Ok Baron. (Hey, it's ironic your nick considering your vehment opposition to the practice of feudalism.
)
So basically instead of coming up with wacked out methods of compensaiton, or reinventing our whole economic system, and in the process causing more serious problems then we are fixing, the solution is simple.
Eliminate the practice of selling the actual copyright of any material. This includes any sort of backdoor methods such as performance contracts or the like. The current system where the corporations act as owner
and distributor of the product must cease. The Author of the material must own the rights to the product and the corporations will be their employees contracted for the purpose of marketing and distribution, instead of the artist being the employee (slave really) of the corporation.
Limit the length of the copyright of any sort of information to something more reasonable and realistic. This would vary depending on the type of material. Longer for books, shorter for software, music and movies somewhere in the middle.
During the term of the copyright the artist would control the distribution and sale of the material and receive whatever compensation for it that can be determined through the natural market process of supply and demand. They would likely need to contract with various distributors or marketers, all of whom should receive compensation for their services from the author, but the author/artist would retain the copyrights to it.
Any aunathorized duplication of the material during the copyright period would have stiff penalties. Of course if the author/artist decides to do so he can waive some or all of those penalties, but he shuld retain the right to have them enforced as strictly as they wish, including financial and possible criminal proceedings, depending on the type and severity of the incident. This would NOT be limited to copies made and distributed for profit but extend also to copies made to avoid payment for the material, unless the author decides to allow such copies to be made.
Once the copyright period ends the material becomes public domain and can be freely copied and distributed by anyone. At that point anyone that can succesfully market the product in such a way that there is a demand for it will be entitled to the compensation with no requirement to pay the orignal author.
I see two problems with this idea.
One, what happens on the death of the author? Does the product become public domain or can the copyright be transfered to his heirs until the term expires?
Secondly, what about an author who writes a book and then wants to use the same characters in a later book? Does the copyright on those characters run from the Last book in the series or the first? Can any joe blow go off and start writing Honor Harrington books once the term expires on the original book, even thogh the author is still producing novels with her in it?
Geoschmo
[ July 16, 2003, 16:10: Message edited by: geoschmo ]