That, after a sufficient elapse of time, is exactly the case, and it’s hardly an argument original to Lessig or me or anyone else living today. It’s the underpinning of the limited nature of copyright, why it was limited, why it is limited, and why it should be limited, in the first place.

In fact, that seems to be the case, measured in several different ways, at about life+35. Life+50 is gravy, and takes care of a few outlier cases. Life + anything more than 50 is long past the point of diminishing returns.

�If you make the term ten billion years, dead authors can�t be induced to create more.� I�m not sure you�re aware of this, but it is generally possible to calculate the present value of the inflows from an investment based on…

And those calculations show that the incremental benefit of the addtional 20 years between life+50 and life+70 is negligible, even at a generous — for “works” — discount of “only” 10%.

…the longer the investment, the higher the present value. This is what I was referring to by y+1 > y. The present value of a given copyright of term t is necessarily less than or equal, ceteris paribus, to the present value of a given copyright of term t+1. You can cash in on that copyright (today!) and receive the additional royalties, even though they won�t be earned until well after you�re dead.

In which case, there should already be evidence that this is happening.

For any two countries, otherwise similar in culture, economic condition, educational achievement, etc., differing ONLY in the term of copyright, there should be measurable differences already observed in the earning of living authors.

For any given country which has extended their term, there should be measurable differences already observed in the earning of living authors as measured before and after the term extension, adjusted for other diachronous changes, like inflation.

So, you have a cute hypothesis, expressable in an equation.

Until someone can dig up some FACTS, some data, some measurements, that tend towards establishing the validity of the equation, your hypothesis is more akin to religious dogma than it is to scientific theory.

Additional royalties equals additional incentive.

Only if those theoretical additional royalties are, IN FACT, being accrued to the author, and only to the extent that money is the incentive for creation in the first place.

I take it you now want to argue that the cost of that additional incentive isn�t worth it, but given how long it�s taken to get this far, I�m not sure it�s worth the effort.

“Works”, at least literary ones, lose at least 65-70% of their value by being “driven off the lot”, and about 5% annually thereafter. The difference between the value of a fifty-year posthumous term and a seventy-year one, EVEN IF ACTUALLY BEING REALIZED, is on the order of a single percentage point AT MOST. “At most” because copyright has a very broad scope, and most “works” in which copyright subsists has no commercial value at all, at any point in their life cycle.

I would like some CONCRETE examples of where authors have leveraged this difference to increase their incomes while still alive.

Anyone? You don’t seem to have any.

I am not arguing that A PARTICULAR copyright in respect of A PARTICULAR work could have “the same or less value during extended term”. I am asking (a) where is the evidence that extended POSTHUMOUS copyright is worth MORE to the AUTHOR while he or she is STILL ALIVE; and (b) where is the evidence that the extended copyright IN GENERAL — IN ALL WORKS, WHETHER BEING ECONOMICALLY USED OR NOT — results in a NET ECONOMIC BENEFIT TO THE SOCIETY AND ECONOMY AS A WHOLE, rather than being a net economic burden or neutral.

Are you being disengenuous, or thick?

You are only looking at the equation from the perspective of the copyright owner. Yes, an extended term of copyright in a work which is still “owned” in that it has an active owner who is AWARE that he or she is the owner, in respect of a work which is commerically viable between 50 and 70 years after the author’s death — which works out to roughly 80 to 100 years after a work’s publication, on an average — that extended term should result in additional economic rent to the owner of copyright in that post-extension period.

(It can’t result in anything to the author, WHO IS BY DEFINITION DEAD! Seriously! Trust me on this one! In the post-mortem copyright countdown period, you are just as dead at life+1 minute as your are life+5 billion years. Dead. It’s forever. A posthumous copyright extension can NEVER benefit a dead person. Dead. Defunct. An ex-author. Deceased. Shuffled off. Bought the farm. Downsized. DEAD.)

HOWEVER, regarding the benefit to the overall economy from this economic rent to the VERY SMALL (16%) proportion of first-generation post-author copyright owners who are even still alive after 50 years, let alone aware that they own a copyright, in respect of the VERY SMALL (less than 1% of PUBLISHED works — let alone unpublished and ephemeral ones) — class of works which still have commercial viability after 50 years… is that benefit to the overall economy, via those owners, LARGER than the burden and costs as against everyone else in society?

Is it a net benefit or a net burden?

THIS IS WHAT THE COPYRIGHT EXTENDERS HAVE NEVER BOTHERED DEMONSTRATING.

Largely because, in the US and EU, politicians drop their pants and take whatever Big Copyright gives them. (Usually large cheques and a dirty ass.)

Whatever your evidence is, either it defies the normal rules of how royalties work or it doesn�t say what you claim it does. If just a single work makes a single penny in years t+1 or later, then y+n (where n = $0.01) > y.

And if just a single work is not re-used commercially because the putative re-user cannot obtain the clearance that he would automatically have, in the 50- to 70-year post-mortem period, but for the same copyright extension that gave an owner a penny; AND if that commercial re-use would have generated $0.01 worth of economic benefit to the re-user if his re-use had been legally permitted to proceed, THEN THE NET BENEFIT OF THE COPYRIGHT EXTENSION IS ZERO.

If the copyright extension suppresses as much economic rent as it protects, the net benefit is ZERO.

If the copyright extension suppresses more economic rent than it protects, the net benefit is NEGATIVE.

Get it?

The copyright-term fetishists have yet to show that the tem extension is a NET BENEFIT to the economy.

You haven’t shown it. You can’t dig up an example of where anyone has shown it, or you won’t. You have equations and a fervent religious belief.

BUT WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE?

The average still-viable post-fifty-years work has to be worth 99 times the value that a stranger, if legally permitted to, could realize from the re-use of the average abandoned or orphaned work.

And that’s just fifty years after PUBLICATION, let alone after the author’s death.

If a third party, or a set of third parties, can, in respect of a work or set of works which were abandoned by their putative copyright owners, realizes as much economic rent as one still-viable, still-actively-owne work, then the net benefit to society from the term extension is ZERO.

If those third parties can realize just one dollar per work used, then the 99-dollar value of the still-owned, still-viable work IS LESS THAN THE VALUE OF HAVING THE REST OF THE WORKS CREATED AT THE SAME TIME FALL INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

What am I missinng?

I’m glad you are satisfied, but don’t pretend it’s anything other than what it is: religious belief. It may seem obvious to you, but in the same way that it seemed obvious to the Babylonians that the sun revolved around the earth.

What is “obvious” to you is simply NOT supported by any facts that I have ever seen adduced anywhere, and I’ve been looking for the buggers. And like I say, my own research, using objective and independent data from the national library here, has shown no evidence to support the supposedly self-evident proposition that “y+1 �> y” y+1 =, at best, y, at worst, Branko, I agree with you. Too often in this field, instead of concluding �That C&D letter is full of crap,� or �X v. Y is wrongly decided,� people conclude �See? This is why the Copyright Act should be repealed.� A little moderation goes a long way.

Extending the term of copyright every time Mickey Mouse is about to do what pre-Mickey Mouse works have done, see their copyrights expire, is NOT moderation. It is the copyright extremism.

I do not see “Hey, we only too twenty years out of the public domain, when the Congressmen we bought were willing to give us a thousand, you should be thankful.” as moderation. This is the bill of goods that the sheep in the US congress and the US public keep getting sold by Mary Bono and Jack Valenti. It’s sad.

No, I am arguing that the factual basis in favour of the latest term extension, the ones before that, the ones to come, and the ones to come after that, is non-existent.

More copyright != more creative endeavours.

Branko, I agree with you. Too often in this field, instead of concluding “That C&D letter is full of crap,” or “X v. Y is wrongly decided,” people conclude “See? This is why the Copyright Act should be repealed.” A little moderation goes a long way.