Barry Eisler: 25 Years of Copyright Would Be More than Enough

Photo: Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler

Over at techdirt.com, best-selling author and former intellectual property lawyer Barry Eisler is talking about Copyright, Piracy And Why SOPA/PIPA Are ‘Extremely Disturbing’.

Copyright terms have grown to be over a century. No reasonable person can claim that, with a term of less than a century, artists wouldn’t be adequately incentivized to create. So current copyright terms are clearly too long from the standpoint of what’s best for society overall. Personally, I think a twenty-five year term would be more than enough. Anyone who claims he wouldn’t bother creating if he could only commercially exploit his creation for a quarter century wasn’t going to create anything worthwhile anyway.

If you are at all interested in this stuff, you really should go read it right away!