Ideally, a child could legally provide their own spin on IP they consumed by the time they reach adulthood. But also, people need to make a living.

I actually think the original 14+14 year copyright is the right balance. It gives people time to make their profits, but also guarantees the right of people to tweak and modify content they consume within their lifetime. It's a balanced time scale rather than one that exists solely to serve mega corporations giving them the capability to hold cultural icons hostage.

We'll be having an in-person celebration at our SF HQ later in January as well, details to come!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_in_public_domain

70 years. After death.

The rules have to change. 70 years is way too long.

In the former Soviet Union, pre-1973 material is out of copyright. Again within living memory. I don't know what Russia etc have done with copyright since then.

https://blog.okfn.org/2012/10/08/do-bad-things-happen-when-w... (Do Bad things happen when works enter the public domain?)

There are answer is no, but they’re ignoring the fact that when works enter the public domain they will invariably spawn horror movies “based” on the work. Pooh: Blood and Honey is the warning sign we all ignored to our detriment and now we’ll all have to watch the slasher version of T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” in 2026.

I hope you’re happy.

Since the point of copyright is to offer an incentive (to profit) from works it should be tightly tied to the market value of said works and the willingness of its owner to present them for sale.

If nobody keeps selling X there's no reason to let X enjoy the protection of copyright.

If X is kept for sale for the sake of keeping copyright alive but it's not really selling much that should also affect the nature of the copyright. For example, a minimum fee you have to pay annually to keep copyright going would cull out the works that are no longer commercially viable.

The fee could be proportional to the overall sales of the works so that if your works were a huge hit in the 80's but sales have trickled down to a minimum you'd have to pay more (from the profits you've obviously received over time) to keep it copyrighted (which would force you to balance your copyrights to your net income from current sales), but if you published an obscure album decades ago that never got much traction your fees would be negligible (but you'd still have a minimum fee you'd have to pay regardless) so you would be incentivized to give up the "protection" and make it cheaper for everyone to let it fall in public domain.

Further, the various aspects of copyright could be torn down in different timeframes. Let's say you wrote a successful book in 1963 which made money but no longer sells much. You probably wouldn't mind letting the copies of the book fall in public domain but if you could keep the option to hold onto copyright for derivative works in case someone wants to make a film out of the book you could do that (again, with annual fees, but these could be lower if the original book could be freely copied).

Or some other scheme. I could soon think of dozens if I wanted to but you get the idea. How about a tax on the sales of copyrighted works that starts from 0% but increases by some percentage point each year. You can profit first but as years go by you will have to start paying more and more to keep it going as the overall balance approaches unprofitability.

Copyright doesn't have to be a complete monopoly, it could have shades of gray. Sure there are exemptions already (such as fair use, in some countries, or right to make backups under certain conditions) but none of them address the commercial stronghold copyright allows for companies to keep works of art hostage for decades and eventually, for centuries.

Compare that with a drug's IP: total of 20 years after the molecule patent, of which 8-10y in clinical trials and only 10-12y in profitable life. But everyone respects that until the last day and it brings billions back.

A short IP time would favor the small/poor creators that could earn something during their lifetime when the work is fresh, while a long one favors companies like Disney which can protect the copyright with their group of lawyers.

That is not to say this particular company is a bad thing (I have not problem with people getting reasonable remuneration) but if you want to know (e.g. if you are considering donating) its something you need to find out on a case by case basis.

This is not well known in the UK, let along outside the UK.

Similarly, some works that are published in the US but are not in the public domain there could be perfectly legal to publish in a death+50 year country.

   1 William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying
   2 Arthur Ransome – Swallows and Amazons
   3 Albert Einstein
   4 Nan Shepherd – The Weatherhouse
   5 Langston Hughes – Not Without Laughter
   6 Wallace Stevens
   7 Hermann Hesse – Narcissus and Goldmund
   8 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)
   9 Barbara Hepworth
  10 Evelyn Waugh – Vile Bodies
  11 Geoffrey Dennis – The End of the World
  12 Charlie Parker
  13 Margaret Ayer Barnes – Years of Grace
  14 Hellbound Train
  15 Hannah Arendt
  16 Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities
  17 T. S. Eliot – Ash Wednesday
  18 Thomas Mann
  19 Agatha Christie – The Murder at the Vicarage
  20 Franz Kafka – The Castle (English translation)
  21 Walker Evans
  22 Sigmund Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents
  23 Stella Benson – The Far-Away Bride
  24 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
  25 E. H. Young – Miss Mole
  26 P. G. Wodehouse
  27 Vladimir Nabokov – The Defense
  28 Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon
  29 Roger Mais
  30 Saadat Hasan Manto
  31 Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – Insatiability

they are playing his jingle for more than 20 years now.

he became so wealhty that he could afford to tear down his old house, move temporaly to a hotel with the whole family, while the new villa was built on the old ground.

Hitler, Mussolini, Patton, Churchill, Goebels. Even Anne Frank and Einstein.

edit: thanks to the dead commenter for clarifying. that sucks.

Just make it 50-ish years, absolute max.

On a side note, that web page's presentation of the items is leaving much to be desired. I can't click on each individual item out-of-order on Safari.

EDIT:

Oh, it's a countdown/Advent calendar.

I mean I admire the creativity but I don't care enough to visit the page each day. Just give me the list.