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Optimum Copyright Period Decided by Math
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jul 13, 2007 08:26 AM
from the everybody-wins dept.
from the everybody-wins dept.
An anonymous reader writes "So how long should a copyright be valid for? A Cambridge student has stepped into the discussion with a dispassionately calculated estimate of the optimal period a copyright should be granted. Ars' point of view: 'Neither the US nor the UK are in any danger of rethinking copyright law from scratch, but if they were looking for guidance in how to set up their systems, Pollock has it. He develops a set of equations focused specifically on the length of copyright and uses as much empirical data as possible to crunch the numbers. The result? An optimal copyright term of 14 years, which is designed to encourage the best balance of incentive to create new work and social welfare that comes from having work enter the public domain (where it often inspires new creative acts).' The original paper is available (pdf) online."
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Proving once again... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Proving once again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Proving once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
None of you understand... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't any of you get it? Infinite, retroactive copyright extension is the ONLY way to enrich our cultural heritage of creative works. If the rights-holding corporations like Disney ever lose control of their money-making "intellectual properties", then some day they are likely to go bankrupt (fiscally, that is). And when that happens in our bleak dystopian future, their angry stock-holders will seize a time machine, go back to the 1920s, and convince Walt to never create his characters in the first place, since it clearly won't be a worthwhile investment of his effort.
Sheesh, why do I have to spell this stuff out for you people? It's the only logical conclusion.
Re:None of you understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:None of you understand... (Score:5, Informative)
E.g. Peter Pan, Sleepy Hollow, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.
You can hold a trademark over a particular design or styling of a public domain character or concept, in a particular class of goods or services. But you can't use that trademark to block the creation or marketing of further works derived from that public domain character.
Hence, there's a peanut butter company out there with a Peter Pan trademark for their foodstuffs and it happily coexists alongside Disney's Peter Pan trademarks, and all the other assorted Peter Pan trademarks -- none of which stopped BJ Hogan from making his own derivative Peter Pan movie.
Re:None of you understand... (Score:4, Interesting)
a footnote: The rights to Peter Pan are under a unique - perpetual - copyright in the U.K. The European copyright on Peter Pan expires this year, 2023 in the U.S. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity: Peter Pan Copyright [gosh.org]
Re:Proving once again... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the interests that controlled the tiny minority of works that continued to be profitable after 28 years, then 56 years, lobbied for and got legislation that extended the term of all works.
Re:Proving once again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Had they truly been geniuses in the sense you suggest, they'd have specified the algorithm for determination of the copyright period, instead of just the value.
I've often wished that the founders of the states had been smart enough to describe an apolitical algorithm for determination of the boundaries for congressional districts as well. Or had been smart enough to realize that plurality voting systems (instead of ranked or condorcet methods) would ultimately result in the creation of an entrenched two-party duopoly from which there appears to be no escape.
Re:Proving once again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Proving once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect. A plurality system pushes politicians towards each other. If one party shifts right and is popular, the other party will shift right to catch up, which is what happens in the USA. Your Democrat party, in other countries, would be considered a fairly far right wing party.
They were thieves! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They were thieves! (Score:5, Funny)
In the United States... (Score:5, Funny)
So we need to plan for that. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have have property that you want protected, then you should PAY for that protection after the standard protection period has expired.
99%+ of book titles won't be sold 15 years after their release. So there's no financial incentive for their authors to protect them. But with Disney and others, their "property" is worth millions of dollars. So charge them 5% of the estimated value. Every year.
If you are an author and you want to keep protecting your book, are you willing to pay 5% a year of the sales from the last year? Or should it be 1%?
Otherwise it falls into the Public Domain.
Re:So we need to plan for that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So we need to plan for that. (Score:4, Insightful)
not a flat rate (Score:5, Interesting)
The advantage of this system is that the copyright owner has some choice as to how long to keep it protected/monopolized. If a work is profitable, then the owner can decided to invest in it and extend the copyright for a while. Due to the ever increasing cost, sooner or later extending the copyright will be a bad investment and then it goes into the public domain.
A pet peeve of mine is non-original ownership of copyrights. I can see where Walt Disney (the individual) wanted exclusive rights for his work with Mickey Mouse, but since he is dead, any new Mickey Mouse material is made by someone else. I don't see why the Walt Disney corporation should have any more rights than anyone else. I understand that companies might own the rights, but that should be to shelter/protect the individual creator so he can milk that cow a bit longer. But once anyone else gets involved in the creativity process, is should be fair game for everyone. Too bad that isn't how the modern world works.
- doug
Re:Interesting idea, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now a Flat fee of $1k/year to keep a movie* copyright free. Studios such as MGM would have to pay millions a year to keep their products under copyright, eventually the accountants would point out that OldMovies 1-100 aren't making $1k, there's no guarantee that they'd make $1k if released on DVD, so they let the copyright expire.
I'd have the fee vary, and go up over time. For example - $10/year for a book, for the second 20 years of copyright(the first 20 are free).
Note: All numbers are approximate.
*original audiovisual production in excess of 60 minutes, (by original I mean not just a tweaked remix)
Re:Interesting idea, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
They pay 5% of whatever they claim the value is.
However, anyone can purchase the property for that claimed value amount.
(in nascar races, if it is a $45k race, then the race can buy any car that competes in it for $45k.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ever wondered why Disney keeps rereleasing those classics from the "Disney Vault"?
For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_ Term_Extension_Act [wikipedia.org]
No no no. (Score:4, Funny)
They're not deciding anything, they're just following the good old nuclear fusion approach:
It's just twenty years away
Re:In the United States... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the United States... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're also into music and movies, and file trading, and all these things are impacted by long copyrights. Things like Google's "Scan every library in existence" scheme could be infinitely cooler if your search would bring you the full text of the actual book, and it could do that for a vast number of books if the copyrights were relaxed.
Re:In the United States... (Score:5, Informative)
It's because the slashdot crowd is concerned about freedoms, and freedoms lost.
It's because many in the slashdot crowd believe in standing on the shoulder's of giants to make their own works. (which can't be done with the current copyright).
Photography is an excellent example (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In the United States... (Score:4, Insightful)
B b b but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:B b b but... (Score:5, Funny)
Consider yourself sued, buddy!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Although they are no doubt the exception (Score:3, Informative)
Good Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
- *
When formulating policy the key variable to consider should be social value, which is the sum of commercial value and user value, rather than commercial value alone (in economist's terminology: welfare rather than national income).
- *
When looking at the value of knowledge goods in general, and the public domain in particular, policy makers should take account of the value generated by complementary products and services.
- *
Historically, innovation policy, particularly in relation to intellectual property, is characterized by extensive rent-seeking activity and significant imbalances in power. It is important that this be taken into account in policy making, for example by the provision of a clear set of principles that could safeguard groups that are poorly represented (such as the general public). The public domain while very important to society tends to lack a concentrated set of stakeholders to defend it, compared, for example, to the copyright-based industries.
- *
For some of the categories of works currently covered by copyright, for example music, the introduction of open access along with some form of alternative compensation system promises to deliver significant gains both to creators and to consumers.
- *
Access and preservation of older copyrighted works is a significant problem and should be addressed. This could be done in several, potentially complementary ways, including: introduction of a registration requirement, orphan works provisions, and a reduction in copyright term.
- *
In areas such as open source software and technology standards the first principle should be "do no harm". In particular, it is imperative that policy makers maintain, and strengthen, the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability.
- *
Make public sector information open. This is one of the most direct, and straightforward actions governments can take in promoting the public domain, and it is one that the available evidence suggests will have large benefits both to industry and to the general public.
He also attempts to show through economic theory that "that a dominant firm may engage in considerable expenditure to maintain its position and the welfare consequences of so doing may be considerable.Also interesting is that he conjectures that the burden of proof of ownership in intellectual property should be placed on those attempting to acquire the IP, not anyone else [rufuspollock.org].
He has a paper detailing a model where innovation occurs without intellectual property [rufuspollock.org] in an attempt to show that the assumption regarding IP's relationship to innovation is false.
Very interesting stuff, to say the least, most of it quite logical which means, of course, that it will be completely ignored by politicians and policy makers.
Not completely ignored... (Score:5, Interesting)
What we're looking at, IMO, is the transition of social, economic, and finally, political power from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution. People like Rufus are today defining the theoretical basis for laws that will be enacted in twenty or fifty years' time.
What is happening, broadly is that a new society is forming around the digitalisation of culture. This society is vast and now includes perhaps half the world's population (3bn SIM cards are in use globally). The new society drives new businesses like Google and Ebay, and in a decade, this digital economy will have become more important than the industrial economy. And at some stage the digital economy will reach for political power.
This happened before, in the industrial revolution, and at that time the old upper class - landowners - tried to stop the growth of the new industrial middle class with laws like the Corn Laws. They ultimately failed, and the urban middle class finally got the vote.
My prediction is that the digital revolution will culminate in a transfer of power from the old political / industrial elite (who are the ones that made today's copyright and patent laws) to a new elite that will create new models of property that suit it much better.
It is feasible to already implement 14-year copyright today, by private contract. E.g. this could be implemented in a GPL-style license. It may be that private legal systems like the GPL become the laws of tomorrow.
Rufus has done a brilliant work in turning the "more is better" dogma of IP upside down and giving us a tool to quantify exactly what is needed.
Re:Not completely ignored... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dispassionate (Score:5, Insightful)
Often they do (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry, I'll
A) have trouble taking someone seriously as doing dispassionate objective maths when the rest of the time they're on a crusade against copyright and copyright extensions. It's akin to trusting a Sony fanboy to give you a scientific and dispassionate estimate as to which console is the best. But more importantly,
B) the data he feeds into those formulas is based on guessed numbers. E.g., for the rate of decay, depending on who you choose to believe, in his own paper the estimates range from 2% to 10%. He chooses 5% as the number to go with, but the important thing to realize is that it's just a guess. The accuracy of that number is remarkably low.
To give you an example of how inacurate that is: for something that decays by 2% per year, after 16 years you've lost only almost 28% of the original value. At 5%, after 16 years you've lost 56% of the original value. At 10% in 16 years you've lost 81% of the value. (I'm using 16 instead of 14 just because I'm too lazy to do more than press the X^2 button in xcalc 4 times. Should be enough for example purposes.) The effects being literally exponential, such a wild inaccuracy is multiplied incredibly. You can produce a wildly different "ideal number of years" by just choosing slightly different guessed numbers to input in those formulas.
C) I see nowhere a calculation of the error margins. As a corolary of B, what's more interesting for such a calculation with wildly guessed numbers isn't just one value reached with the most likely guess, but what is the _interval_ of plausible results. If you've fed data which could be anything between 2% and 10%, then what is the result for 2% and what is the result for 10%, for a start. Don't give me the result just for 5%. And that's just one of the values there.
Basically what I'm saying is that even if you trust the formulas to be correct, the insanely large intervals of believable values means you can get almost any number you want to get there, just by picking different guessed numbers. You can use the same formula to get any number between 2-3 years (if you chose to believe everything devalues extremely fast, and everything creates incredible value in derivative works) to well over 50 years (if you choose to go by the idea that even though some crap devalues faster, the most deserving protection are the masterworks that devalue very slowly.) Pick your own pre-conceived number in that range, and there's a valid set of guessed numbers that produces it.
Anyway, it's used all the time. E.g., if you work in most large corporations, you must have seen at least one (but more likely dozens) of baffling decisions that go somewhat like this:
How it's supposed to look from the outside: some manager (A) saw that problem X exists and is really a problem, (2) analyzed which products solved that problem, (3) made a list of features and performance characteristics, put them in numbers, and assigned them weights according to their importance in the actual case at hand, (4) dispassionately calculated the weighted score for all of them, and (5) the result happens to say that, objectively, product Y from supplier Z is the perfect choice.
What really happened: was that the manager had already decided that he wants product Y or just to buy something from company Z, for entirely other reasons. Often (but not always) he even had to scratch his head to figure out a problem X that fits that solution. At any rate, from there the analyzed features and their weights are juggled and massaged until product Y ends u
Re:Often they do (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with your criticisms, though not with your implication that he is massaging the numbers to get the results he wants. Regardless, I would like to point out something that, I think, is crucial about the approach he has taken: Because he expresses his logic and results in rigorous, mathematical form, it is possible for us to analyze and improve on them rationally.
Most debates in public policy are just rhetoric: trying to convince people by appeals to emotion and "common sense" (or contorted logic). There is no way to improve upon the debate other than to throw your own rhetoric into the mix. Here, we have a mathematical analysis. If you think there are flaws in the math, you can easily point them out. If you think he should have done an error analysis, you can do this error analysis. If you think graphing the range of possibilities is more fair, you can go ahead and do that. His work can be built upon, objectively criticized, and improved. This is less like rhetoric and now more like science.
So, far from being the "final word" on the optimal length on copyright, I view this as a step towards logical analysis (finally!). I hope that others pick upon on this work and come up with more reliable input numbers. That's how progress is made.
Yes, statistics can be contorted to "prove" alot of things. But the more rigorously and mathematically you frame your argument, the easier it is to point out mistakes and fallacies. I think this is a step in the right direction for this debate.
Having said all that, I will have to read it a few more times to determine whether I agree with the logic and math. However I think it would be premature to dismiss this without due consideration.
Re:Often they do (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are surprised by the 14 year number he gives as a point estimate, really, you just don't understand exponentials. The value of longer copyright terms goes down fast, and even with relatively low exponents, you reach break-even quite fast. Just because a small handful of works maintain their value so well as to warrant massive lobbying, the vast majority of creative works aren't worth the bother to continue printing after just a few years. Consider books; except for bestsellers, they have a really low self-life (pun intended)--only 1% of books ever had their copyright renewed at the 14 year mark (back when that was required). Just 1%!
He also gives a range of estimates, including some ridiculously low discount rates (2% is obscenely low...). The *highest* copyright term he comes up with is 51.51 years. Now, it seems to me that 50 years is quite a bit shorter than life+70...
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it does [reference.com]:
Now, this is a different kettle of fish entirely:
What you're arguing in effect precludes any notion of objective truth, since every assertion is either an assumption or based on other things that are. And every person who argues anything at all has some personal biases. However this doesn't make his arguments empty or imply they must be biased by his personal preferences. This is a familiar position to me from arguing with my postmodernist friends. I'm not against postmodernism, Like Milton, I think any idea is healthy food for a strong and healthy mind. Yet I find that people exclusively educated in that style lack a certain respect for the value of data. And how we handle data is very important to whether we are being dispassionate or not.
This is one of the big problems with the modern media: it cannot distinguish balancing facts from balancing opinions. If they feature a evolutionary biologist, they "balance" that by presenting a creationist, as if their views were equally valid alternatives. In part this is driven by economics: weighing facts is much harder and slower than trotting out somebody who simply disagrees. We're talking about the difference between building something with legos and building them with raw stock and a machine shop.
The problem with strong emotions is that they narrow our ability to process information. In the grip of passions, we unconsciously filter out data which would alter our emotional state. When we're angry, we ignore data that would calm us and focus on data that makes us angrier. When we're fearful, we focus on data that scares us and disregard data that would make us feel safe.
So a dispassionate argument is not one that has no viewpoint; it is one that is impartial with the facts. It may discount certain facts and place greater significance on others, but it does so consciously with an identifiable justification. It is therefore negatable by negating its justifications and altering its selection of facts.
For that matter non-biased doesn't mean right either. It is quite possible to disagree with the conclusions of a dispassionate and unbiased argument, provided that you (a) have facts available to you that the person arguing does not or (b) disagree with explicit assumptions the person is working with.
Example: people who believe in intellectual property as a fundamental but alienable right (like most people consider the right to personal property) might well agree with every fact in this paper. But if they disagree with the assumption that copyright is about maximizing utility, the argument while valid, is wrong. It wouldn't matter if he showed that copyright terms of any age were automatically harmful to the public good because their assumptions is that the public good does not take precedence over individual property rights in any situation.
Now we all engage in wishful thinking, in which we can have our cake and eat it too. We can believe that rights are paramount, but that pursing individual rights always maximizes public utility. Or vice versa. But this is biased, passionate thinking. We have a powerful, unjustifiable and implicit
prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
who's to profit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most authors have no problem with making copyright much shorter. I've heard values as low as 3 years, with 5 to 10 being the usual suggestion. It's only the Disney's and other superstars of the publishing world that want copyright longer then the normal human lifespan.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Regulations don't make things "optimal" (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at what Prince just did [google.com] -- he disturbed the distribution monopoly's hold on music sales, and they're PO'd about it. Instead of hoping for sales for an album he knows is already online and in the hands of fans, he used the music he created as a "loss leader" to drive sales to a market he can control -- his own time. Instead of hoping to make millions on an album (which anyone can copy, using their own time, their own equipment), he can now make millions selling something unique -- HIS time in front of his fans.
Albums are quickly becoming marketing structures to get people to attend your live performances. Many new bands give away their music via MySpace and PureVolume in hopes of getting people to come to their shows -- where they make the actual dollars doing actual labor on an ongoing basis.
I'm an artist, and I produce some musical acts myself. I've convinced most, if not all, to tell their crowds to go and copy the album they buy at the show for friends, so that the band has a bigger pull the next time they're in town. My own brother's band, Maps & Atlases, is now doing that to great acclaim (MTV2, college radio, and a large tour pending) with hopes of making their money on beer cuts, T-shirt sales, etc. Copyright is useless to them. They won't sign a contract to the various labels chasing them unless they are allowed to distribute their music in any way they want (including Torrent, free MP3 on their sites, etc).
What is optimal is a market that a producer and a consumer can both dictate what terms they want for a transaction. If an item has the chance to be infinitely available, the cost drops to zero. CDs can theoretically be nearly-infinitely available today. The cost should be close to zero. The time an artists can serve their fans is not infinitely zero (at least not in a live performance, face to face). This is where money can, and should, be made. That is optimal for all.
It's a model (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The author built a mathematical model of the world.
2. Then he performed (presumably) valid math within that model.
3. But generally, all models simplify, often over-simplify, the thing they describe.
4. So even if all his math is valid, his results may be inaccurate.
We also can't simply ignore the fact that the objective function he was trying to maximize embodies a particular notion of what "good" is. But we know that the idea of "good" varies from person to person, even amongst Slashdot'ers, in major ways. So just because we like the fact that he used math, and we like his advocacy of shorter copyright, we maybe should seriously disagree with his conclusion of "about 14 years" being optimal.
Landes & Posner said the same thing 5 years ag (Score:3, Informative)
Re:M