The Massachusetts Pirate Party is debating the term of copyright in order to form a policy on it. The “term” of copyright refers to the length of time for which a copyright is in effect. Currently it can get up as high as centuries, and is tending towards infinity. We think it is spiraling out of control, and we want to limit the term of copyright. But for exactly how long? One proposal is 14 years, and another is 5 years. A compromise proposal would split the difference between these two ideas. Please weigh in with your opinions by leaving a comment. The Pirate Party already has a great policy about fair use, public domain and other aspects of copyright. This debate should be limited in scope to simply the length of time.
The Statute of Anne is regarded as the first copyright statute in Great Britain. In the years after the invention of the printing press, bibles and official documents were printed. Dissent was also printed, and there were disputes that content had been stolen from the original author. So a copyright law was developed. The original author had the sole right to publish the book for 14 years. (Old books were grandfathered in with 21 years.) It could be extended for 14 more years, but only by the original author, and only if they were alive at the end of the first copyright term. (Incidentally, the author was understood to be an individual rather than a corporation.) Although this was created in England under Queen Anne, a similar statute was later adopted in the U.S. after independence.
The Swedish Pirate Party has called for a five year term of copyright. This is understandable because the world has sped up a lot with the Internet and electronic media. Most media don’t require a printing press or a centralized office to create them any more. A YouTube video from five years ago now seems like ancient history. If fourteen years was an appropriate length of copyright in the 1700s, then why not 5 years in the 21st century?
A possible compromise position might be to adopt a 14 year term of copyright for physical media such as a printed book, a DVD or a game cartridge. But a 5 year term of copyright for purely electronic media such as downloads and streaming media. The rationale is that the production costs are greater for traditional physical media, and the audience is slower. Some media producers might want to avoid online media to get a longer term of copyright, but this would put them at a serious competitive disadvantage. Under this compromise proposal, a movie like Avatar would be protected for five years from both online and physical use. After five years, it would be protected from only physical use. Anyone could download it or share it freely on the Internet, and you could even charge money for it. However you couldn’t sell a DVD or make a printed book about it until the 14 year term had expired.