Imagine how much better the world would be if the copyright term was shorter and/or if past a certain point, registration (and payment of fee) was needed to renew copyright and use the full term.
Imagine all the incredible fan works that could spark careers and businesses if e.g. the original star wars trilogy were public domain, or how many indie dev studios could get started by riffing on pokemon. But alas, fans of both franchises continue to make works but can't profit from them and need to pray that Disney and Nintendo won't send lawyers after them if they get popular
Fan works of Star Wars have long been as good or better than the official releases. The world would be a much richer place if anyone was free to create whatever they wanted.
I've been imagining even just having legal access to the Spotify (or similar) API to legally stream music, so I could pay the rights holders without having to deal with these annoying interfaces. Can I not have that? I'm even willing to use an sdk with a drm blob if I have to.
DRM is on my no list. I want my operating system to respect my freedoms and privacy.
I'm barely willing to tolerate Steam's default DRM a little. Those are 'just games' and that particular version doesn't try very hard, plus the rest of the package (network effect, servers, and a strongly customer friendly brand) combine to balance out the negatives. I'm generally hopeful that as things become classic Steam will either continue to maintain the access servers or release versions that work properly without them.
For static media, just give me a reasonable way to pay a reasonable fee for the use license and place to get an unencumbered official high fidelity copy to enjoy.
Paraphrased: 'Copyright infringement indicates a customer service failure.' At least with respect to anyone who'd have considered the purchase in the first place.
I suggest looking at the https://publicdomainreview.org/ for a more comprehensive listings,
and this one for books:
https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026
Imagine how much better the world would be if the copyright term was shorter and/or if past a certain point, registration (and payment of fee) was needed to renew copyright and use the full term.
Imagine all the incredible fan works that could spark careers and businesses if e.g. the original star wars trilogy were public domain, or how many indie dev studios could get started by riffing on pokemon. But alas, fans of both franchises continue to make works but can't profit from them and need to pray that Disney and Nintendo won't send lawyers after them if they get popular
Fan works of Star Wars have long been as good or better than the official releases. The world would be a much richer place if anyone was free to create whatever they wanted.
Who would the fee go to? Copyright should be for the consumer. I should be able to modify the works of my own lifetime.
Imagine simply owning your digital music, video, and game purchases in your own lifetime.
I've been imagining even just having legal access to the Spotify (or similar) API to legally stream music, so I could pay the rights holders without having to deal with these annoying interfaces. Can I not have that? I'm even willing to use an sdk with a drm blob if I have to.
DRM is on my no list. I want my operating system to respect my freedoms and privacy.
I'm barely willing to tolerate Steam's default DRM a little. Those are 'just games' and that particular version doesn't try very hard, plus the rest of the package (network effect, servers, and a strongly customer friendly brand) combine to balance out the negatives. I'm generally hopeful that as things become classic Steam will either continue to maintain the access servers or release versions that work properly without them.
For static media, just give me a reasonable way to pay a reasonable fee for the use license and place to get an unencumbered official high fidelity copy to enjoy.
Paraphrased: 'Copyright infringement indicates a customer service failure.' At least with respect to anyone who'd have considered the purchase in the first place.
“Or” would be terrible. Every work that’s particularly interesting would just be kept in copyright forever by the estate or corporate overlords.
Not if total duration was limited to some small number of re-ups (or the fee ramped up at some greater than linear rate)
Related:
What will enter the public domain in 2026?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46117112
In an equitable world, LLMs would only provide answers from <=1930 data (as of 1 January).
Yet another argument for copyright being far too long.
Well, there's a massive amount of public domain and creative commons content being released all the time; we don't need to wait for copyrighted works.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46319826