Copyright

[krunky]

Michael:

As a springboard for more discussion I am wondering as to your precise thoughts on copyright laws. What should they protect? How long should they last? How long can they be renewed, and how many times should they be allowed to be renewed? Should the estate of a copyright holder inherit the copyright; and if so, for how long and should it be renewable? Should fictitious persons be allowed to hold copyrights? If so, should there be any difference between the laws for natural versus fictitious persons?

I realize that this came up recently in a more general way. I just wondered if you would address the subject with greater specificity. If you don't have ready or complete answers, I'm even interested in your gut feelings on the subject. Even provisional answers would be interesting.

As a great believer in the public domain as a kind of property belonging to everyone, my general ideas are that copyrights should exist for somewhere in the area of 30-80 years maximum, not be renewable, not be transferable to an estate, and not be held by fictitious persons. I would apply most of this to patent law, except that patents would only be for 20 years maximum and could be owned by a corporation (i.e. a fictitious person).

I note with interest that your ominbus editions with White Wolf were copyrighted in the names of both Michael and Linda Moorcock. Was this done as a limited partnership or because Linda is actually co-author of some of the material in the omnibus editions? If its none of my damn business, that's okay too. :D

[Michael Moorcock]

I've discussed most of this elsewhere but the reason I have Linda as a copyright holder is that if I died tomorrow she would have to pay unearned income tax, which has never seemed fair, since we're very much a family business. It simply protects her. Too many authors have died and left their families in bad shape because of the huge tax the family has had to pay on their income. We now have a company, Multiverse Inc., which tends to cover that problem. I think the current copyright laws are fair enough, but there are problems exemplified by the recent running out of J.M.Barrie's endowment of the Peter Pan royalties to Great Ormond Street. I think if he'd actually given the hospital his copyrights, rather than the earnings from them, he would have done better, but he wasn't to know, I suppose.

[Dean]

"Multiverse Inc."

Hm.

Sounds like a rather large company.

You need a motto. How about: "A million verses served daily."

[Michael Moorcock]

How about 'A million heroes: one author' ? It's funny being a corporation. We did it because we were advised it was the best way of keeping copyrights. They even gave us a special stamp that imprints our official documents. I've used it on books but am not sure what else I can do with it...
That said, I am one of those authors who has put quite a lot of free stuff on the net, mainly through SFRevolution (Breakfast in the Ruins etc.) and Fantastic Metropolis (Engelbrech etc.) but I still would come down on some bastard who made a profit out of what I'd given away free and that's where one of the problems lies. It always has, since the sixties. I gave my stuff to both Dungeons and Dragons and Chaosium and the next thing I knew they were fighting over ownership of something I'd originally let them have for nothing. That's a familiar experience. Hawkwind do a free concert and some bastard sells a bootleg tape of it for their own profit. What's that all about ?