If we are successful in substantially reducing copyright term, we will have a sudden removal of restrictions on the use of works unprecedented in scale. We have a one-time opportunity to decide whether we should immediately allow new copyright restrictions on derivatives of these works. Few people seem to be asking whether we should allow such restrictions, and when the question is asked, the response tends to be a firm yes, but I don't think there is a sound reason for this.

I think we all agree that there is no absolute moral right to impose copyright restrictions, so any suggestion that people have an absolute moral right to impose copyright restrictions on derivatives of recently freed works seems dead in the water to me.

Nor can I see a moral reason that if we are to allow the imposition of copyright restrictions on works that have been free for a while, then we must allow the imposition of copyright restrictions on derivatives of recently freed works. Surely, if copyright is not a moral right, but rather a societal arrangement intended to further the public good, then we can decide not to allow the imposition of copyright restrictions in cases where such restrictions would be less likely to further the public good.

I think allowing copyright restrictions on derivatives of recently freed works is less likely to further the public good than allowing copyright restrictions on derivatives of works that have been free for a while. For copyright to further the public good, it must produce works that fill a niche that would not have otherwise been filled, and the only way to determine whether such free works would have been produced without copyright is to allow some time for that to happen.

If a niche is filled by a copyright restricted work when it could have been filled by a free work, then I believe the existence of the copyright restricted work is likely to harm the development of a free work that could have filled that niche and/or the utility of any such free work if it is developed. If a copyright restricted work fills a niche, then many people may take this quick-fix option, including those who might have otherwise helped in the development of a free work to fill that niche which would have resulted in greater public good in the long run. Even if the development of free works were not harmed, by drawing away some of the potential user base of free works, copyright restricted works may marginalise the users of free works, and thereby reduce the utility of the free works. Therefore I think there are good economic reasons for allowing time for the development of new free derivatives before letting people place copyright restrictions on derivatives of freed works.

Further, I don't think it would be too difficult to do this. We could simply consider any works on which copyright restrictions have recently expired to be available for use under the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0 for, say 10 years, before becoming 'public domain' (meaning people can place copyright restrictions on derivatives of them). The CC BY-SA 3.0 is already an international success in allowing the free development and use of derivative works without allowing the imposition of copyright restrictions on derivative works.

What I'm saying is give free a chance. Specifically, give it a 10 year head start. Allow copyright restrictions on commercial use in general, but with a 10 year moratorium before such restrictions can be placed on derivatives of freed works.

I'd like to add too, while I don't have a problem with shortening the legal right for me to impose restrictions on the use of my work (since I don't see this as a moral right), I think I would feel a bit ripped off if someone else imposed restrictions on the use of derivatives of my work.

In light of the arguments in my previous post, can someone argue why it would be economically beneficial to allow other people to impose restrictions on derivatives of my recent work, and/or why it would be impractical to not allow other people to impose restrictions on derivatives of my recent work?

Didn't you get to enjoy the copyright term yourself for your own work, that might itself be derivative in some way?
If you released your content under something such as a Creative Commons licence that allows derivatives, you still got to enjoy the copyright period in the way you want. Especially if you stipulate derivative works have to be released under a similar licence.

Removing copyright restrictions removes copyleft restrictions as well. You can't get annoyed at someone making profitable, copyprotected content from yours after the copyright has expired; you no longer own it.
Your content is still free and others are still free to make content derived from that.

Your argument here seems to be that other people wouldn't be allowed to do something (place copyright restrictions on derivatives of my work) when I have done something equivalent (place copyright restrictions on derivatives of other people's work). The comparison holds only if you ignore the time frames. I would have had to wait a certain length of time before placing restrictions on derivatives of other people's work, and other people would be allowed to place restrictions on derivatives of my work once they've waited the same length of time. By much the same reasoning, I could argue against copyright. i.e. If you copyright a derivative of a work, I could say "Didn't you get to enjoy unrestricted use of the original work for yourself?"

If what I want is to have my work and derivatives of it unrestricted, then copyright diminishes this. Without copyright, I would be able to enjoy unrestricted use of derivatives of my work regardless of when they were published. With copyright, I can only expect to enjoy unrestricted use of derivatives of my work if they are published during the copyright term. Copyright law takes away my right to enjoy unrestricted use of derivatives of my work published after the copyright term.

This argument only make sense if you start from the premise that copyright is a moral right, and therefore that not having a legal right to impose restrictions on the use of a work can only be justified on the basis of someone else's moral right to impose restrictions on the use of a work. For people who instead believe they have a right to have their work and derivatives of it unrestricted, there would be a reason to be annoyed if someone placed restrictions on derivatives of their work.

I'm concerned about problems like 'embrace, extend and extinguish'.

What problem? If the copyright has expired on something, it has expired. If Peter Pan was to be freed, as he kind of has in the U.S. in a broken fashion, why can't someone who writes a Peter Pan book have it published, attributed, and protected? The commercial release doesn't stop other people writing Peter Pan books; all it does is add to the growing collection of Peter Pan books. It adds rather than taking away.
A CC licence has little effect, other than allowing the owner to retain attribution and moral rights. A CC licence, being a copyright imposed on the work, is still more restrictive than letting the copyright (whatever the terms of the original distribution licence was) lapse. Restricting commercial licensing on derivatives restricts commercial interest which is of no benefit to anyone, least of all pirates who consume commercially produced content.

By unrestricted, you actually mean fitting with your restrictions and expectations. Something that can only be achieved by the work being attributed to you as the owner and stipulating the conditions it and derivatives have to comply by.

Starting from the assumption that people have a moral right to impose copyright restrictions, then yes, we would want the opportunity to impose copyright restrictions ASAP, which would be as soon as previous restrictions had expired. If we place importance in freedom from restrictions, though, then there's no particular reason to rush to allow new restrictions, we'd want to ask whether there'd be a nett benefit in allowing new restrictions immediately.

Two similar works may compete for the same audience. If there is a restricted derived work made from something, then this may reduce the likely audience for an unrestricted work, and thereby reduce the chance that someone decides to make one.

I'm thinking mainly of software, though, useful works for which free derivatives might well be developed, that undergo continual development, and for which usefulness depends on context (user base, documents, etc.). This is where 'embrace, extend and extinguish' is most relevant, I think.

BTW, there are a variety of CC licences with different terms. I'm thinking of the CC BY-SA.

I am thinking of unrestricted as being what the situation would be like without copyright law--i.e. freedom to use a work and its derivatives. Given that we do have copyright law, the only way this can be achieved is to prevent restrictions with 'restrictions'--i.e. you are 'restricted' from imposing restrictions. However this is certainly not the only possible way freedom from restrictions could be achieved--the other way would be to abolish copyright.

How would abolishing copyright improve freedom? Works are even riper for commercial plundering without reward, respect, or even acknowledgement of the original creator. The freedom of some software relies on copyright to protect it's core development.
The difference being the ability for anyone and everyone to copy and sell knock-offs. Which is actually worse as commercial development is hobbled by the popularity of it's own products and people will go for the commercial plundering instead of giving freedom a chance.

You know, like how people choose to pirate proprietary software, claiming it as being free (as in beer) instead of embracing software that is truly free (as in speech).

My feeling is that the GPL's source disclosure requirement is probably largely unnecessary (assuming that's what talking about). Without the ability to impose restrictions on copying, I don't think there'd be much point in withholding the source. Withholding the source means others can't contribute to development, so development costs aren't shared, but if restrictions can't be imposed on use of the works, then the benefits of development are shared, so withholding the source would make no financial sense. RedHat, Novell, Intel, and IBM stand to benefit from GNU/Linux succeeding because they offer associated products and services, so they contribute to development for this reason. Even if they could withhold the source, it would make no sense for any of these companies to prevent the others from contributing to development.

Abolishing copyright would be an issue for hosted software like Affero though, since hosted software can be provided as a service without being distributed. But I think there's some objection in the pirate movement to the suggestion that freedom means requiring people to hand over source code.

Regarding acknowledgement of the author, I don't think it would generally be very restrictive to require this, so I don't have much issue with it.

While GPL is a prominent example, it isn't the source code component that I'm thinking of. An important part of the GPL is derivatives must be released under the GPL. It's essential to the GNU project, more than the release of source code which is a by-product.
The 'source' can be released for commercial works as well. Pitchshifter put the samples used in their 1998 album, http://www.pichshifter.com, on the CD and encouraged others to do the same. It's an incentive to purchase their album (I don't know if they did the same for other releases) and fostering creation. Creation more creative than ripping samples from Blackeyed Peas singles. (For the record, I support fair use. I don't feel fair use is ridding on the coat-tails of someone else's commercial success).

The freedom you talk of can be created, fostered, and protected by copyright. Social freedom and commerce can actually compliment each other.
A (poor)* example is Steam on Linux. Because of Valve's involvement there has been vast improvements in nVidea's closed-source drivers and ATI are slowly coming to the party (they recently updated their legacy driver to support Ubuntu level of development). And that's just a side effect of the commercial quality games.

Ultimately, it's a social issue. I don't see retrospective shortening of copyright to be practical or a realistic goal. A shorter term for new works will achieve a much more positive result as developers from the commercial side of the fence can build products and communities that work in that framework.
Simply expiring content built under the current duration will be resisted to the end and will not be constructive for cultural development. Stopping perpetual copyright and balancing the term is a noble goal that can be realised with support of both society and large factions of the industry.
Everyone does better when everyone does better.


*I'm not completely satisfied with the way Valve are running and maintaining Steam, but that's a technical issue.

I've had this discussion before. If the whole point of 'copyleft' is requiring that derivative works not be restricted by 'copyright' then that becomes unnecessary (as well as impossible) in exactly the same measure that copyright ceases to exist.

If the government says that both of us can't place restrictions on copying then I can't impose a copyright license telling you that you're not allowed to restrict copying of my work, but it doesn't matter because you no longer have copyright telling you that you can.

Richard Stallman would argue that source disclosure is just as important though, and that would go away without copyright. Things would fall into a more BSD-like situation. I don't think that's so bad anyhow though. BSD as an open source codebase has not ceased to exist just because people can take from it and make non-free, non-open derivatives.