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Here's my opinion on how to defuse many aspects of culture war: reduce copyright length to at most 40-50 years.
Consider. Lots of people were upset when Rian Johnson deliberately made the Last Jedi to be about fighting "toxic masculinity" and "fan entitlement". But he is not the problem. I am not here to criticize RJ. His interpretation actually had some interesting ideas even if it was badly executed and inconsistent with my general concept of what SW movie "should" be.
The problem is that Disney anointed him to be the one to save Star Wars from smelly nerds. And there's nothing you could do unless you had a billion dollars to buy SW from Disney. Except in the end this didn't work out for "woke" cause either, because TLJ did poorly at the box office so Disney hired Abrams who overrode every RJs decision. Everyone loses.
I think part of the reason why "culture wars" are so bitter is that all sides are essentially reduced to pressuring (or begging) large, faceless corporations into reflecting their values. This creates mutual distrust because both sides know that corporations will drop your values the second they stop being profitable. It is fundamentally toxic.
But if noone owns IP then we can have both "based" and "woke" version of every franchise. Fans will rise to the occasion to make both. Hence, less bitter culture wars.
Of course, there's zero chance Disney ever allows erosion of copyright, but it is fun to speculate.
I wish we could have a scheme where copyrights had to be renewed every 5 or so years, and the price rose per term dramatically something like:
And there is no eighth term. The idea would be most properties fall out between the third and fifth term (15 to 25 years) and the enforcers of copyright benefit from extended protection on the super valuable properties (something like Pokemon, Star Wars, or Harry Potter might be worth a 6th term but that's about it).
Huh, I actually find a lot to like in this scheme.
There may be a better way to set a price for each renewal term, but I like that the fourth term is within the means of a group of devoted fans to crowdfund the purchase of the rights if the original holder is no longer interested, and as you indicate, the sixth term is certainly only justifiable for massive properties.
If a given work isn't renewed after a given term, is that a situation where it automatically and permanently falls into public domain, or would it simply remain on the 'open market' where anyone can swoop in to buy up the rights at the stated price?
Also, if the seventh term is going to be such an absurdly high amount, perhaps that can be the price to purchase the rights 'in perpetuity' such that they never expire.
Yeah those were just round numbers I picked to illustrate the pattern. I'm certain there are better figures to use (I'd probably lower the 2nd and 3rd some so small authors can make money for at least a decade and might raise the 5th a bit).
Automatically goes to the open domain. Just like It's a Wonderful Life which didn't get renewed so it came out very early. I'd like a new scheme to allow for that (such that stuff people forget about becomes public). I'd make the terms extend to perpetuity but in the US, I think there's a constitutional prohibition.
Seems like the ideal pricing scheme would aim to be some % of the estimated value of the property, or maybe % of the revenue generated by it, but that calculation seems way too fraught.
But that would allow small authors/creators to maintain their rights at low cost unless some particular property got really popular.
Perhaps the only issue I see with allowing a property to slide directly to public domain if rights aren't renewed is that it actually disincentivizes anyone from making any works using such a property since they can't exclude others from doing so if the new works get popular.
Whereas if there's a property that's just sitting out there unused and the rights can be snapped up for $10k-$100k then creators might keep a very close eye on the stuff that isn't renewed so they can snag it and do some work with it.
Not that public domain stuff never gets used.
Huh, maybe there could also be some absurdly high amount which, if paid, would automatically transfer the rights of some property to the public domain and the payment split between the government and the rights-holder.
Sort-of-kind-of like an 'eminent domain' for IP.
I'm not the best at copyright law but I think when a new work uses a character from a work that's in the public domain they retain rights to their work but not the character. Like when something like Pride and Predjudice and Zombies gets written doesn't it become a new creative work? Or when Disney makes an Aladin animated film they own the rights to that film but anyone else can make their own Alladin fim or comic or whatever, too.
Eminent domain for IP seems pretty interesting, I'll have to think more about that.
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