The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by cyrusdaku:

C.E. Petit goes on at some length here on the trademark and copyright issues surrounding fanfic. He talks a little bit about the idea of "character copyright", which is kind of interesting. (I thought he wrote more on that, but I can't find it.)

Of course that was about two years ago, so important things may have changed.

in #23, Aurelian, you brought up the "reasonable" case for life+ terms. I'll quote myself from elsewhere. Take what you like.

The true utility of life+ terms is as follows:

* It provides a verifiable way to determine the exact date something enters the public domain. Death certificates and death registers are easier to locate and more certain to be created than copyright registrations.
* It provides for the author being run over by a truck the day after they sign a contract.

The true utility of life+ terms is NOT:

* To provide for dependents. Sell the copyright and invest the money, and in 70+ years you will be able to reliably provide for your dependents. The future value of almost all copyrights is zero; to regard them as an investment is to acknowledge that they are a very risky investment.
* To provide for the author's literary immortality. Every one of your fans AND their children will be DEAD when someone can first take your work and build it into our culture. (Under the current regime.)

There's some nuances to what I said above that are worth talking about, I think. For instance, Life+ terms are much much less of a problem if copyright registration has to be kept up in order to get them: several orders of magnitude of orphan works would fall into the public domain quickly and easily, and lots of the edge cases that drive anthology editors nuts would be resolved.

Comment statistics for cyrusdaku on the Making Light blog

Total: 2 comments. View all these comments on a single page.