The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Will Shetterly:

Tienanman, when you talk politics or religion, you've got to expect preconceptions. Devout capitalists approach questions one way; devout communists approach them another. So, acknowledging that humans aren't objective and the ones who claim to be are liars or fools, here goes;

"Property" is the idea that things can be owned: clothes, crops, land, etc. "Intellectual property" is the idea that ideas are also things that can be owned. The idea of property is at least as old as the ideas of kings and thieves, but it's usually been balanced by the idea of the commons, the idea that not everything should be owned. The idea of intellectual property is much newer. Perhaps the first copyright battle was the Battle of Cuil Dremne. But the obvious beginning of modern copyright is the Statute of Anne in 1710. It offered a 14 year copyright period, renewable once, before the right to copy an idea would return to the public domain.

Now, "rational self interest" is one of those phrases that I find fascinating. As someone who is concerned about his stories, I think they have a much better chance of surviving in the public domain than they do locked in the cellars of unending copyright. Melville's a fine example: his work was effectively forgotten by the end of his life, but when it came into the public domain, publishers began reprinting it because it was cheap and good, and now he's held to be a great writer. Whether that would happen under the current "death plus 70" system, I don't know, but I'm doubtful.

Maluko, I like what Xeni did, too. And I agree with Patrick. I think we need both approaches in the debate. But if we're negotiating a capitalist solution with capitalists, it's nice to point out that what we're after is much closer to what the US's Founders imagined than the unending corporatist monopoly system that's now in place

Heresiarch, I think there may be something to your earlier "what if the rights to reproduce the actual work lapsed after a reasonable time (when most any conceivable profit from publication has run its course), but the rights to derivative work remained with the author longer?" Whatever you think of the internet, it gives us the ability to have easily accessible databases. But the ability to do derivative work is at the heart of copyright, so it only makes sense to have a longer period for derivative work if the period on the original work is short, say 14 or 28 years.

Greg, why abandon the commons for the bounty? The bounty analogy may fit, but it's not intuitive, and it's a bit insulting.

Though I must admit sometimes I think the stories are doing their best to slip their chains and get away.

I agree with Alex's last post, with the quibble that I don't like living in Locke's World. But so long as I'm stuck here, I'll play within the walls to survive while I try to push the walls back or bring them down.

Also, the people who'll change the laws are likely to be Lockeites. The debate has to be discussed in ways they'll grasp. (Yes, I often say to ignore the enemy's terms of debate. But the whole point of copyleft is to improve capitalism, not end it.)

I am sometimes surprised that the far right isn't arguing in favor of short copyrights, since short copyrights increase competition. Why should the US publishers who had the Yeats rights long after the rest of the world have been able to keep their monopoly? Not being of the far right, I don't accept the question, but the premise seems valid if you are of the right. Maybe I'm just showing my limited understanding of capitalism.

Got to say I don't like the bounty hunter metaphor. I don't hunt down stories. I make them. Yeah, it's an esthetic quibble, but esthetic quibbles are important when you're trying to win allies.

Okay, I'll fess up, sometimes I do hunt down stories. But I try to file off the serial numbers and give 'em a new coat of paint.

Greg, I hate the idea of Heatdeath Mickey, too. But I think you're better off fighting battles that you have a hope of winning (says a guy who's almost always happy to fight ones that he knows he'll lose). Big business wants big bucks from big properties. Let them have them. I'm far more concerned with the obscure stuff that's locked away by copyright because no one knows how to find the owner or the owner is too unreasonable to deal with. 14 Infinitely Renewable means a short copyright period so that most things can fall into the public domain quickly, yet Disney can be happy because they'll have their rat. You could slow down copyright speculation by increasing the registration fees with each renewal: doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled.... The first fees could be very low, and the later, big ones could pay for the registry and other services to promote art.

Speaking of Disney, they do have ways to inhibit public domain art, too. My wife and I wrote a William Tell script that had a day or two of buzz, until the word went around that Disney already had a Tell script in their library, theoretically as (I kid you not) a vehicle for Arnold. No one was likely to start production on a Tell film knowing that they would butt heads with Disney. At least, not without some major players on board. (Baseball players on ships! I love the cliches of Hollywood speech.)

Charlie, why is death plus 50 easier to defend than death plus 10 or 70?

My current, increasingly nebulous thoughts on the issue are that we should go back to the Statute of Anne/Founders' copyright of 14 years, but made infinitely renewable. I'm not crazy about letting someone milk the Mouse eternally, but it really doesn't put much of a crimp in my creativity. At least, not so long as I can do something like Rudy Rat to make the same sort of point I might want to make with Mickey.

Anyone know if anyone's fighting the copyright war by focusing on fair use? I once paid $100 to use snippets of Yeats that were in the public domain everywhere except the US. Copyright profitting anyone other than a creator has infuriated me ever since.

Charlie, why is death plus 50 easier to defend than death plus 10 or 70?

My current, increasingly nebulous thoughts on the issue are that we should go back to the UK Statute of Anne/US Founders' copyright of 14 years, only make it infinitely renewable. I'm not crazy about letting someone milk the Mouse eternally, but it really doesn't put much of a crimp in my creativity. At least, not so long as I can do something like Rudy Rat to make the same sort of point I might want to make with Mickey.

Anyone know if anyone's fighting the copyright war by focusing on fair use? I once paid $100 to use snippets of Yeats that were in the public domain everywhere except the US. Copyright profitting anyone other than a creator has infuriated me ever since.

Since I'm s'posed to be a storyteller, I wrote a story about copyright over the weekend: The People Who Owned the Bible. It's slight, so I put it under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

It doesn't address any of the later discussion in this thread. I think my firmness on those issues is holding at: until society cares for everyone, artists need some copyright for a while, but not too long.

Charlie, ah! I don't think I've every moved so quickly between camps, but I guess I'm not firmly opposed to "death plus X" after all.

Simplicity is important. But we don't have to be too simple. Keep in mind that copyleft is still a commercial concept, and it's therefore appropriate to have a commercial registry. Since this is the web, I'll go with a few spur of the moment thoughts:

1. The creator should have a guaranteed period of protection for a creation.

2. The creator should have the option of ending that period of protection in order to move something quickly into the public domain.

3. Extending protection beyond the guaranteed period should be cheap for the sake of poor creators, but it does not need to be free. The purpose of extending protection is to increase the chance of making money, and a fine old capitalist principle is that you should be prepared to spend money to make money.

I wish all countries that subscribe to the principle of copyright would jointly fund a web site where all works are registered. Want to know if Thorne Smith's first Topper book is in the public domain? Go to the site and learn for free.

One of my frustrations with capitalism is that because it's focused exclusively on profit, convenience and clarity are only factors when they're profitable.

And, on another note, I've gotten a little uncomfortable with "copyleft" because it's not an inherently leftist issue. The name's clever, but it's potentially divisive. Success calls for making as many allies as possible.

Alex, thanks! There's always that warning bell when I correct someone; I should've heeded it this time. I did a quick google and found a reference to the roots of US copyright: the 1709 Statute of Anne. But I didn't find a reason for choosing fourteen plus a renewable fourteen, and I really shouldn't take on another research project now.

I've decided to officialy change my position. I was giving qualified support to life plus ten as a reasonable compromise, but between thinking about the original intent of copyright and the rather macabre and arbitrary nature of "death plus X years," I'm now firmly in the camp of those who favor a set number of years for maximum copyright. We live in a culture that loves multiples of five and ten. Why not 25 years, renewable every 25 years for your nation's smallest economic unit (meaning, in the U.S., a penny)? And, sigh, as a concession to those who want to milk a hot property, let it be renewable three times for a maximum of 100 years?

Charlie, Jane and I live in a country that has more than 40 million citizens who are not covered by health care. In my state, Arizona, I do have limited health care thanks to a program for folks who don't make much money, but the Bush administration wants to do away with that. We're forced to be obsessed with the silly ways our country does things. That said, I fully agree that we should discuss copyright as an issue of transnational corporate exploitation.

Jane, I've been very grateful for your comments, and would appreciate one more (and am very sorry if I missed it earlier): How long do you think copyright should extend? Under the current system of regular Mouse extensions, the US answer is "Since Steamboat Willy."

Greg, original copyright periods were 28 years, nonrenewable. Dunno why they picked 28 years, but would love to hear it.

Charlie, asking storymakers to avoid analogies is like asking scientists to avoid numbers. Analogy may be fluid, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Take the farm analogy. If you're looking at it with a 21st century US commercial take, there are at least two different metaphors there: the little family farm that we like to imagine where families are healthy and cows and chickens have range and unadulterated feed. Then there's the factory farm, where the checks go to someone who does none of the work. (I'm not prepared to take on Dave Bell's tenant farm now, though I agree that corporations are a major issue in all of this.)

Some writers think they have gone into the wilderness where no human has been and cleared the land and tilled the soil and planted seeds that were bought with their hard labor. Other writers think they've been granted a plot on the commons, and seeds and compost are all around for their use, and they like knowing that when they're gone, any useful strain they might have developed will be taken by others who're growing things there. If I'm really lucky, someday someone will be able to say, Ay, that's a fine Shetterly apple. Young Jenny was experimenting with a Shetterly and a Yolen, and she came up with a fine Jenny apple, though there's still some what prefer the pure Shetterly or the pure Yolen.

Dave Pentecost, it's not a question of framing the debate for the electorate (though I like to think that ultimately it will be). It's a matter of framing it for politicians and judges. They have to know that what they are doing can be explained as solidly American to those who might question them, which is to say, the people who fund their campaigns.

I think the commie symbols are hilarious. But they're lies. The communist solution is to abolish copyright, and if we had a democratic libertarian communist society, I would be content with that; I just want to be able to write what I want to write and know that I might not die in a gutter as a consequence. Copyleft isn't communist. It's sensible capitalism with freedom for the creator to choose a category of copyright.

And while I'm not one who thinks the internet will solve all our problems, I do think it makes registering the appropriate sort of copyright fairly easy. My wife recently got into a copyright awkwardness when she adapted a song called "The Black Fox" that she thought was in the public domain because it was on a tape produced pre-internet by people who clearly also thought it was in the public domain. But googling by a curious reader found the author, who has since received his well-deserved piece of the advance.

Jane, I am that naive, and I appreciate your answer. I don't have a clue how the feds handle the inheritance of stories. I want mine in the public domain when I die, if not sooner, though I always thought it was kind of charming (and a very sad commentary on our economic system) that a kid's hospital benefits from Barrie's and the NAACP benefits from Dorothy Parker's.

Avram, I agree with you, but I don't think that's the way to win. I'd be content with copyright that lasted 28 years, as it was first conceived. I'm very admiring of the Creative Commons licensing. But many professional writers are terrified of our economic system, and they see strong copyright as the only way to keep their families out of the poorhouse after they die. If you want a lot of prosperous authors on board, I think you have to assure them that even though they won't be guaranteed health care or social security, they can choose to have a five or ten year grace period while copyright helps their heirs make new lives. And though I say it 99.99% in jest, I don't like thinking that if I had a breakout book, some studio could rush the movie into production if I happened to have a traffic accident on a rainy night.

Jane, I'm always sorry when I hop your metaphors. Whenever the conversation arises while we're both in the room, we can state positions without feeling any need to convince the other, honest. I do understand that when kids and grandkids are as cute as yours, you want to give 'em everything you've got. But because I want to understand your position better, I have a question: if stories are the same as the family farm, should they be subject to inheritance taxes, and if so, how do you value them?

Charlie, that proposal sounds reasonable to me. I may be a copyright conservative, but I'm not an absolutist. But I would like that to be the most extreme option. If I decide to put my work in the public domain, I don't think someone with a family connection should be able to jerk it out again.

Charlie Stross, my take on a reasonable maximum copyright period is life of the artist, plus five years. That's long enough to help the heirs immediately after your death and to ensure that no one decides to kill you to make a movie of your work more cheaply.

I do think you should have the option of shorter copyright periods.

Jane, an artist's heirs inevitably get three benefits: the artist's name, a life in the artist's family, and the investments the artist made while the work was under copyright. I have serious doubts about giving them more. I look at Professional Heirs out there like Christopher Tolkien and Majel Roddenberry, and I am not impressed and not convinced that's a good thing to do to a child you love.

I must add that I love the look of the copyleft symbol with wings. Put that on a blue, green, or black background, and you've got a great bit of design that only the people you'll never reach would object to.

Making a living through copyright doesn't mean we need the current form of copyright. Me, I'm a copyright conservative: I think the Founders original notion was pretty good, and I would happily go back to it if that was the only alternative.

I think the copyright debate should be framed in two terms: Short copyrights are conservative and American; longer copyrights are radical and greedy. Being able to choose your own copyright license is a matter of liberty.

If it's the reds versus the blues, we all lose. Boingboing has the real color of the American map.

Clark, I did a little checking on the web for Florida's rules in 2000, and as far as I can tell, the scenario for the Bushiverse goes like this: Gore has the option of statewide recount or a few counties. His campaign decides to look like gentlemen while cherrypicking four or five counties that are likely to give them the victory. Then they ask for a statewide recount, the Florida Supreme Court grants it, and wham! The U.S. Supreme Court shuts them down. It's Hollywood-class implausibility, but you gotta admit it's great drama. I might not want to live in that world, but it'd be fun to see the movie.

Ken, I (and maybe a million others) call that the Hindenburg Effect, based on that great Dick story in which the Hindenburg crashes, but the crash is covered live on radio and people are so terrified that zeppelins and dirigibles are effectively abandoned. Packing people into large heavier-than-air craft for long flights-- Ugh! There's another world I don't want to live in.

Will (who thinks he'll use his jet pack to fly door-to-door this weekend drumming up votes in the Four More 4 Gore campaign.

Claude, I really didn't really mean to spoil a bit of innocent fun. And I confess, I hadn't realized how many people read Patrick's blog, but now it seems like everyone's running with his scenario. Salon.com has a piece about a puppet-control device on a President Bush's back. Sojourners's latest email proposes that abortion rates would increase under his anti-abortion presidency as more people struggled under a Bush economy. I think it just proves that everyone loves a disaster story. The Bush Presidency and The Day After Tomorrow are equally implausible, equally horrifying, and equally capable of making me glad that things just couldn't happen like that.

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