David Tomlinson wrote:
Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not
three months, and if three months, why at all.
A year or less strikes me as too little because too many people would
just wait until it was free. 5-10 years seems like a more realistic
minimum in that regard. Mind you, I think that copyright terms would
vary by medium, ideally.
How long does it take for most products to make the vast majority of
their money. There are exceptions, like the Beatles etc.
As has been pointed out repeatedly already, copyright is about wider
issues of control than the right to make money from a work. If you want
to convince people that abolition makes sense, you need to address that
wider issue.
How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an
alternative to a say a book. More than three months ?
A week or two, perhaps? Longer for a really high-volume product, but if
copyright was abolished then you'd see specialist piracy-houses
springing up, competing to be first-to-market with copied products. And
they could take pre-orders in the interim period, reducing sales
beneficial to the author still further.
S
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