Comment by Aromasin

> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.

I like Cory Doctorow's analogy: Artists are, to a large degree, at the mercy of big companies (publishers, music labels, etc), who have the leverage to force artists to sign over all of their rights. Giving artists more rights is like giving your kid more lunch money when it's being stolen by a bully: no matter how much money you give your kid in that situation it's not going to give him any lunch.

I don't know that A Game of Thrones is a good example, at all.

The series was already remarkable commercial success before the TV adaptation. A Feast for Crows debuted at #1 on the NYT list in 2005.

The series sold millions of copies prior to the TV series. That's more successful than the average successful Fantasy novel by orders of magnitude.

If the books sold even more copies after being adapted, that's because HBO put the story on TV, not because of anything the author did.

And, of course, even if the first book in the series lost it's copyright after 28 years (nearly three decades!), the all the rest of books in the series would still under copyright, and the HBO wouldn't be able to access the ending without the authors help, as it hasn't even been published yet. The most HBO could have done without Martin's involvement would have been to create glorified fan fiction, while leaving themselves open to lawsuits about any similarities to any later books in the series under copyright.

Almost all the money almost any artist makes comes in the first 28 years. It is hard to see why we should deprive all of society from benefiting from using, building on, or remixing culture, to slightly increase the leverage that a handful of exceptionally rare winners get.

An of course, there is a huge gap between 14+14 and today's maximalist copyright regime.

> Fantasy book are a good example. A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity. Good Omens main peak was ~15 years after release. Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985 but only reached their peak in 2010.

Using your example and the rules suggested in the grandparent post, GRRM's copyright would have been set to initially expire in 2024, where he would be able to pay $100k to renew it until 2038. Handmaiden's Tale works in a similar way, with the initial expiration in 2013.

This still seems very reasonable to me.

So add another 14 to the original 14+14, giving 42 years of maximum protection. That would cover your examples and require active renewal to send abandonware to the public domain earlier. I'd love to see shorter terms, but active renewal would already greatly enrich the public domain.

> Hell, some books like Handmaiden's Tale were published in 1985

It was already a classic by the year 2000 and Margaret Atwood has made more than enough money and was an icon even back then. I say this as a fan and someone who paid to meet her.

Copyright should ensure that artists make a living, not enable them to make a killing.

If a novel you wrote 15 years ago becomes hugely successful you can capitalize with a sequel. Maybe GRRM would have written them a little faster in that universe.

Game of Thrones and Good Omens would easily fit in the 14+14 model. Even Handmaid's Tale would be fine, although the new TV series would be outside of copyright. 28 years is still a long time in human terms, timespans longer than that are mostly beneficial only for effectively immortal corporations.

14+14=28 years. That minimum being proposed here is longer than a patent lasts for.

Why should we protect the work of an author for a lengthier term than that of an inventor?

(And remember: It's really not my problem, as a regular Joe, when an author or inventor creates something that doesn't catch on right away -- if at all. Success is not guaranteed.)

> A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Way before 2011 all my friends were telling me to read it. It was so popular that Neil Gaiman - before 2011 - wrote a famous blog post criticizing R R Martin fans for being upset that R R Martin was not giving a timeline for writing his next book (and implied he may never complete the series).

It also consistently won some of the top awards prior to 2011.

14+14 seems to cover these two scenarios? Lifetime+whatever is far too on the other end of this seesaw.

> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy

IP laws were created on the Modern Age (that is not, you know, our modern one) arguably to protect the technique of book copyists, and very probably to improve kingdoms taxation and control what knowledge the bourgeoisie could access... at that time when the bourgeoisie was a persecuted fringe group.

> A Games of Thrones was first released in 1996 but had middling success. It was only after 2011 that the series exploded in popularity

Yes - the catalyst was the amazing (early on) TV series, and not the book.

> IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.

In the case of GoT, if the TV series had never happened then the popularity wouldn't have happened. The author's books got popularity based on other people's efforts.

>IP law was originally to protect artist and authors from the wealthy, but now it seems to have the opposite intent.

Im pretty sure that was always the sales pitch and never the intent.

Similar to the Patriot act.

"Quite often" = actually quite rare. I think you greatly underestimate the number of new novels published each year.

Your first two examples would have been covered under a 14+14 copyright period.

I do not think a 28-year copyright period would have kept Atwood from writing The Handmaiden's Tale, do you? She was a millionaire by the time that copyright expired.

I don't think looking at peak sales for outlying cases should affect copyright limits. When were peak sales for Shakespeare's Hamlet? Darwin's On the Origin of Species? Marx's Das Kapital?

The justification for US copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The problem you point out is that right can be transferred to publishers and others. Note that since 1978 it's possible for an author to terminate that transfer after 35 years, which is well after those peaks you mentioned.

What you've not mentioned is the ability for other authors to build on existing ideas. Disney famously profited by re-telling public domain stories, but will come down on you if you re-tell their stories. Speaking of fantasy, you can now write stories which take place in Oz, but make sure it doesn't have ruby slippers as that's a detail from the movie, which is still under copyright.

14 years is already too long.

Also, IP is not real. It is a term we should avoid. Copyright and trademark have nothing to do with each other.