I think copyright is fundamentally absurd. It is the ownership of information, and that can work in a world where most business happens on a physical level and the production of information can be separated from the usage of information. But this stops making a lot of sense in the limit as we go towards further digitalization of our lives. Think, for example, if a brain implant meant to help people with aphantastia with visualization would be legally permitted to visualize copyrighted works. Essentially, the limit of copyright in its totality is thought crime, which we probably don't want to be a thing. Generative AI is starting to expose the cracks as traditional notions stop making sense (Are models learning like humans? Eventually they will.)
Therefore I would like to have a discussion on how a world without any copyright, any ownership of ideas or information, would look like. Would it be bad? How bad? How would industries adapt?
For example at a first glance it looks like all big budget art production would collapse to indie level plus a few kickstarter projects.
Perhaps industries would reinvent copyright themselves by entering large shared contracts where they promise eachother not to infringe on their rights, i.e. fast food joints create a cartel which shuns brands that don't follow the rules.
I think traditionally when laws which society thinks should exist did not, then soviety created paralgovernmental institutions that... enforced these laws. Like local militias to prevent crime.
Copyright is acknowledgement of creatorship
Without copyright, I can claim to be the author of Romeo and Juliet or Harry Potter or The Firm - and you can never prove me wrong
Look at countries around the world that either do not recognize or enforce copyright from other locations (or which have no concept for native productions) if you want to know what a "world without copyright" would look like ... it exists already around the globe
Say...double the length of a patent (for institutionally-produced work) or lifetime of the creator(s) (for everything else)
If patents last for 15 or 20 years[0], then anything created by an organization (business, non-profit, etc) should cap at 30 or 40 years (I would push for 30 ... but would settle for 40)
Anything created by individually-named and -credited people should last until the last of them dies (or they agree to relinquish their copyright)
You write a book at 20 and live to 80? You have a 60-year copyright. Write a book at 74 and die at 81? Congratulations - 7-year copyright.
You write a technical manual for a business? It is under copyright for no more than 40 years. (Again, I would lobby for 30 - but 40 is still in the realm of plausible.)
Most corporately-produced, copyrightable items have zero value at well-under 20 years (let alone 30 or 40) - but even those that do have value past that point (say ... Yankee Doodle Dandy, or the like), are not especially likely to be "infringed upon". Keeping with the movie example for a moment, say you look at the 1969 movie The Italian Job. It was remade in 2003. Remaking a story 30+ years on detracts in no way from the previous rendition, but can give a new value.
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_S...
For each of my books, I had to invest a substantial amount of time to do research, plus the writing and editing itself, plus everything else that goes into having a book published with a traditional publisher.
For instance:
* Experimenting With Babies (Oct 2013): 34,200 words. 208 pages. 82 works cited in references.
* Correlated (July 2014): 29,800 words. 210 pages. 1,123 lines of code across several programming languages to parse all of the data.
* Experiments for Newlyweds (April 2019): 43,200 words. 276 pages. 95 works cited in references.
* Experimenting With Kids (May 2020): 48,300 words. 272 pages. 86 works cited in references.
I could not have written any of these books without the ability to get paid for that work. And my publisher could not have paid me for that work without the ability to sell that work with exclusivity for some period of time. Otherwise, any other publisher could undercut them and profit off of work they didn't produce or pay for.
So although I understand the "information should be free" argument, we have to grapple with the fact that information is not free to produce, and it likely WILL NOT be produced if the people who would produce it decide not to because they need to devote their time to other activities that DO produce income. In a world without copyright, many of the creative works we currently enjoy simply would not exist.
That said, I think the current length of copyright in the US is obscenely long. If we were to make it much shorter (say 50 years total) I don't think it would have any effect on 99.9% of copyright holders.
In a world sans copyright, creativity might flourish in an open-source-like environment, but there's a catch. Big-budget projects could shrink dramatically, likely impacting the quality and scale of productions. Industries might form their own protective alliances, but would this be enough?
Your point about the need for some protection period to incentivize innovation is key. Without it, the risk of financial ruin is too high for anyone to pour substantial resources into new developments. But, how long should this period last? That's the million-dollar question.
"The length of copyright established by the Founding Fathers was 14 years, plus the ability to renew it one time, for 14 more."
maybe even the Copyright Act of 1831: the original copyright term became 28 years, with an option to renew the copyright for another 14 years.
I remember reading an article by Jerry Pournelle where he said authors generally sold their work, and they would get the rights back for the renewal term. They were good with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...