Copyright activation
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The point of copyright activation occurs when the duration of copyright begins to pass. This is described as "starting the stopwatch".
For example, say that copyright is activated when the work is commercially exploited and that the duration of copyright is five years. If a work is commercially exploited a year and a month after creation, then it is protected by copyright for six years and one month.
Currently, activation occurs at the moment of creation.
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Summary
Not all works begin to return profit from the moment of creation (screenplays, etc), so a shortened copyright duration makes it harder to exploit these works meaning that the incentive to create them is reduced. While it may be possible to categorise works and apply a different duration to them, it may be more desirable to activate copyright (or "start the stopwatch" for copyright duration) at a later point. Possible points to activate copyright are when the work is first commercially exploited or when the work is first published.
A consequence of this is that copyright will never expire for works that are never activated; this may be an advantage or a disadvantage. One solution could be to set a limit after which inactivated works are put into the public domain, perhaps 25 years.
The primary disadvantage to delaying activation is that it extends copyright, lengthening the time until a work enters the public domain. Furthermore, this could cause needless complication of copyright and ambiguity as to the actual duration of copyright, depending on how commercial exploitation or publication is recorded.
Impact on Copyleft and Free Software
Not activating copyright until after commercial exploitation is an inherit and automatic protection for those who make their work available for free or under a copyleft mechanism, for instance creators of free software or users of the Creative Commons licenses. This is because it would prevent commercial exploitation by others for a longer period.
On the other hand, the selling of free software (and conceivably, some other copylefted works) is considered acceptable; thus free software as it currently exists is not fully protected by activation only after commercial exploitation.
Impact on Privacy
Private works are covered by copyright, but are rarely commercially exploited or published. When they are published copyright is being violated, but there is usually no risk of litigation as no damages would be award due to the low economic value of the works. In some cases when private works do have economic value an extended copyright would dissuade publication without permission, thus protecting the privacy of individuals for a longer period.
On the other hand, privacy matters should not be handled by way of copyright, which intends to reward the creation of work not prevent the publication of it.
Forum topics
- Flexible Copyright, Protecting Copyleft and Privacy (last post: 22 November 2009)
- Start of copyright term
Votes
No votes have been taken on this issue and none are planned.
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