One of the clearest demonstrations of how copyright is actively harmful is the lawsuit that four of the biggest publishers brought against the Internet Archive. As a result of the judge’s decision in favour of the publishers – currently being appealed – more than 500,000 books have been taken out of lending by the Internet Archive, including more than 1,300 banned and “challenged” books. In an open letter to the publishers in the lawsuit, the Internet Archive lists three core reasons why removing half a million ebooks is “having a devastating impact in the US and around the world, with far-reaching implications”.
Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17259314
How long do you think copyright should be? It was originally 14 years in the United States.
https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycle/
The max that I would ever be happy with is 25, but 20 or 17 preferred for me at least. I think it gives plenty of time for a Series completion.
Robert Jordan and George RR Martin disagree.
Do you have any exact statements from them? Because I would like to know more.
I rarely hear about authors/artists talk about copyright other than, when they talk about what license they use or them complaining because they felt that their work wasn’t infringing on other artists copyright since it was transformative.
Robert Jordan took a long time finishing his Wheel of Time series- he actually died and Brandon Sanderson had to write the last three books
GRRM is still writing his series.
My point is that they would say that time proposed is not enough because they take a long time to write.
Additional context:
Robert Jordan’s first book for the Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990. His last book, A Memory of Light, was published in 2013. He died in 2007 and a lot of fans, me included, thought the series was also dead but Jordan’s wife brought on Sanderson to finish it. And he did such a great job writing in Jordan’s style that some think he did Jordan better than Jordan did.
GRRM wrote A Game of Thrones which was published in 1996 which is the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire. His latest book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011 and only book five of seven proposed books for the series. Three series was originally going to be a trilogy so we’ll see if it ends at seven. The Wheel of Time series was also supposed to be a trilogy when Jordan started it.
That’s simple: have the earliest works released into the public domain, while he keeps squatting on the newer and promised ones.
I feel like someone not releasing anything but squatting IP rights for 13 years is a poor argument for longer copyright terms.