Gutenberg9443@aol.com wrote:
Even speaking as a writer, guarding my copyrights fiercely because I think that if the publisher and the illustrator are still making money from my creation I also should make money from it, I think life +95 is absurd. Life +25 should be quite adequate for anybody. There are many people in this community who consider even that to be absurd.
I agree wholeheartedly. I seem to remember the copyright office in Australia last year recommending that copyrights be SHORTENED rather than LENGTHENED. The benefits to authors from extending copyrights from Life + 50 to Life + 70 are pretty much non-existent. You could perhaps make the argument that authors may do more work to see that their children or grandchildren are well looked after after their death. However, when you start getting into Life + 70 territory, it's likely that the only beneficiaries will be a generation of descendents who weren't even born when the author was alive!!! The people who really benefit from copyrights are the publishers. Longer copyrights mean longer periods without competition from low-cost public domain publishers. It's perhaps unfortunate that at the governmental level, the people most represented (publishers) are the people who least need to be represented. If governments are given the choice to please high-powered corporations with minimal complaint from the electorate, they'll go right ahead and do it. It's even worse when, as in the case of Australia, the government may not even _want_ to impose longer copyrights but they have their hands forced through "Free Trade Agreements" with more powerful countries. When given a choice between sanctions from the richest country in the world and increasing copyrights by _another_ 20 years, which one would you choose? The sad part of it is, governments are increasing copyrights against the advice of their copyright offices, without considering the choices which will have the best impact on their country (which government has seriously taken advice on the "optimal" length of copyright?). These decisions are adversely affecting consumers every day but they're hurried through because nobody cares. Cheers, Holden