The problem with varying copyright terms by medium is that it gets confusing for the average person, however I (and a majority of the PPUK) agree with you about copyright being used for reasons other than purely financial. This is one of the reasons for the debate about when the 5+5 copyright term should start. The preveilling opinion (though not yet policy) seems to be from first commercial use of your works, but there are still problems to be solved around this.
regards, Vijay 2009/10/8 Steve Jolly <[email protected]> > 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 > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ >
