Boing Boing points to Max Barry's latest on copyright insanity. Barry, of course, is the author of the wacky and cool Jennifer Government.

I’d make copyright a flat ten years. You come up with a novel, a song, a movie, whatever: you have ten years to make a buck out of it. After that, anyone can make copies, or create spin-offs, or produce the movie version, or whatever. Now that would be an incentive. You’d see all kinds of new art, both during the copyright period, as artists rush to make the most of their creation, and after, when everybody else can build on what they’ve done and make something new. You’d see much cheaper versions of books and movies that were a decade old. You wouldn’t have the descendants of some writer refusing to allow new media featuring the Daleks, or Tintin, or whatever. And artists with massive hits would be merely rich, not super-rich.

So I'm compelled to respond. First of all, since Barry is a full-time writer, I'm assuming he has the luxury of being able to churn out books in enough time to do something with them in ten years' time. My first novel took five years. Why? Because I have a day job. So now I have the added pressure, in Barry's world, of spending the next ten years not only working on my next book (which took three years, incidentally) and promoting the shit out of my first book. So now, in addition to my day job, my second book takes longer to create because I'm trying to eek out as much from my first book as possible. Artists rushing sounds great if you have that luxury, but a lot of the artists I know have, you know, other shit on their plate.

And what the hell's wrong with being super-rich anyway?

Personally, here's my take on copyright control. They're my characters. It's my story. I labored to bring it forth. Why should I be compelled to ever give up my rights? Why shouldn't my kids, lazy fuckers that they no doubt will someday be, be able to make a buck off of what I've done, assuming there are bucks to be made? If you want to make me give up the rights to my stuff after any amount of time, then you can blow me.

Now.

That being said, bear in mind that you can download my first book from this site for free. My poetry chapbook is available as well. For free. My audiobook files (as quick as I can make them) are available over Gnutella. For free. I've got an entire website devoted to a sci-fi universe that people can come play in all they want (which is in dire need of updating, I know, I know). I'm a firm believer in the Creative Commons movement.

So why am I so against the idea of a compulsory move of items to the public domain? I just don't like being forced to do anything. If you give me the choice, I'll probably just go ahead and do it. Of course. I'm writing to be read, of course. I'm sure as hell not doing this for my health. And let's face it, as far as getting rich? Writing is the last avenue I'd follow if my goal was to get rich. Just don't put a gun to my head and make me give up my rights, because I'll do my best to gnaw your goddamn arm off.

Here's what I don't understand. Why aren't we trying to make everybody happy? Lessig's idea of a renewable copyright I think is very feasible and very reasonable. (I can't seem to find the article I originally read it in, though a lot of the ideas I found in a transcript here–he's talked about it all over the place.) The gist is that you get a copyright for a certain amount of time. After that amount of time, then you pay to renew. It's not an exhorbitant sum–I think $50 is the number he threw out–but you plonk that down and you're good for another five years.

Why is this a good idea? Because it's either that, or you're going to have Disney pushing the whole of copyright coverage until the heat death of the universe just to save their own bits of IP. Disney can pay $50 for Mickey, $50 for Goofy, etc etc ad infinitum if they so desire. I can, if I so desire, pay $50 for each of my titles and keep extending them as much as I want. However, I think Lessig is right when he says that the majority of works will simply pass into the public domain. So those who want to can, and those who want to hold onto them can do that too. Everybody's happy.

(I see in my Googling for the original article that Greplaw mentions that such a thing would punish the poor. Punish the poor? $10 a year is punishing the poor? I'm sorry, if you can't fork over $10 a year to re-register your stuff, then I've got no sympathy. It cost me $20 each to register my screenplays with the WGA! THE WGA HATES THE POOR. Please.)

If we go with Lessig's idea, who gets hurt? The corporations are happy because they get to probably save money on lobbyists and instead just fork over a few thousand bucks to re-register every X years. They get to keep their shit. And why not? It's their shit. They paid for it, let them keep it. Can you convince me that world culture is going to be injured because you can't use Mickey Mouse in your artistic project? It's Mickey Fucking Mouse, for God's sake. And let's face it–since when has owning the copyright or trademark kept them bulletproof anyway? We know for a fact that those who cling to their intellectual property the hardest are going to lose the most. Why? Because all of Disney's hoohah couldn't prevent this. All of the MPAA's street cameras and attacks on Bit Torrent have done…what? I've heard that now we have an even better version of Episode III on Usenet with no timecode and of DVD quality. Unfortunately, I hear that the film is the same piece of shit that's tearing up the box office, so…who cares?

So corporations lose nothing. They gain (a little) peace of mind and can continue their downward slide into obscurity, tilting at windmills the whole way.

And what do we lose? Well, like I said, oh well, we might have to–shudder–come up with our own ideas instead of appropriating someone else's. Who fucking cares if you can't write a story with Daleks in it? Create your own killer robot race. Do an homage if you must. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai begat John Sturges' Magnificent Seven begat Pixar's Bug's Life and countless others. It's not that difficult, people.

Ah, but here comes the argument that's always thrown at me.

"What about Shakespeare?" you ask. "If Shakespeare's heirs could still make money off of it, we wouldn't have Shakespeare."

Well, to me, this first makes the assumption that the reason we think Shakespeare rocks so much ass is because he's free. Which, if the guy was alive, would probably depress him more than the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow left him for that dude from Coldplay. Secondly, this makes Hamlet into nothing more than Mickey Mouse or a Dalek. Besides, I find it extremely pessimistic to assume that if Shakespeare were so tied up to work with/buy/read/perform, that no other writer would have stepped up to take his place. We would have other Shakespeares. But why?

Well, we need to stop the whining. Right now, the assumption is that if the IP is tied up, that hurts the public. What the fuck is that about? If an intellectual property is so tied up that it is prohibitive to work with it, we should stop fucking whining about it and make our own. Quit fucking whining about intellectual property obstacles and go around them. If people spent half as much time creating something new as they did whining about the toys that they don't get to play with because somebody else owns them, then that, my friends, would be something exciting to see. Imagine a world where people just churned out new shit all the time instead of bitching and moaning that they can't remake Steamboat Willie. Then we could all go spend our money on the new, good shit instead of the stuff that's hard to work with. And then–when the corporations see that they're losing money because they're clinging too tightly to their shit–they will either relax or die. It's just that simple.

Let the people who cling to their IP do so in their little walled cities and let the rest of us have a party outside, scaring the shit out of them because we're so loud and having such a great time. I don't see why we can't have our cake and Edith too, is all I'm saying. Barry can choose to let whoever publishes his works whenever and I can do the same for mine. And Disney can continue pissing on Walt's grave. And everybody's happy. Except maybe Walt. But, still, is that so hard a concept?