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[Jim Cassedy]

... virtually all of Van Gogh’s work is public domain.

VanGoghMask.jpg

[Randy Stankey]

The purpose of copyright is to encourage more of that creative stuff to be done.

Copyright encourages creativity because it ensures that the creator or his heirs can profit from their own work for a certain period of time.

We all know that Van Gogh was bat-shit crazy. In his day, mental health care was in the Stone Age, compared to today.

What if copyright laws could have protected Van Gogh's work for a reasonable period of time such that he was able to profit from his own work and ensure that he could have the care he needed? Could that have prevented him from committing suicide? If that would be true then Van Gogh might have lived for several more years and would have been able to produce even more work that, after his natural death, would have brought even more creative benefit to society, in general.

Van Gogh's brother, Theo, financially supported Vincent for decades for his death. Theo, sometimes, struggled, financially, because of it. Supposedly, he did it out of brotherly love or maybe because of familial obligation. It doesn't matter, really. What does matter is that Theo should have had the right to recover some of his expenses in supporting Vincent throughout his troubled life by profiting from his brother's work. Theo was Vincent's rightful heir.

If copyright laws protected an artist's heirs, would they not be more willing and able to care for their family through ensuring the ability to financially support them. Artists would be able to live longer, be more productive and, again, benefit society by producing more art.

I don't want to quibble the history of Vincent Van Gogh. I'm only going by what I learned in Art History classes in college. That was decades ago.

My point is that there are many people in similar situations to Van Gogh who are unable to support themselves through their work because corporations abuse copyright laws, leaving others with no options. If copyright laws were better (not simply stronger but more sensible) millions of people like Van Gogh might be able to produce more work which would benefit the rest of society.

Jim: Funny as hell! It took me a second, though...

[Leo Enticknap]

My favorite "adaptation" of this sort is the numerous renderings of Rodin's Le Penseur with a toilet added:

thinkerontheloo.PNG

This one goes one stage further with the irony, adding the cellphone, too.

The ideal with copyright is to achieve the Paula Deen principle of "everything in moderation" (but unlike Deen, actually meaning it). Content creators need to make a reasonable return on their investment, but that should not get in the way of legitimate historical inquiry or public debate. Fair use provisions generally do a good job in terms of the latter, but duration of copyright is and always has been a difficult one. What makes it even more difficult is that different business models are involved in different types of content. If you make a blockbuster, mainstream movie costing $200M, pulp fiction novel, or a pop album, you're going to recover that investment and make your profit relatively quickly: in a year's time, it'll be yesterday's news. But if you make an arthouse movie, an opera recording, or a highbrow work of literature, the return will be slow burn: you'll only sell in the hundreds of copies a year, but over many decades. An obvious example here would be Artur Schnabel's 1933-38 recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas (the first complete recording of all of them): they have been continually in EMI's catalog since their original release on 78, and you can now buy them as downloads. Everyone involved in creating those recordings has been dead for decades, and they're still making money for the company that produced them. Yet copyright duration doesn't discriminate, and realistically it can't: who are politicians to decide if something is mainstream or arthouse?!

What really annoys me is when something that was never intended to generate revenue over many decades unexpectedly becomes a classic and does so, at which point the rights owner becomes all protective about it, after having previously having ignored or even abandoned it. There are several examples of movies like this, and It's a Wonderful Life is a prime example. What is doubly ironic is that it only became a cult classic because of the lapsed copyright renewal and broadcasters pouncing on this "free" content as a result. Then the attorneys went into battle, and essentially clawed the copyright back again. The restoration racket is now another tool in the rights' owners box, because by creating a new version you reset the copyright duration clock back to day 1.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Copyright encourages creativity because it ensures that the creator or his heirs can profit from their own work for a certain period of time.

You could even argue why the heirs should actually inherit the copyright. Are they continuing to produce new creative works or are they there just to reap the benefits from someone else's work?

What if copyright laws could have protected Van Gogh's work for a reasonable period of time such that he was able to profit from his own work and ensure that he could have the care he needed? Could that have prevented him from committing suicide? If that would be true then Van Gogh might have lived for several more years and would have been able to produce even more work that, after his natural death, would have brought even more creative benefit to society, in general.

If Van Gogh would've lived in the modern Netherlands or France as of now, he probably would've gotten treatments for his mental problems, so it's really not fair to compare the situation. But even with all the copyright and IP frameworks in place, would that really have changed the outcome for him? How many artists can actually live from their work? You could make a piece of art that might become the next "Night Watch" or even "Mona Lisa" a few centuries down the road, but right now, nobody is going to give you a dime for it, because you're still a "nobody". Meanwhile, if you managed to build your reputation like e.g. Bansky, you only need to put some random poster through a shredder and sell it for millions. The price of art is much like Coca Cola: it's name and fame, the actual product is just of secondary importance.

The restoration racket is now another tool in the rights' owners box, because by creating a new version you reset the copyright duration clock back to day 1.

I don't mind the copyright on restored work as much, since a good restauration will take time, efforts and often some expensive resources, which needs to be compensated somehow. If the original is in the public domain, everybody is free to make their own restaurations too.

[Bobby Henderson]

In my opinion, even 50 years is way too much for copyright. I'd say it should be the same as patents: You get 10 years with the option to renew 10 years. Those 20 years should be ample to cash in on any original work and will avoid the creative stranglehold many IP properties have found themselves in.

I strongly disagree with this. You must be forgetting just how long various literary properties can languish in "development hell" before anything happens with them in terms of movies, TV shows or any other form of entertainment. This notion that book authors are going to "cash in" for all a given property is worth within a 10 year time window is bullshit.

I'll give you one personal example, my dad's first military non-fiction book "Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills" was first published in the mid 1980's. Over the past 30 plus years there have been hints and half-ass efforts at trying to turn the book (and its later follow-up "Silent Warrior") into a movie. But no actual, for real deals have ever been made on it. Just a bunch of worthless talking is all. Various movies, such as "Sniper" and "Shooter" have ripped off story beats from that book. There is still some off and on interest in the "Marine Sniper" book now. If anything ever happens with turning that book into a movie (and actually making a deal with my Dad over it) I'll believe it when I see it.

If there was only a 10 year time window with a one-time 10 year renewal then pretty much all book authors would be shit out of luck at getting paid for any movie/TV adaptations of their work. It would be nothing for movie/TV studios and production companies to wait out the clock for that work to fall into the public domain. Writers frequently get royally screwed by entertainment companies anyway even when they fully own the rights to their books. It's not exactly cheap to take a copyright infringement case to court. Unless a book author is pretty well known he probably won't have enough of a "war chest" to take on a media company in a civil case that could drag on for a decade or longer. Even if he can take a media company to court over the matter the action might wreck any future chances he has on selling movie rights to other books later. Hollywood is known for informally blacklisting people.

Times are pretty tough in general for book authors. So many of the brick and mortar retail outlets have vanished. It is much more difficult today to get a book distributed in physical form by a major publisher. E-books are a different animal. Writers can self-publish, but good luck on getting the work noticed among countless other self-published works.

Lots of other works besides books deserve long term copyright (and patent) protection. Art is a big one. 10 or 20 years is nothing in terms of fine art gaining value and notice. Much of the graphic design software I use in my daily work was first introduced over 30 years ago. Copyrights and patents (usually) get renewed when the software is updated with new version releases. But not everything like that does get updated.

Generally speaking, these calls for copyrights to be greatly limited tend to be inspired by the motivation to get something for free. I think writers, artists or even software engineers should be paid for their work. There are people in my business (the sign industry) who think it's ridiculous to pay for any commercial fonts when they can often be grabbed from some sketchy web site for free. These guys probably never considered just how much work and time goes into designing a commercial-grade typeface or type family. I'll turn their comment around on them, "why should you get paid to design signs? All you're doing is playing around on the computer, right?" Fucking hypocrisy.

[Randy Stankey]

Most people tend to over value their own art but under value the art of others. This makes it hard for artists, writers, movie makers, etc. to distribute their work on fair terms.

I have over a dozen framed photographs that I made, myself, hanging on my walls. It's a virtual art gallery worth thousands if you only count the cost of time and materials. They'd be worth much more as works of art but I'd be damned if I can sell them at cost.

I have sold a few photos for a couple-few hundred apiece but, at those prices, my profit, after the cots of printing and framing, come out to $50.00 if I'm lucky. There's one photo, hanging near where I'm sitting now that's worth almost $500.00, just in materials alone. It's a 16x20 Cibachrome (Ilfochrome) print in an acrylic face-mount frame. It's one-of-a-kind that can never, ever be reproduced. (Cibachrome was discontinued several years ago.) It cost me almost $200 just to have the print made and another $200 for the mounting. This doesn't account for the cost of my film, the cost of developing, the value of my work in the darkroom or the value of my time in the field, actually shooting the scene. There's another one, a companion piece, hanging next to it that cost just as much to make. Together, the two photos are worth at least $1,000.00.

I entered those photos in two art shows and got awards that totaled $50.00 each. The owner of a local art gallery approached me and invited me to display them in his shop. I priced them at $1,500.00 for the pair and $800.00 for a single. Once you subtract the gallery's commission, my take-home would have been barely above break-even. I "stalked" my own work at the gallery opening and saw at least a dozen people look at them and make good comments but, when they looked at the price, they just went "Harumph!" and walked away. Never sold a-one!

I put another print, a standard B/W, gelatin-silver print in that same gallery (Again, at the invitation of the owner) and it sold for $400.00. Take out the gallery's commission and I got just under $250.00. It barely covered the cost or printing and framing!

My girlfriend is an excellent crochet artist. She crochets 3-dimensional stuffed toys. She designs her own patterns and makes her own, original work. Not just reproducing other peoples' patterns. I convinced her to enter her work in the local County Fair where she took First place, Third Place and Honorable Mention for three out of three entries. (The limit for entries by one person.) The total prize money was a little over $10.00. Not even enough to cover the cost of yarn. If she put her creations up for sale on Ebay or Etsy, she'd be lucky to get $10.00 or $20.00 apiece.

I'm no Ansel Adams. Not in the least but my work still has value. The same goes for my girlfriend. She's no Susie Homemaker but she deserves to get much more than $10.00 for a handmade Teddy Bear.

When it comes to copyright protection, I'm sorta'-kinda' protected because of the nature of my work. I make real, tangible photographs that can't be reproduced digitally. If somebody tries (and some people have) I have the negatives to prove it's my work. My girlfriend is a different story. She has had several people redistribute her patterns for sale without her permission. The only reason we were able to get a "takedown" was because the people stole patterns from several crochet artists who were all members of the same on-line community. About a dozen people all banded together to threaten the infringers as a group.

Given the conditions I work under, I have absolutely no motivation to make more photographs. I have to work full time just to pay bills and I have zero time in my day to go out and shoot photos, much less do the darkroom and framing work. For the money I get, I'd be working at a loss if I did. My girlfriend is the same. She only makes things for herself and to give away to friends, all at her own expense.

We NEED better copyright laws that establish sensible rules to protect artists like me and my girlfriend. There are thousands (or millions) of good artists like me. Many of them, BETTER than me. Millions or billions of dollars worth of value to the economy are proverbially flushed down the toilet because we have no protection for the value of our work. There's no reason to do it.

BTW: You can Dodd-Gamm bet that I'm passing the rights to my photographs to my heirs! I've got a dozen notebooks, filled with photographic negatives, and boxes of unframed photo prints that will still be around, long after I'm dead. I'm not saying that my work will ever rise to the level of Van Gogh after I'm gone. I'd have a better chance of winning the lottery ten times in a row.

Still, my work DESERVES protection and, still, my rightful heirs deserve to reap the value of my work.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Still, theoretically, why do your "heirs" deserve to reap the benefits of your work? Are they continuing your line of work and expand the existing body of work available to the public?

I strongly disagree with this. You must be forgetting just how long various literary properties can languish in "development hell" before anythinghappens with them in terms of movies, TV shows or any other form of entertainment. This notion that book authors are going to "cash in" for all a given property is worth within a 10 year time window is bullshit.

I mentioned 20 years of total protection, not 10 years. Why should an inventor, who easily needs to spend $150k or more to get a max 20 year patent protection on his work, get better terms than an author or artist, who essentially gets their protection for free?

There may be tons of examples where someone gets screwed over due to a bad deal, but copyright needs to be a balance between exclusive rights and public domain. If we allow everything to be locked behind copyright bars, then the big corporations will essentially control our culture and heritage, you already see this happening now, where the likes of Disney essentially control a lot of property that's part of modern culture and identity.

I'll give you one personal example, my dad's first military non-fiction book "Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills" was first published in the mid 1980's. Over the past 30 plus years there have been hints and half-ass efforts at trying to turn the book (and its later follow-up "Silent Warrior") into a movie. But no actual, for real deals have ever been made on it.

So, there you have it... endless copyright protection on your father's original work and seemingly you only got screwed over. In the end, the big corporations take what they want from you and never pay you a due dime. You don't agree? See you in court... let's see who can afford the best lawyers and will have the longest breath.

Time and time again it has been proven that those endless copyright restrictions only serve the big boys, who actually have the means to defend their rights in court, but will happily screw everybody else over.

[Leo Enticknap]

I'm no Ansel Adams.

Which brings up an interesting issue, one that is, IMHO, somewhat of a sidebar when it comes to copyright. If you own an original Ansel Adams (i.e. a print that he actually made), you are probably a millionaire. If you own a coffee table book of reproductions of his photos, no matter how high quality it is, you own an object worth around $30. The entire fine art market is predicated on the rarity value of individual artifacts rather than their intrinsic artistic merit. At the risk of getting political, the paintings of Adolf Hitler and Hunter Biden would not be worth what they are otherwise: the value derives from the notoriety of their creator, not the creative craft skill or inspiration that went into creating them.

If you can find it, this documentary, about arguably the world's most successful art forger, is a hilarious indictment of this phenomenon:

But with books, recordings, and movies, the dynamic is different. The business model there is not about the uniqueness of the individual artifact: quite the opposite. It's based on the ability to copy and disseminate it as widely as possible, hence the need for legal protections on who can do this, and how, if anyone is going to invest in creating the work of IP in the first place. We can, and should, argue about precisely what is protectable by copyright (e.g. how different an "adaptation" has to be from an original work to not be linked to it for copyright purposes, which, IMHO, is an increasingly important question when it comes to remasterings and restorations), and copyright duration. Personally, I think that an "death of the author plus X years" option if the creator is an individual, or a set duration if it is a corporate entity, is the way to go. But like many others, I am worried by the fact that it constantly creeps upwards, and somewhat relieved that the current political climate is unlikely to give the mouse another extension in 2024. Even if the reason for drawing that line (political revenge, basically) is not the most noble, that line needs to be drawn.

[Bobby Henderson]

Still, theoretically, why do your "heirs" deserve to reap the benefits of your work? Are they continuing your line of work and expand the existing body of work available to the public?

The rights to something like a book is property. Passing those rights along to heirs is no different from a parent passing a house on to their kids.

I was a teenager when my dad wrote his first book. It took about 3 years of research and writing/editing to finish the manuscript. That meant a lot of time not spent doing usual family stuff. Plus me, my brother and my mother proof-read every manuscript draft. So I have a Goddamn stake in that IP. Screw anyone who says I don't.

There may be tons of examples where someone gets screwed over due to a bad deal, but copyright needs to be a balance between exclusive rights and public domain.

Artists don't need to work for free. The business model already sucks bad enough for people in any creative business. Much of the general public doesn't have the first damn clue how much time and effort has to go into something. They just think anything creative should be offered for free. Fuck that. Are you willing to do your job for free?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Artists don't need to work for free. The business model already sucks bad enough for people in any creative business. Much of the general public doesn't have the first damn clue how much time and effort has to go into something. They just think anything creative should be offered for free. Fuck that. Are you willing to do your job for free?

Most of my and my wife's income depends on creative work, either directly or indirectly, nobody is claiming that creative work should be free, quite to the contrary, many artists' work is completely undervaluated. But the solution isn't never-ending copyright, because that's not where the primary problem lies for most of those arttists.

Especially you should know that nothing is created from nothing. Creativity doesn't spring from a vacuum, it requires inspiration. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. An artist should have the right to a clearly defined, but time-limited monopily over everything he/she creates, the same should be true for inventors, I see no reason why they should be punished even more, as patents have already become so expensive, they're not even attainable for normal people anymore. But once the period of exclusivity has run out, stuff should enter the public domain, so others can draw from that pool, draw inspiration from it and extend it.

[Bobby Henderson]

There is a big difference between creative inspiration and plagiarism. Greatly limiting the rights of certain creatives so others can presumably freeload is 100% hogwash.

In the case of book authors, like my father, the long term of copyrights is one of the few things that makes being a writer worth it financially. It sure isn't about some jerk-off notion like "the honor of being published." A small, but steady stream of royalty payments will help writers who are seemingly unknown still make a decent amount of money from their works over the long term. Shutting off the spigot after only 10 or 20 years ruins that business model. A shorter term makes it far easier for big companies to push around writers.

[Frank Cox]

Nobody has a right to make a living at whatever they may choose to do. Small businesses go out of business every day of the week for all kinds of reasons, and in most cases people worked very hard attempting to make those businesses succeed right up to the point that they didn't.

We don't have any lobbyists pushing to outlaw home kitchens so the restaurant folks can make a living. Nobody's demanding that everyone wear wool suits to work to keep the dry cleaners in business.

[Bobby Henderson]

Frank, your analogy about restaurants versus home kitchens doesn't make any sense in relation to intellectual property. And small businesses typically have to pay employees to work at those businesses; no one has any obligation to work for free. Any business that feels its employees don't deserve to be able to make a living is a business that deserves to go the hell out of business.

[Frank Cox]

Beethoven made a living before the age of copyright and today everyone knows his name. So did Galileo and a whole host of others. It can be done.

Intellectual property is a very fuzzy and artificial concept.

[Randy Stankey]

If you spend years developing a recipe for the world's best chicken soup for which you have put a lot of time, effort and money into getting everything "just right," does some random restaurant have the right to copy your recipe, call it their own and sell it to customers without your permission?

(Assuming you have written everything down in copyrightable form.)