<story><title>Willingham sends Fables into the public domain</title><url>https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jzb</author><text>10 years is nothing. I&amp;#x27;m against copyright maximalism and would love to see copyright terms whittled down, but 10 years is a non-starter.&lt;p&gt;For every Stephen King that has a massive following and would easily earn enough  in those 10 years, there&amp;#x27;s 100 mid-tier and lower-tier creators that need any income they can get from works still earning in some fashion.&lt;p&gt;Also, think about how a 10 year limit would be used against creators by the Disneys of the world. &amp;quot;Well, damn, we don&amp;#x27;t need to arrange a movie deal with King...  we&amp;#x27;ll just wait 10 years and a day and then make a movie on this book.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Hey, indie band that still scrapes by on royalties and touring? The minute your best-selling album is 10 years old, it&amp;#x27;s going to be repackaged and sold without you seeing a dime.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s more complicated than that, but... an arbitrary 10 year limit wouldn&amp;#x27;t fix things or make the world substantially better and might make things worse.&lt;p&gt;Now - I&amp;#x27;d be willing to talk about things like drastically shorting terms for works for hire&amp;#x2F;copyright owned by corporations and not individuals.&lt;p&gt;We might also need to think about not having one term for all things. There&amp;#x27;s no reason the copyright term for software should be the same as that for a song or a movie or a book. Books, songs, paintings, basically &lt;i&gt;art&lt;/i&gt; should probably have a copyright term in the 25-50 year range. Certainly no longer than 50 years.</text></item><item><author>bmacho</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know Fables, but I&amp;#x27;d love to see more things going to public domain. All fictional characters and stories, after 10 years. All software stuff, API&amp;#x2F;ABI, formats, UI and leaked source code, you should be able to use it, modify it, or even sell it. Everyday products like a washing machine, or a microwave, someone created a reliable and easy to produce microwave, now anyone should be able to mass produce it, and sell it cheaper. Produce and sell an iphone, a compatible, a partially compatible, an improved version, or whatever you want. And so on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Anarch157a</author><text>Copyrights should be more like trademarks. Use it or lose it.&lt;p&gt;Put a limit of 10 years if the work is not available for purchase by the general public, so any work that goes out of print becomes public domain 10 years after the last copy was sold.&lt;p&gt;But... Only for works owned by _corporations_. For works still owned by the original artists, works would enter public domain on the artists death or if the artist had under-age children at the moment of their passing, when the youngest completes 18.&lt;p&gt;I think this is the best way to ensure that corpos can&amp;#x27;t sit on works for eternity while allowing artists to have an income for life, with some protection for their children in case of untimely death.&lt;p&gt;In any case, any law that implements such limitations should mandate a complete removal of any DRM involved, or at least publication of the private keys needed to decrypt any work, once they become public.</text></comment>
<story><title>Willingham sends Fables into the public domain</title><url>https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jzb</author><text>10 years is nothing. I&amp;#x27;m against copyright maximalism and would love to see copyright terms whittled down, but 10 years is a non-starter.&lt;p&gt;For every Stephen King that has a massive following and would easily earn enough  in those 10 years, there&amp;#x27;s 100 mid-tier and lower-tier creators that need any income they can get from works still earning in some fashion.&lt;p&gt;Also, think about how a 10 year limit would be used against creators by the Disneys of the world. &amp;quot;Well, damn, we don&amp;#x27;t need to arrange a movie deal with King...  we&amp;#x27;ll just wait 10 years and a day and then make a movie on this book.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Hey, indie band that still scrapes by on royalties and touring? The minute your best-selling album is 10 years old, it&amp;#x27;s going to be repackaged and sold without you seeing a dime.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s more complicated than that, but... an arbitrary 10 year limit wouldn&amp;#x27;t fix things or make the world substantially better and might make things worse.&lt;p&gt;Now - I&amp;#x27;d be willing to talk about things like drastically shorting terms for works for hire&amp;#x2F;copyright owned by corporations and not individuals.&lt;p&gt;We might also need to think about not having one term for all things. There&amp;#x27;s no reason the copyright term for software should be the same as that for a song or a movie or a book. Books, songs, paintings, basically &lt;i&gt;art&lt;/i&gt; should probably have a copyright term in the 25-50 year range. Certainly no longer than 50 years.</text></item><item><author>bmacho</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know Fables, but I&amp;#x27;d love to see more things going to public domain. All fictional characters and stories, after 10 years. All software stuff, API&amp;#x2F;ABI, formats, UI and leaked source code, you should be able to use it, modify it, or even sell it. Everyday products like a washing machine, or a microwave, someone created a reliable and easy to produce microwave, now anyone should be able to mass produce it, and sell it cheaper. Produce and sell an iphone, a compatible, a partially compatible, an improved version, or whatever you want. And so on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>OkayPhysicist</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve thought about this quite a bit. I think one fair approach would be to have a 2 tiered copyright release, where there&amp;#x27;s still a pretty long time before a work lapses into the public domain, but before that, a relatively short amount of time after the release of the work (say, 10-15 years) the original owner loses the power to dictate who uses their work. Basically, between that point and the public domain lapse, anyone would have the option to accept a default contract of paying the creator some standardized % royalties. The creator would still have the option to accept explicit contracts with weaker terms, for example waiving the royalties for projects they want to give away.</text></comment>