Delete comment from: The 1709 Blog
The principal argument used to support extensions of the copyright term says that the oeuvre of a successful author, artist, composer etc is equivalent to another person's pension, and that thus the post mortem element is there to support the author's spouse and offspring after his/her death. The reason for increasing this period from 50 to 70 years in many jurisdictions seems to be that people live longer now than they did when such concepts were brought into the early Berne Conventions. Clearly a spouse who survives for 70 years after the death of the author is a somewhat rare thing, but even assuming this remains a sensible method for calculating a copyright term, why should the same hold where the rights owner is actually not a human being but rather a corporate entity?
Perhaps we should consider changing the law so that an assignment of copyright to anyone other than a natural person (or possibly a trust in favour of the author's immediate family) immediately converts the term to a fixed period (say 50 years) following creation, first publication or making available to the public of the work. Similarly where the first owner of copyright is the employer by virtue of CDPA Section 11 (and its international equivalents), the term would automatically be 50 years from creation. Since something similar already exists with regard to sound recordings (notwithstanding the recent extension to 70 years) and broadcasts, the system could have a certain symmetry which it currently lacks. Also since I suspect that, de facto, most first owners of the copyright in films will actually be companies (even though they may be personal vehicles for the director, producer etc) and so should be swept up by the s 11 provisions, this would add further coherence to the otherwise varied current system of copyright terms. To complete the picture, much the same approach could be applied to performance and database rights.
Clearly there would need to be additional regulations to prevent corporations just buying perpetual exclusive licences instead of assignments, but that would not be too difficult to resolve. Perhaps the key to this particular problem lies in continuing to deny mere licencees any standing to bring civil actions for infringement, or to press for criminal prosecutions for infringement.
Nov 20, 2012, 12:37:52 PM