations that are incentivized and non-incentivized by the…
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In my opinion, copyrights are a matter apart from the other intelectual property rights.
I do not think a romance, for example, fits in the definition of innovation, which is what we are trying to foster and protect
at the same time. Hence, I believe there should be a division between
the type of creations that are incentivized and non-incentivized by the existence of copyrights. One of the reasons for this division is
the amount of resources spent by those trying to develop
pre-existing theories comparing to the resources used to write a non-scientific book, which someone usually does genuinely, from her
inspiration and passion, without a monetary purpose. No copyrights in “artistical” works may be an
incentive for new creations. If we look at scientific books or articles, which
have a greater potential to turn into innovation, anyone is perfectly able to pick up from the point where another work ended,
use some extention of the methods used and develop new findings, as long as she states the sources. That, indeed, incentivizes innovation and knowledge creation.
If someone wants to use a book or another film to do some new work, why shouldn’t she? If a work
like the Harry Potter saga has some value, its quality should speak for itself. Anyone who wanted to change it should be
free to do it but under another name. Whoever likes J.K. Rowling’s work would still buy her books because no one would write the way she does.

Protecting books, music or films distorts their initial purpose (expressing and sharing visions, ideas, feelings,…) and harms the quality of the works.
I do not believe in money-driven creations and nowadays, it is difficult to find truly genuin works.

Also, the industries that appeared as a consequence of this protection are already experiencing some difficulties because of Internet, Video and Music-streaming
websites, etc. They should be put into a harder test, which would be a lower protection of these type of creations.

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Daniel Scurtu
Some good points and really well articulated arguments. I'll just add to what everybody said by mentioning that one aspect of innovation is often forgotten: the butterfly effect. There is no way to ever predict which innovation will lead to the next big discovery, which idea will spark another, and what ideas are required for a truly amazing discovery. For…
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Some good points and really well articulated arguments.
I’ll just add to what everybody said by mentioning that one aspect of innovation is often forgotten: the butterfly effect.
There is no way to ever predict which innovation will lead to the next big discovery, which idea will spark another, and what ideas are required for a truly amazing discovery.
For a very well description of this, I recommend the documentary series “Connections” by James Burke. Here’s the first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOp-nz3lHg. One of the best uses of 10 hours you could ever plan.

Secondly, I would like to provide a historical example supporting the claim of the 17 economists. In an article from Der Spiegel, the copyright laws of Germany were compared to the ones from Britain. Due to the strict regulations of the UK, and several cultural factors (some of which you will see in the documentary series “Connections”), science and engineering didn’t flourish as they should have. In Germany, on the other hand, loose copyright laws and no norms saying that “the sciences are not for nobles” meant everybody had access to literature of every kind, and was free to build and improve on it.
As a result, Germany was a technological leader of the world in many areas, and was #1 in chemistry at the end of the 19th century.

Thirdly and most importantly, I wish to add the political argument.
What we have here in reality isn’t an economic issue, it’s political. Companies who have made huge profits off other people’s ideas are the ones who have the most money. Sometimes record companies pay their artists about 10-15% of total sales. The artists often become millionaires anyway, but most of the profits for music in those cases actually go to the shareholders.
In political economics, the result is often that desired by the group with the greatest lobbying power. That means the most amount of money in the hands of the smallest group of people (high lobby power, low cooperation and negotiation costs).
Sadly, they do not care about innovation, but money. Fortunately, their power is not infinite, and people will always find new ways to create and innovate. Unfortunately, they cannot make money off their creations, unlike the large firms before them.

And if it’s in the non-profit sector, it doesn’t always mean it’s any better. For instance, the US university I went to had a strict policy with regards to any innovation. Even if a student had 100% of the discovery and ideas and did 100% of the work, if he/she used so much as a computer or a test tube from the university, the ownership of the intellectual property went to the university, and the student had no right to complain about it.

So for instance, if you ever hear of Drexel University winning RoboCup (World Robot Soccer Championship), it wasn’t the engineering professors who had anything to do with it, it was all the generations of students for years and years who might have had brilliant ideas. Unfortunately their names will be lost.

So copyright isn’t always meant to protect the authors themselves. It’s becoming more and more an extractive institution.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html

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Henrotte Philippe
In my oppinion I strongly agree that any author should be paid for his work during his whole life. But the dibate is more difficult when it comes to compagnies. Both point of views makes senses but I think it's very important to separate the technological industry ant the entertainment industry because because the impact of the entertainment industry is…
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In my oppinion I strongly agree that any author should be paid for his work during his whole life.
But the dibate is more difficult when it comes to compagnies. Both point of views makes senses but I think it’s very important to separate the technological industry ant the entertainment industry because because the impact of the entertainment industry is much more complexe in a sense that there is no real “improvement” on this sector. Of course the profits drives both those industries but the externalities of the entertainment industry is much more a philosophical matter. Indeed it’s very difficult to comptue the effectiveness of the entertainment industry but it’s very important to take that matters into account.

I would therefore tease the debate in favor of the long peroriod of copyrights because I think that the public likes innovation on this field better than remakes. I think that the deadweightlosses are only monetary but might this system might be benefical on the “happiness” point of view. thanks to patent the entertainment industry have to be more creative in order to find new “product”

Economy is closely related to the politic life therefore I think it should be taken into account. But another question remains to know if the public is happier with the politic of longer copyright…

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Frederic Anaëlle
It’s incontestable, the copyright is not a perfect way to protect the creator of an original work. This form of intellectual property has some advantages but also some disadvantages. First of all, I will talk about the pros of copyright: - First (and this is the basic principle of copyright), it gives the creator of a work the right to produce…
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It’s incontestable, the copyright is not a perfect way to protect the creator of an original work.
This form of intellectual property has some advantages but also some disadvantages.
First of all, I will talk about the pros of copyright:
– First (and this is the basic principle of copyright), it gives the creator of a work the right to produce and reproduce his work.
– Secondly, the creator can authorize or not others to produce or reproduce his work as well as the right to broadcast his work.
– According to me, the most important advantage of copyright is that it prevents our work from being stolen or misused by others.
– An another significant advantage is that without protection on the creativity, it can lead to less creativity because people don’t like to work for free.

The copyright has not only advantages. Here are the cons of copyright :
– It’s not free and it requires time and effort to apply for registration.
– As copyright doesn’t allow the others to use and distribute our work. This can mean that our work is spread slowly or sometimes not at all.
– Authorship doesn’t mean always Ownership. Indeed, being the creator of the work doesn’t guarantee ownership. In some rare cases the owner is actually the person who commissioned the work, or the company for whom the work was produced.
– Copyright can unfortunately limit the creativity too. Indeed, as mentioned Brasseur Amandine in her comment, it can happen that people don’t want to take the risk to create a new work because they don’t know if their new ideas are already protected by a Copyright.

Concerning the extension of the copyright term from 50 years to 70 years, I find this mesure a little exaggerated.
I agree with students whom in their comment said that they don’t understand why they want to protect the creativity of someone dead. Because when the person is dead, he can’t improve his work, so it’s consistent to authorise the others to do it.
I think that this structure benefits people who hold copyrights rather than individual artists.
But a longer copyright validity period can also have some advantages.
Indeed : « the benefits of a successful copyright can be passed on as inheritance, artists may feel more inclined to develop new works. » and so it can increase the creativity.

To conclude, I find that copyright should be improved in order that the first goal is to encourage the creativity and thereby improve the economic efficiency. But I think that there is no solution where everyone would agree. It’s a really hot topic and it’s verry hard to find a good copyright’s duration because it has to encourage the creation but also be careful with the losses due to the limitation of new ideas and due to monopolies.

(1) http://copyrightkills.blogspot.be/2009/12/copyright-advantages-and-disadvantages.html
(2) http://voices.yahoo.com/what-advantages-disadvantages-longer-10951178.html
(3) http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/copyright-registration-advantages-disadvantages-1063.html

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Mariama Dicko
I think that there should not be a standard length established for copyrights. Also, for me, the length should not be homogeneous across products and authors. I am therefore against its extension. I believe that flexibility is key. From my perspective, the most important aspect of copyrights is giving incentives to potential inventors to create value. In order to do so,…
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I think that there should not be a standard length established for copyrights. Also, for me, the length should not be homogeneous across products and authors. I am therefore against its extension.

I believe that flexibility is key.

From my perspective, the most important aspect of copyrights is giving incentives to potential inventors to create value. In order to do so, copyrights laws and institutions must guarantee that authors would benefit from their work, especially if it result in valuable products’ creation. The original authors should at least recover their initial investments (effective costs) and receive additional revenues to allow them to prepare for further projects (target profits). The effective costs depend on the production processes and the target profits depend on the authors’ expectations. Regarding target profits, a negotiation process would have to be put in place to set reasonable amounts; and here, I think another factor – also linked to the identity of the authors – should be taken into account: the ability to exploit products’ potential. For example, I believe that a company, which is more likely to derive new products than a physical person, should receive a substantial profit that would allow the development of new products.

The time needed to generate these amounts depend on several variables such as the final products’ market reactions and its distribution networks. Therefore, I think the length of copyrights should be calculated and established for every product.

This clearly is a normative point of view that may not be possible to implement – or too costly, however, I believe it is the direction that would lead to a better situation

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Georges Cyprien
As far as I'm concerned, this trade-off is not very complicated to solve. It is very important that we keep the incentive to create, to innovate and in that sense, Copyrights are absolutely essential. But I don't think that lengthening the copyrights over the years over and over make sense in a global economic way of thinking. It appears very…
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As far as I’m concerned, this trade-off is not very complicated to solve. It is very important that we keep the incentive to create, to innovate and in that sense, Copyrights are absolutely essential. But I don’t think that lengthening the copyrights over the years over and over make sense in a global economic way of thinking. It appears very clear to me that this is just the result of the lobby from these multinational companies, who are then allowed to get a monopoly power for an undetermined duration. This can not be rationnaly justified, since neither the customers, niether the global economy is better off this way (only firms, but largely outweighted by the DWL, so Social Welfare is way worse off). There is a big loss created by these monopoly power, this is a restraint to innovation and creativity, and it is also against our culture! I also think that this is not economically legitimate. In fact, this extension only guarentees royalties forever (or nearly) to these (already very rich) companies. But in what way is destroying creativity a good way to boost the growth ? Making the rich more rich is not interesting, this is only extending the gap between rich and poors. If you want growth, you need a strong middle-class, because they are the one buying and consuming, a very rich perso will not consume in proportion with the money he makes, there are boundries (no interest in buying 100kg bananas because you are able to …) Anyway, isn’t this extension a way to give a legal monopoly to companies, while we are actually trying to fight all this concentration power? How can we justify this in terms of anti-trust policies ? We can not really argue about the fact that this is a natural monopoly or because it would be too costly to liberalize the market… It’s quite funny that this rule which was created to protect innovation and make it viable and profitable eventually ends up destroying this exact same innovation.

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Solène Thibaut
In my opinion, I believe that extending the copyright length would generate a loss in innovation and creativity because it removes a great amount of inspirational material. Indeed, every innovation is based on a series of old innovations that have led to the completion of this latest innovative product. Thus considering that fact, depriving them from this background is a…
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In my opinion, I believe that extending the copyright length would generate a loss in innovation and creativity because it removes a great amount of inspirational material. Indeed, every innovation is based on a series of old innovations that have led to the completion of this latest innovative product. Thus considering that fact, depriving them from this background is a barrier to creativity. If we take the society point of view, a lack of new inventions represents a great loss.

But on the other hand, if we consider the artist’s stand, we see that lengthening the copyrights time would probably create incentive for real new innovation instead of plagiarism. I would indeed favor artists with a lot of imagination and the capacity to step back from their influences which is a really good thing concerning their contribution in terms of progress. But as mentioned in the article, there is always the risk that it might scare them away and thus that it appears to be a significant barrier to entry.

In a nutshell, I would say that since there is a lack of empirical values and that it is I am afraid a double-edged sword, I would recommend restricting its use to a minimum in order to let the invention market self-regulate in a healthy way. In addition, I believe that sponsoring young artists is a better idea in terms of incentives rather than manipulating the weights in the balance of this market.

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Anne-Cécile Annet
Copyright grants authors exclusive control over the exploitation of a large number of artistic creations. Copyright generates income for artists. If we removed the copyright, this can lead to an obstacle to encourage the creation, we would never have all these films or the music and the stories that we enjoy every day. But in fact, copyright is only a small…
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Copyright grants authors exclusive control over the exploitation of a large number of artistic creations. Copyright generates income for artists. If we removed the copyright, this can lead to an obstacle to encourage the creation, we would never have all these films or the music and the stories that we enjoy every day.

But in fact, copyright is only a small part of the income of the authors. Indeed, a report by the British Gowers on intellectual property rights said “on average, musicians receive a very small percentage of royalties from their recordings”. If we take the example of musical sector, concerts are already great ways to generate income. Moreover, nowadays, musicians don’t need to have a record company. With the latest technology, they can record their music the way they want it to sound. They do not need the marketing director of a large company of disks or its labels.

Because the copyright has little importance in income for most artists, it makes me cross that the industry uses copyright to protect its investments. In that way, periods become longer and base of protection becomes larger.

I believe that a longer extension prevents the younger generations to access the artistically heritage now forgotten. For example, “Goldman Generation” is a French album containing 14 songs of Jean-Jacques Goldman performed by young singers and pop singers. Thanks to that, the songs of Goldman experience a second youth. Other works could know this success but the duration of copyright does not allow it.

Of course, copyright is not only in the art work but also in a lot of business. It plays an important role throughout the innovation process. Before an invention is a marketable product, it is not always easy, especially for SMEs; it must finance the development and testing. Ownership of intellectual property can help to convince investors. Companies can also choose to entrust the development of the product and its distribution to a third party by giving him their intellectual property rights. But I don’ t think that we need to extend the length of this right, 70 years is already a lot.

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Lefebvre Jean-Christophe
The copyright law was created since long before the existence of internet and the actual possibilities for communication which have radically changed the landscape of creation, inspiration and protection. Another change of the context is the actual power of music and movie industry. Nowadays, the big production houses have an important influence on the success of artist. Therefore, in my…
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The copyright law was created since long before the existence of internet and the actual possibilities for communication which have radically changed the landscape of creation, inspiration and protection. Another change of the context is the actual power of music and movie industry. Nowadays, the big production houses have an important influence on the success of artist. Therefore, in my opinion, the copyright law needs to be totally rethought.
We should think about the goal of the law and her length of application.

The goal is to empower the creativity by protecting it. This first sentence is already a subject of debate. We see today thank to website like Youtube more creative content than ever before. The fact of sharing, the multiple exchanges, etc. empower the inspiration of people and the will to create. Of course, we need to build space for creativity in a safe environment. But is it normal that some people work a day on a song and earn more money with it than a teacher could earn in his entire live? For me, the copyright has to be divided in different forms: utilisation that generates money, diffusion, publication… Moreover, it should end after a period or a fixed amount of benefits. This amount could increase with the number of creation which would give credits to legends of music.

Then, I also don’t see the point by giving the copyright in legacy to the family. After the death of an artist why don’t we simply let his work inspire the others? Families don’t have enough with the original paints, recording or money that the artist let after his death?

To conclude, I am against an extension of the copyright and I would like to see it redesigned for more creativity. I recommend this video that explains the situation and the issues that the copyright meets => http://youtu.be/l_C77d7KBHk

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Edward Still
There are many different points of view regarding copyright and how it affects innovation. Some are fervent supporters of it while on the other hand many disagree with it completely. But why does the subject of copyright divide opinion so much? And does copyright really stifle innovation? Let’s start by looking at the various disadvantages of the copyright system. As Rory…
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There are many different points of view regarding copyright and how it affects innovation. Some are fervent supporters of it while on the other hand many disagree with it completely. But why does the subject of copyright divide opinion so much? And does copyright really stifle innovation?

Let’s start by looking at the various disadvantages of the copyright system. As Rory Cellan-Jones the BBC technology correspondent explains (1), a whole host of inventors or potential inventors are held back from putting their ideas forward in fear of being sued for copyright infringement, either rightly by company’s who have already copyrighted a certain idea or product, or by trollers who are just there to exploit the copyright system by suing vulnerable inventors who know little about it.
Besides that there are also large corporations who aim to extend copyright to a maximum in order to stifle competition and to extend their market power. The more copyrights they have, the less place it leaves for competitors to be able to innovate and offer new products.

However one of the main arguments in favour of copyright, as Adam Cohen explains (2), is that if offers artists and inventors protection and compensation for their work. Without copyright, they lose any incentive to produce and innovate.

In my view the basic idea of copyright is positive for innovation and the economy as a whole. It stops people from inventing the same things, forcing them to create in an innovative manner without reproducing what has already been done and therefore encourages innovation in a way that creates a greater diversity of products.
Take the example of online music. People want to have access to free music. However before the invention of spotify, music could only be obtained by purchasing it from places such as iTunes. Millions of people have been illegally downloading music for years now so as not to pay for it, while governments and disc firms have been suing and closing down illegal downloading websites all over the world. The problem however is that as soon as one of these websites closes another appears elsewhere.
So, as Adam Smith from Time magazine explains, the fact of music being copyrighted is the source of spotify being created back in 2006 and has provided an alternative to iTunes. People are ready to listen to the occasional advert in exchange for listening to music.

The main issue regarding copyright should be more focused on the scope it can have rather than the time length. How far should the copyright of an idea or product stretch for it not to stifle innovation within the market completely, while at the same time still protecting its owners and inventors?

(1) 09.11.2011, R. Cellan-Jones, “do the patent wars threaten innovation”, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15652385
(2) 28.07.2010, A. Cohen, “The iPhone jailbreak: a win against copyright creep”, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2006956,00.html
(3) 17.06.2009, A. Smith, “The Pirate Bay guilty of breaching copyright”, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892236,00.html

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Rubens Moura
The existence of copyrights is able to solve, at least partially, the problem of appropriability, given that it establishes incentives for the creation of new knowledge by ensuring a temporary monetary reward for the creator. The exclusive use of an invention is, however, costly in terms of welfare for the economy as a whole in the sense that consumers would…
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The existence of copyrights is able to solve, at least partially, the problem of appropriability, given that it establishes incentives for the creation of new knowledge by ensuring a temporary monetary reward for the creator. The exclusive use of an invention is, however, costly in terms of welfare for the economy as a whole in the sense that consumers would face higher prices, which leads to a suboptimal level of consumption (see Belleflamme & Peitz, 2010). Therefore, setting the periods of protection of intellectual property (IP) becomes an important issue for the purpose of public policies.
In order to determine the optimal length of copyrights, several factors must be taken into account. A complete analysis must contemplate the predicted impacts over both the producers and the consumers. As a starting point, let us focus attention on the supply side.
First of all, it is absolutely crucial that the protection of IP’s is lasting enough to both allow the creator to recover the investment/effort performed and to provide her a reward for the risk (of failing in the attempt of innovation) incurred. Naturally, future revenues generated by a new invention depends on inherent characteristics of the good produced. In order to estimate them accurately, it is fundamental to analyze issues such as the degree of substitutability that unauthorized copies from the original good can be set. A real example: it is expected that consumers may evaluate superiorly, in general, an unauthorized copy from music’s than they would do from paintings. Hence, arguing in favor of an extension for copyrights in the first industry seems an easier task than in the last one.
Furthermore, it is also relevant to investigate the importance that the marginal revenues resulting from the extension on copyrights has over the total amount of revenues gained once the copyrights extension is established. One can intuit that the higher this weight is, the stronger the argument in favor of the extension of the copyrights becomes. Empirical studies, however, diverge about the real dimension that the indicator of revenue mentioned above assumes: Akerlof et al. (2002) argue that there are reasonable evidences to believe that they assume insignificant values; Liebowitz (2007) states that the analyzed effect might not be scorned.
Deciding on the optimal length of copyrights has also to consider the expenses needed for protecting the IP. Presumably, copyrights get costlier to enforce as time goes by. This effect becomes especially significant when the horizon of analysis comprehends several decades after creations are conceived.
Regarding the consumer side, it is possible to infer that the extent of the market inefficiency (measured as the existent deadweight loss) increases with the elasticity of the demand curve. Therefore, ceteris paribus, an optimal public policy should assign shorter term IP protection for markets on which quite elastic demands are observed.
In summary, it is not an optimal public policy to set a universal period of protection of copyrights for all sort of products. A suitable measure must take into account the specificities (degree of substitutability of unauthorized copies, share of marginal revenue, enforcement costs and demand’s elasticity were mentioned as the prime factors) of each industry for deciding on the legitimacy of copyrights extension.

References

(1) Akerloff, G et al. (2002). The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998:
An Economic Analysis.
(2) Belleflamme, P. and Peitz, M. (2010) Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(3) Liebowitz, S.J. (2007). What are the consequences of the european union extending Copyright length for sound recordings?.University of Taxas at Dallas.

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Tiago Fins Joaquim
At its core, IP rights are related to private property rights, which are singled out as being one of the main contributors of economic growth [1]. Experiments to abolish private property rights have always resulted in an inefficient economy (e.g. in communist states). Property rights protection is an essential part of every healthy economy. As we know, production of new assets…
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At its core, IP rights are related to private property rights, which are singled out as being one of the main contributors of economic growth [1]. Experiments to abolish private property rights have always resulted in an inefficient economy (e.g. in communist states). Property rights protection is an essential part of every healthy economy.

As we know, production of new assets is always risky. During the development phase, it is difficult to assess whether the new asset will be good enough to generate a return that covers the production and development costs. How big the return will be depends, for example, on the talent of the creator. To reward the creator for the risks and quality of his work, he should be rightly compensated. The law grants the creator a certain period of time, during which he has exclusive rights on the use of the new asset. Now the question is for how long should he receive benefits from his creation?

Focusing on the example of Disney, it is easy to understand why they push for extended periods of copyrights ownership. Over the past decades, they built theme parks, created songs, movies, merchandise and thousands of stories around the character of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse is one of most popular characters in cartoon history. For over 80 years, Disney managed to make money from Mickey Mouse. Disney spent a lot of money lobbying lawmakers (a dubious practice from society’s perspective) because they knew that that cost of lobbying would be much smaller than the profits generated from the use of Mickey Mouse.

Many people would argue that it is a source of inefficiency. The period of protection is too long and it potentially prevented creation of new IP. The use of Mickey Mouse could be done more efficiently under a less protective and more competitive environment, thus increasing producer surplus and decreasing deadweight loss. Disney also profited from using characters that were no longer (or never) protected by copyright laws (e.g. Cinderella), thus it is questionable that the characters created by Disney are not available as a source of creative works for others at some point in time.

So how can we reconcile both points of view? Perhaps, instead of setting a clearly defined time span for copyright protection, the original creator (or inheritor) decides whether or not to prolong the period of copyright protection. For instance, for 40 years, the copyright protection would be granted to the creator. After that period, the original creation would be part of the public domain. If the creator wishes to extend the period of copyright protection, he could do so by paying a fixed fee, but he would also be taxed on any profits generated from the original creation. The longer the period of protection, the higher the tax rate and fixed fee would be. Hence, extending the copyright protection from 40 to 50 years would be less costly than extending it from 80 to 90 years. This tax revenue could then be used on society as a whole to promote creation of new IP (art schools, theaters, etc). This resembles of course the typical tax on monopolies that governments sometimes use.

Private property rights should not apply when the creation was funded by taxpayer money. If a private entity created new IP with no financing from the government (usually taxpayer money), it should remain under copyright protection. Once it was funded collectively, it should be a public good from the start. Scientific advancements done in publicly funded universities would fall under that category.

To conclude, it is difficult to make ideology and economic efficiency cohabit. If Disney purchased a piece of land, they become the perpetual owner of that piece of land. Why shouldn’t this apply to intangible assets also? One can argue that even in the case of land ownership by private entities, some inefficiencies might arise and that is when expropriation becomes a possibility. However when it comes to IP, it’s expected that the owner will be eventually expropriated and the main reason for that is social welfare. Still, I do believe that the original creator should be granted a sort of perpetual moral ownership, in that the law could mandate that the creation should always be associated with the name of the creator.

Reference:
[1] http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa482.pdf

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Miguel Moreira
First of all, I believe that when we consider the patent problem, it is important to make the distinction between creations in terms of technical software and other types of creations (such as art items for example). When we think about items such as books, films or music albums, in my opinion it makes sense that the author is given the…
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First of all, I believe that when we consider the patent problem, it is important to make the distinction between creations in terms of technical software and other types of creations (such as art items for example).
When we think about items such as books, films or music albums, in my opinion it makes sense that the author is given the suited protection copyright for his creation, during his lifetime period. After the death of the author maybe it would be good to allow innovation based on his work, as it is said in the video above, if the author is dead there is no more to gain for him. I don’t believe that in these cases creativity is being harmed by having a potentially large period of copyrights, on the contrary, it will probably work as an incentive to new artists to develop their projects because they have the insurance that their creations will be adequatly protected against imitations, and they will receive the recognition they deserve for their work. It also forces new authors to create something different, therefore assuring that all projects have something new, provoking an increase of diversity in the market.
Regarding the technical software issue, the major problem is that usually new programs and processes are based on old knowledge and ideas, and if we limit the access to that knowledge we are making innovation and progress in this area more difficult. I believe that in this case a shorter-term patent would be the ideal solution, a period of time long enough to offer some protection to its creators, but short enough to not prejudice the technological progress that can be achieved.

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Valerio Serse
In my opinion, the analysis made by Amici Curiae should be sufficient to explain that, like the “Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998”, the extension of the copyright term on music recording approved by EU parliament won't stimulate new creations of works. Moreover, I think that the production of music, as film industries, has some specific characteristic that make incentives…
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In my opinion, the analysis made by Amici Curiae should be sufficient to explain that, like the “Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998”, the extension of the copyright term on music recording approved by EU parliament won’t stimulate new creations of works. Moreover, I think that the production of music, as film industries, has some specific characteristic that make incentives to produce different from other markets.

As explained by Amici Curiae, is unlikely that an increase of 20 years in copyright protection will stimulate creation of new works. The discounted value of the future cash-flows will be so low that it wouldn’t make any difference in the artist’s decision to produce. Moreover, is highly probable that the artist won’t benefit of all the future cash-flows because the copyright protection could exceed the author’s life. So the costs of monopoly and the limit to new potential creations overcome the benefits because there isn’t a real increase in terms of incentive to create new works.

I even agree with the video above, “Copyright: Forever Less One Day”, when it says that the decision of US (and UE) to extend copyright protection seems to be a favor to the biggest holders of existing copyrights. Though this could be a controversial point, I think that has a big economic relevance. In fact, this copyright extensions will have a positive impact mainly on big companies that hold many copyrights because their monopolistic position will be elongated of 20 years. So, as said by Amici Curiae, without any increase of incentives to finance the production of new musics or new films (really low discounted value of future returns on investment for the additional 20 years), is likely that there will be only an additional loss of efficiency.

Anyway, I would like to say that in the production of music and films there could be other incentives to produce than expected returns on new works. These could be artistic recognition and popularity. In fact, both this status could increase the utility of an individual by new earnings, for example due to the use of his image, or by an increase of his self-esteem. Nowadays celebrities’ earnings from advertising are very high, and I think that this could be a big incentive to create new works.

In conclusion, for all the reasons above I think that copyright in EU and in US should be re-dimensioned in order to stimulate new works and improve the economic efficiency. The issue now is to find a right copyright’s duration that maximize incentives to create new works and minimize the losses due to monopolies and due to limitations of new potential works. The increase in copyright protection of 20 years wasn’t a good measure and I believe that UE and US should change this two laws and evaluate carefully, and in the interest of the community, the best copyright’s duration.

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Biglia Alexia
An extension of the copyright from 50 years to 70 years will extend the flow of revenues due to music recorder in the 60’ and it also preserves the incentive to creates new goods because they will be protect during a longer period. But some people say that it will damage European creativity because we cannot borrow from earlier work…
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An extension of the copyright from 50 years to 70 years will extend the flow of revenues due to music recorder in the 60’ and it also preserves the incentive to creates new goods because they will be protect during a longer period.
But some people say that it will damage European creativity because we cannot borrow from earlier work or to build upon them and thereby producing new ideas is costly.

I think it’s a very difficult decision to make. It’s hard to decide how much time a product must be protected. How can we decide it? What are the criterions?
Their is an arbitrage to make because if we don’t have protection, people will work for nothing so it will lead to less creativity but too much protection it’s difficult to lead to new creativity.

I disagree with the extension to 70 years. Off course we need copyright to protect new product but I think that 20 to 30 years is largely enough. The extension will be highly profitable only for a few owners. We can thus say hat we are in a situation of monopoly so it will creates deadweight losses. Besides with the extension to 70 years, copyright will protect product from people who are dead. It’s a non sense.

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Mariame Ammour
If I had to choose, I will sustain the group against. First of all, I agree with the seventeen economists who think that if copyright extension can generate benefits, it will generate costs too. And it seems very difficult that this high discounted benefits can be much higher than the costs. Then, I think that even if extension has (maybe) the advantage…
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If I had to choose, I will sustain the group against.

First of all, I agree with the seventeen economists who think that if copyright extension can generate benefits, it will generate costs too. And it seems very difficult that this high discounted benefits can be much higher than the costs.

Then, I think that even if extension has (maybe) the advantage to generate benefits, it has also the disadvantage to block the creativity of others. In my opinion, the generated benefits are lower than the profits of the news potential creations of the others. So in my sense this extension is not something necessary. Furthermore, we have to keep on mind that people who has the same culture, way of thinking, education, … has approximately the same ideas too and that’s why I think that the extension to 70 years is not interesting ; because it would prevent people to improve or develop their concept. If 50 years is enough to largely compensate the high initial creation costs, the 20 years will be nothing compared to the earlier revenues, so why to persist and not give the place to the others.

Finally, the copyrights allow to the owners to perceive compensation if their work is used and it’s a good thing because the creation process is long. However copyright give a monopolistic position to its owner, it’s acceptable for 50 years but beyond it could generate negative externalities.

To conclude, copyright gives a protection to its owner but it generate negative externalities such as monopoly, trouble on creativity, … Thus the shorter the extension of the copyright is, the better it is.

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Taelemans Charles-Edouard
After reading this article and watching the video : Copyright ,forever less one day , I agree with the point of view of the video but for me I think that they're exagerating too much, because if you create a work that everybody can copy without your consent several years after its release ,you'll feel that the work you're did…
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After reading this article and watching the video : Copyright ,forever less one day , I agree with the point of view of the video but for me I think that they’re exagerating too much, because if you create a work that everybody can copy without your consent several years after its release ,you’ll feel that the work you’re did is used by the others , and if you want to write the following (or the prequels like star wars). It will be difficult to make such a thing because without the copyright law everybody would be able his own brainchild of the prequels or following of your work.
Therefore, with everyone using your work to make their own creation you certainly won’t be motivated to create others stories in relation with the first one , and it could be even possible that a lot of person ,knowing that there are no patent or copyright rules would not create anything.
Indeed if you know that your brainchild will be used by the others as soon as you created it, and that will be a great factor of demotivation

That’s why we need to have some rules about intellectual Property but not as important as today because this will stifle innovation and thus growth.
Today the copyright rules in US is that a work is protected until the lifetime of the author plus 70 years.
In my point of 70 years is way too much because since the author is death this rule gives an advantge to the company but the company didn’t create the work so why should it benefit a 70 years protection!
To summarize , I think that we have to protect the brainchild of an author until his death plus some years for preparing the company to the upcoming competition.

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Hexin Shi
Well, I think the extension of copyright protection is a double-edged sword. It have advantages and disadvantages. Specifically, first, it can bring benefit to both owners and users, i totally agree with the point of view of Landes and Posner "copy right protection-the right of the copyright······". It is true that the extension of copyright can protect the right of…
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Well, I think the extension of copyright protection is a double-edged sword. It have advantages and disadvantages.
Specifically, first, it can bring benefit to both owners and users, i totally agree with the point of view of Landes and Posner “copy right protection-the right of the copyright······”. It is true that the extension of copyright can protect the right of owner and also can enable them to create more and better works to meet people’s need.And it also can enhance people’s awareness of protection of copyright,because if users want gain some products(such as:music,movies,books),they should pay for it,thus,it can let people developing a view that we should respect the copyright of owners.
Second,we should pay attention to the disadvantage of extension of copyright.According to the widely accepted view, the economic efficiency of the need for copyright protection is limited to a certain period of time, to extend the copyright term may not really be able to create incentives.This is because the copyright terms of both in order to stimulate creativity, and to encourage them to make the work published. Public domain that contains the accumulated knowledge of different eras, these are an important source of new works .Belittle the public sphere also ignores a basic economic principle that free competition drove down prices, improve the quality. Extend the copyright term is actually hinder new work to extract the essence from the old works.Author of the work has been completed on the extension of the term of protection will not increase motivation. Incentive for copyright holders concerned, there are diminishing marginal benefit.And willingness to pay copyright holders and ability to pay determines the actual work protected by copyright period, when the copy works, the cost is higher than its registered copyright copyright revenue, the copyright holder will automatically relinquish copyright, copyright also useless. It also bring barrier to library, because library is a place for dissemination of knowledge. If extent copyright, it will increase the cost of library.And because the extension of copyright ,it can restrict the ability of library to provide knowledge to public.
In conclusion, the extension of copyright will bring disadvantages overweight benefits,so i think the extension of copyright is between 50 years and 70 years is better.

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Francesco Battino
From a personal standpoint I'm sympathetic with Mike Konrad's opinion, but from a rational one I can't agree with him, not completely at least. The copyrights length is bigger than patents length because of the trade off between the length of the protection and the breadth of the protection. Because length and breadth are substitutable policy tools, the optimal mix…
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From a personal standpoint I’m sympathetic with Mike Konrad’s opinion, but from a rational one I can’t agree with him, not completely at least.

The copyrights length is bigger than patents length because of the trade off between the length of the protection and the breadth of the protection. Because length and breadth are substitutable policy tools, the optimal mix are A narrow protection for long time or a broad protection for short time. For this reason, if we are going to reduce to only 20 years the length of the copyrights, like for the patents, as suggested by Mike Konrad, at the same time we have to widen the breadth of the protection from narrow to broad.

For copyrights field of protection I prefer a narrow breadth, than a broad one. If we apply a broad protection on a music composition, we do not only protect that exact series of notes, but all the combinations of those notes. For example, a pharmaceutical drug patent cover not only the original drug, but all the derivatives from that one. If we protect the variation of a music theme or of a song with a broad protection, we can end up with some artist “owning” the rights of entire notes or chord. Or in painting, someone might own all the shades of a color or some combination of colors.

For these reasons I think it is logical to apply a narrow breath to this type of intellectual property; for such reason, consequentially, the time protection have to be longer than patents; so Mike Konrad’s point, even being appealing, can’t be supported.

I think the real question is not if the general scheme of a narrow and long protection have to be applied, but how much longer the time have to be for granting equality in the two optimal solution.

In conclusion, I prefer a narrow breadth and a long length scheme of protection for copyrights, but at the same time i think the actual length is excessive. The objective of a copyrights law is to optimize the trade off between incentives to innovate and the social benefit society has when the copyright end. So I think the protection time need to be shortened, obviuosly without modifying the general scheme in one with short duration and broad protection.

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Julien van Cottem
Basically, I think the protection of intellectual property is good for the economy because it is a good incentive for people to create and provide new goods and services. It forces producers to adapt to the demand. This will increase the choice and thus meet the utility for a lot more consumers. Therefore, I say that the extension is a…
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Basically, I think the protection of intellectual property is good for the economy because it is a good incentive for people to create and provide new goods and services. It forces producers to adapt to the demand. This will increase the choice and thus meet the utility for a lot more consumers. Therefore, I say that the extension is a good thing in our society because it will protect an idea or a technology longer, which give securities for creators and then for them a strong will to innovate. For me, it means having a good idea is profitable in the long-term and this is motivating.

But, I also think that the way the copyrights are applied is not efficient to keep a good incentive for producers. The law around those rights are too strong and firms spend more time and money in defending them than in innovation. Take a company like Apple, which has more than 4000 patents. Their competitors have other products, clearly differentiated products but even if there is a small similitude Apple will sue them in order to protect their share of the market. As I see it, there is a difference between the use of intellectual property of others and being inspired by the shape or the way others’ products work. The way actions are taken against the use of intellectual property forbids young firms to grow but also bigger ones to be competitive (as we all had read with the war between Apple and Samsung about their smartphones). The law is too much in favour for the owner of the copyright. And as long as this situation remains, any extension of the copyrights will be an extension of monopolies. Knowing that a monopoly is not an efficient state in a market, extensions should not be voted.

In conclusion, I say it will always be important to protect the ideas and the intellectual property of people. In most of the time it is a long and difficult work to grow and raise a good concept or an innovating technology. As every work, it should be well protected. Consumers are expecting more and more different utilities amongst one sector. It is up to the firms to be competitive and build an innovation that will assure them market shares. However, protecting an idea should not be forbidding others to have one. Firms can’t be the only provider of a basic good or a song, at least not for the eternity. Copyrights give power, too much power to the owner of a product or a technology and allow him to be a monopolist. Nowadays, the firms with patents and copyrights, because of a too strong law, are monopolist and it does not allow a maximum social welfare for the markets.

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Valentine Lowagie
I share the point of view of the seventeen economists and I think that copyright length shouldn’t be extended. First of all, I don’t think that copyright extension could increase the incentive to create, neither for new works, nor for existing works. Indeed, for new works, the extension occurs so far in the future that its present value would be…
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I share the point of view of the seventeen economists and I think that copyright length shouldn’t be extended.

First of all, I don’t think that copyright extension could increase the incentive to create, neither for new works, nor for existing works. Indeed, for new works, the extension occurs so far in the future that its present value would be too small to have an impact on the incentive to create new works. Moreover, most of the creations protected by a copyright are decreasing in economic value over time, which means that additional revenues would be negligible. We can here give the example of songs which become outdated in time : people don’t listen to them anymore because they are old-fashioned or because the quality is bad compared to what we now have.

In the case of an existing work, the work has already been created, so the investment has already been made. The additional compensation is just a “plus”, it won’t influence the author of the existing work to create new products and it might not be sufficient to invest in a new creation. However, the additional compensation can be used to renew the existing creation, and so to prevent it from depreciation.

Secondly, copyright length extension limits the possibilities of new creations using existing ones. Let’s take the example of a film maker. He will undoubtedly need to add music to the video. If the music is protected by a copyright, the film maker will have to pay its holder for using it in his film, which means that he will incur higher costs of creation. These higher costs mean less incentive to create new works.

For these previous reasons, I think that copyright length should be shorter. But shorter copyright length also means smaller revenues from the creative work. Yet, these revenues allow the author to recoup the investment made to create the work. Therefore, the copyright length should be such that revenues earned during the protection period compensate the costs incurred for the creation. In other words, the incentive for creation has to be sufficient, i.e. large enough to recoup the initial investment. According to me, an optimal copyright length is a length that is proportional to the investment made for the creation.

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Aneta Spychalska
According my point of view copyright protection is an instrument of recognition to those who created it. This prevent copiers to reproduce a work that is not theirs. Also it provides a source of income during a long period. First, it is interesting to note that “copyright protection” is fiercely defended by the record labels and publishers who perceives the…
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According my point of view copyright protection is an instrument of recognition to those who created it. This prevent copiers to reproduce a work that is not theirs. Also it provides a source of income during a long period.
First, it is interesting to note that “copyright protection” is fiercely defended by the record labels and publishers who perceives the huge amount of money. The author also receives a part but it is minimal compared to record labels. This copyright protection is not equally and effectively divided between all parts (song writer, singer, producer-label).
Second, extend the protection to 70 years it’s not an efficient solution because this will not allow to regain the income losses by simply extend the term of protection, it will be wiser to review the copyright protection model in full. Indeed, we can see that this model is no longer valid and not work with our technology (downloading, streaming, …). Even if illegal downloading is illegal their practice is widespread and law which protect illegal downloading is impractical. How you want to apply this rule without restricting fundamental freedoms of indigenous people? Extend the term of protection will not remove the illegal downloading, it would be better to find a new sources of income which can replace this income losses.
This new technology has certainly resulted losses of revenue to the record industry and artists but it has contributed to the emergence of new artists with new business models (buzz, advertising income, derivatives). The problem is that record and movie labels were not prepared to radical change in consumer habits. They thought they could keep their business model based on copyright long enough and continue to maintain a monopoly power discouraging innovation and prevent the technology evolution.
My recommendation will be to review the copyright protection and better adapt it to the current situation and to the context in which we live without locked us into an obsolete model facing difficulties.

http://forge.framabook.org/imagine/chapitre-115-fr.poule
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/19701-droits-d-auteur-20-ans-de-plus-pour-les-producteurs-et-musiciens.html
http://www.planetagora.org/theme2_suj6_note.html

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Senterre Quentin
If I had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, I would first say that there is a huge problem about the design of copyright protection. In my opinion it is not an extension that is needed but a transformation and adaptation to the technology and to our lifestyle. 
As said in the article: « In April 2009, the…
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If I had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, I would first say that there is a huge problem about the design of copyright protection. In my opinion it is not an extension that is needed but a transformation and adaptation to the technology and to our lifestyle.


As said in the article: « In April 2009, the EU Parliament approved an extension of the copyright terms for music recordings from 50 to 70 years ».
But Copyrights on songs, movies, series and so on are no longer efficient, no matter how long they last. You can get what you want on the Internet and in a very limited time without paying any property rights. It is so easy and widespread that it is now normal to download a movie on a site or using small software to get what you need. The fact is that very big sites like “the pirate bay” (which is well named) defend the right to share the information but then with no limit. However, they are still winning lawsuits because they have become so powerful that no one can stop them.

On one hand, if your are an artist trying to earn money by selling the song that you just write you will be opposed to the share of information and try to protect your property.

On the other hand, if you are a student trying to listen to some good music and that you can afford to pay you this song, will you still support the copyright’s law extension ? Difficult to say… The fact is that nowadays there is a real battle between people who want to protect the share of the information and people who want to protect creators’ rights and that the two camps have their own good reasons to fight…

Moreover, as we saw in the article, copyrights have been repeatedly extended and there is still a problem, that’s why I don’t recommend a simple “extra-extension”. The entire system must be modified so that everyone can keep access to the information and to the culture, but that the artists, designers and inventors continue to be able to protect their rights and goods.

I agree with the author Mike Konrad who said : « Copyright law in America gives individuals, and corporations, a paralyzing stranglehold on our culture. » And I think that copyright without limitation could have a terrible effect on people creativity so I don’t recommend it.

To conclude, I would say that Copyright protection is no longer adapted to our time and that a serious rephrasing must be done to fit in our current expectations and way of life. It is more about adaptation than about extension because extension did not and will not solve the problem as we saw in the past.

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Verbeke Ludovic
If I had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension in Europe (from 50 years to 70 years), it would be very tricky to find my way. On the one hand it’s a good thing that the length of copyright is extended. This protection prevents others from making copies and preserves the creative integrity of the creator’s work. More…
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If I had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension in Europe (from 50 years to 70 years), it would be very tricky to find my way.

On the one hand it’s a good thing that the length of copyright is extended. This protection prevents others from making copies and preserves the creative integrity of the creator’s work. More and more films, music, books are easier accessible by the downloading. It has led to a crisis in these industries. For instance for the US market CD sales decreased by 15% in 2007. This is clearly a shortfall for this economic agent. But is it relevant to extend the copyright in order to get back this shortfall caused by the internet? Maybe not. Moreover music industry has planned for better recovery of rights from radio stations and public places with sound (for example: stores).

On the other hand the extension of copyrights is highly profitable for a few owners of valuable copyrights from the 1920’s and 1930’s (for example: Disney). It means that we are in front of a monopoly situation which generates deadweight losses. Furthermore those companies which have an important market power are able to extend their copyrights. For example realizing DVD for star wars (as it said on the video) which extend the period of the copyright.

It’s why it’s very complicated to find the right balance between the real protection of the creator’s work which is essential to cover the cost of creating new work and the fact that you permit some monopoly situations for a long-term period.

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Denis Matthieu
In my opinion, there should be a distinction between art-work and science-work. Such a distinction should be made because I think that a writer, a singer, an artist shouldn't be copied without his approbation, or the approbation of the person in charge of his legacy, because it could de-nature his orginial idea, and be used in a way he would…
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In my opinion, there should be a distinction between art-work and science-work. Such a distinction should be made because I think that a writer, a singer, an artist shouldn’t be copied without his approbation, or the approbation of the person in charge of his legacy, because it could de-nature his orginial idea, and be used in a way he would never allowed. I have in mind the use of Wagner by the nazis during the WWII, or even the work of Nietzche, that has been misused to fit the nazi’s docrtine.

An extended protection could allow to protect such work, and I think it could even be extended to a longer term, because it comes from the mind of one person, and it is really original. If we don’t protect it, we would eventually have 10 different films or books of Harry Potter or the Lord of the Ring for example, without really respecting the story. Some people could also make money by copying the most part, without even working one-tenth of the time Tolkien or Rowling did.

The reason why I think pieces of art should be more protected than innovations is that every scienced-based innovation for example, comes from previous scientific discovery. In this sector, every work is based on a previous one, and this use to invent something new, or discover something new, is not only vital to further the scientific knowledge, but also strengthens the recognition of the importance of the previous work.
Plus, an art-work may give inspiration for a new work, but there is no real interest to use exactely the same work, that’s the biggest difference.

Finally, the whole scientific community work together to further the common knowledge, and when an inventor is quoted in a new work, it is a honor to him to show that thanks to him, we discovered something new.

Now, there is the problem of the competition in the commercial point of vue. But, a copyright don’t forbid the use of an innovation if this one is crucial for another. If an entreprise absolutely needs it, it always can pay for it, or make it in cooperation.
Plus, this monetary aspect and the competition encourages compagnies to innovate.

To summarize, I’m a defender of a long-term copyright protection for art-work, and a smaller one for the scientific/commercial innovation.

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Suzanne Beguin
If I had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, I would probably overweight the cons. As the brief of Amici Curia, I’d like to support my view by going further in one of an argument against the extension of the CTEA : “the CTEA reduces innovation by restricting the production of new creative works that make use…
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If I had to weigh the pros and cons of copyright extension, I would probably overweight the cons. As the brief of Amici Curia, I’d like to support my view by going further in one of an argument against the extension of the CTEA : “the CTEA reduces innovation by restricting the production of new creative works that make use of existing material”. The main ideas of this argument are that there are fewer incentives to innovate if new creative works are built with part of material from existing copyrighted work and that the creator of new work faces “transaction” costs as the bargaining with or the search of the copyright holder. The extension of the copyright on existing work lengthens these two concerns for new creators.

To illustrate this argument, I found music market appropriated. As seen, the European parliament approved an extension of the copyright term of music recording from 50 to 70 years, making song of 1960 still protected from imitation. There were a lot of infringements of copyright last years, but of different types. Some are just the fact that an author does not mention the name of a previous author, bad faith or ignorance? It was the case with the song “ice ice baby” of Vanilla Ice. It was exactly the same introduction that the song “under pressure” of David Bowie. Vanilla Ice singer claimed that it was not the same music, and his bigger mistake is not to have granted/mention David Bowie as other did (My Chemical Romance). Another type of infringement of music copyrights is an unknown infringement. Madonna copied a part of a unknown songwriter, and was suited. In this case, I don’t think she is to blame. How would she know that a part of her song was already invented? Must every creator search trace of all existing creative work in the whole world to make sure to not violate some copyright?

I think it’s the main weakness of copyright in creative work. Everyone is different, has different minds, but with more than 6 billion of humans, it’s possible that several have the same idea, of the same part of idea, mostly in music business. In fact, there exist not a lot of sounds combinations, and that may happen that composers came with practically same works. And the more the copyright protection length, the less someone with an idea similar to an existing one can diffuse his work.

To sum up, I think copyright extension reduces the production of new creative work by the fact that new creators are prevented from presenting their work as long as someone has a similar one. In comes by the fact that imagination/creation is not an infinite thing (same ideas may come several times –fashion- or some people can have the same idea, perhaps at the same time).

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Willems Margaux
The first to say is that for a lot of things like film, music and even books, it is very easy to obtain them without paying anything. With the technology evolution, we lose the notion of "time" because we can download what we want and where we want. If someone buys a book, the hour later the book can be…
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The first to say is that for a lot of things like film, music and even books, it is very easy to obtain them without paying anything. With the technology evolution, we lose the notion of “time” because we can download what we want and where we want. If someone buys a book, the hour later the book can be on Internet and other people from the world can read it but only one person has paid copyright. So the amount of copyright decreases drastically.

Everything is accessible en a real time and everywhere, there is neither geographical boundaries nor temporal space. Creativity is less and less rewarded due to the new technology as Internet. Consumption becomes ephemeral and kill the creativity.
In the past there was no other option to buy the book or the movie we wanted, now we can download what we want.

I just see advantage to the extension of copyright. Creations belong to their creator. I think that this is not fair to use creation of other person even after the death of the author or the time copyright. Creations should always belong to their creator or their descendants. If we reduce the copyright it will be normal to draw Mickey Mouse for example and where is the aim to create if everybody can use our creation after a certain time?

Author obtains less copyright due to downloading. If we want to have other author, we need to keep copyright much longer to protect the creativity despite piracy. I think to reward creators there should be no time limit to copyright. It is normal to be rewarded for what we have created. Without copyright, there is no more reason to be a creator. Everyone wants to be recognized for what he did. Respect for the author should be translated by the copyright.

To conclude, I recommend copyright without limitation to point the respect of creator and to inspire new creators to innovate.

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Marina Dinkova
Writers, composers and artists depend upon copyright protection to preserve the creative integrity of their work. This largely ensures that copyright owners can exert some reasonable legal control over the use of their creations and receive adequate compensation when that work is published or performed. Copyrights last a certain period of time before they are no longer owned by the…
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Writers, composers and artists depend upon copyright protection to preserve the creative integrity of their work. This largely ensures that copyright owners can exert some reasonable legal control over the use of their creations and receive adequate compensation when that work is published or performed. Copyrights last a certain period of time before they are no longer owned by the author or artist.

Although that there are some artists that support Copyright extension, there are proofs against this act.

Study after study has shown that longer copyright terms do not protect creativity; they harm it. And yet copyright terms keep growing, in the face of the evidence.

In my view a term extension is not an appropriate measure to improve the situation of the performing artists. Copyright extensions are bad for innovation, bad for the economy and bad for our culture. The only people they are good for are those who collect the royalties and according to research that’s far more likely to be publishers, record labels and already-rich stars than it is to be struggling artists.

For me long copyright terms are how the industries avoid competing with their own back catalogs.

Copyright extensions will have a negative impact on the accessibility of cultural material such as those contained in libraries and archives, and will create supplementary financial and administrative burdens to enterprises, broadcasting organisations and consumers. Archive recordings can be made available through many routes. Sound archives typically also hold unpublished material, oral histories, interviews, sound effects – much of this material involves performers and producers who are NOT represented by collecting societies. Many people who do not have access to the materials will benefit.

It is bad for the economies. For example the European Commission is trying to persuade policy makers that copyright extension is cost free. In fact the extension in music industry will cost more than 1 bn EUR (according to the IAP). That cost will be transferred from the public to the music labels.

Last, but not least, the extensions give companies a virtually unlimited monopoly, discouraging innovation by forcing would-be innovators to pay enormous costs in royalties and other fees.

As it is written by the leading European IP academics, in the open letter to the European Commission:

…The simple truth is that copyright extension benefits most those who already hold rights. It benefits incumbent holders of major back-catalogues, be they record companies, ageing rock stars or, increasingly, artists’ estates. It does nothing for innovation and creativity…

http://williampatry.blogspot.be/2008/07/eu-railroads-term-extension.html

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Christophe Speth
The ever-increasing length of copyright protection term in the US and in the EU does not make sense from an economic POV because the costs of such decisions typically outweigh the benefits. A group of economists known as Amici Curiae rigorously analysed this issue and came to the same conclusion. Make a long story short, it is useless to grant…
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The ever-increasing length of copyright protection term in the US and in the EU does not make sense from an economic POV because the costs of such decisions typically outweigh the benefits. A group of economists known as Amici Curiae rigorously analysed this issue and came to the same conclusion. Make a long story short, it is useless to grant people that already produced knowledge with a longer copyright protection term.

I would like to go beyond the neo-classical theory which typically assumes rational agents that produce knowledge in order to maximize profits. I do not release the assumption of utility-maximizing behavior. I only argue that utility does not only include profits. Prestige is another driver for knowledge production (this might not be true when people produce knowledge protected by patents or when people want to preserve anonymity).

Even if the assumption of profit-maximizing agents is not released, one still has to take into account that knowledge protected by copyright protection is at least partially excludable. For example, musicians can incent fans to reveal their WTP through the organization of a concert. Such a concert is monopolistic (or at least monopolistically competitive), so price discrimination can be used to further extract the fans’ surplus.

Intrinsic motivation may also be taken into account, but this goes beyond the scope of my comment.

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Arnaud De Visscher
Before reading my comment, please note that I like to draw in my free time, like characters and often add them some background story. I create for myself in the first place but it happens sometimes that I think of commercializing such ideas (that they are good or bad, this not the subject) and thus the question of copyright logically…
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Before reading my comment, please note that I like to draw in my free time, like characters and often add them some background story. I create for myself in the first place but it happens sometimes that I think of commercializing such ideas (that they are good or bad, this not the subject) and thus the question of copyright logically appears. So my point of view on this topic might be a little biased in favor of the artists.

If the copyright’s holder is the inventor and is still alive, then I agree with the copyright extension since 20st century. The copyright was created in order to preserve the incentive of creation, and not only from the inception of it, but through the whole life of its creator. Ideas don’t come from seeds that you water once in a while and wait half season for them to be ready. It takes time. Let me illustrate my point with an example:
When you ask people what their favorite character from the albums of Tintin is, odds are large enough that you will hear different answers (Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, etc). Hergé didn’t invent them all at once. Captain Haddock first appearance was only in the 9th album of the series, which was published 11 years after the first Tintin adventure (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets).
If we reduced the copyright duration, we would only rush the creator in their work. Their guideline would be “I do it because I have to and not because I want to”. Even though it would lead to a better economic efficiency, I don’t think it would be in the interest of the Art neither in our personal interest (Who wants to read bad stories?).

Regarding the point of a post mortem copyright, like they said in the video, I don’t see the point of it. Once you are dead, you can’t improve your work or enlarge its universe. So why prevent others from doing your job?
They should set a law that once the creator dies, no one can buy the full copyright of its art but only get copyright of creations drawn from it.
For instance, suppose that George Lucas had kept it Star Wars copyright and died yesterday. The law should stipulate that nobody could be able to buy the whole franchise (hold it as a public good). But what could be done is creating completely new arcs, such as Star Wars: Wookie’s Republic (dips on the copyright!) and get the rights for this creation. This would allow a very large creativity and a high economic efficiency.

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Brasseur Amandine
After reading the text, I can list the following pros and cons: - Pros: protect creativity and preserve the incentive to create more - Cons: choke off new creativity (people don’t want to take the risk because they don’t always know if their new ideas are still protected by a copyright) and deadweight losses. I totally agree with the point of view of Mike…
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After reading the text, I can list the following pros and cons:
– Pros: protect creativity and preserve the incentive to create more
– Cons: choke off new creativity (people don’t want to take the risk because they don’t always know if their new ideas are still protected by a copyright) and deadweight losses.

I totally agree with the point of view of Mike Konrad when he has written “[…]copyright law’s exaggerated length[…]There is no reason why an artist’s creativity is more valuable than a scientist’s or an engineer’s. Why is an author’s work considered more precious than that of a research lab that requires hundreds of millions of dollars in investment?” (http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/copyright_strangulation.html#ixzz2euJwfxHT).

I understand the complexity of this debate. Indeed, if there are not enough protections on creativity, it will conduct to less creativity (people don’t want to work for nothing). But in another hand, there are so many protections that it’s become harder to give way to new creativity.

My point of view is that the extension of copyright is not a good thing. There is no sense to have a copyright which protects the creativity of someone dead. Because it’s the case, if you create something when you are 30 years old, you will maybe not survive 70 others years.

In my opinion, with such an extension (70 years) the benefits (creating more work by protecting it) are less than the losses (limited access and costs of administrating copyright protection). We don’t reach the social welfare by adopting more extensions of copyright.

I also think that it’s not equitable to provide protection during 70 years for an artist when other people receive just once a wage for their work. Why a singer should be paid during 70 years for one creation when a worker is paid only once (because we can see his work as a creation of him).

In conclusion, the protection of copyright is disproportional if you take into account the patents or the work of a worker. It should have more studies to know exactly what time is the best for the social welfare but I am totally convinced that it’s less than 70 years.

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