When copyright term-extension meets infinite life-extension

Madcap science fiction paragon Paul Di Filippo's column in the latest Fantasy and Science Fiction takes the form of a short story demonstrating a new (to me) potential consequence of lifetime-based copyrights, human longevity, and the idea that copyrights should be extended to benefit a creator's descendants.

By all rights, Rajah Robot and Poxy Toff belonged to me, as Arden Pence's only relative! But the immutable laws of ownership and copyright—unchanged since the distant twenty-first century, thanks to the Disney corporation and pals: life plus seventy years!—insured that Rajah and Poxy would remain in my father's negligent and uncaring hands. How very unfair!

My father had certainly derived enough income from them already, enough to sustain him for the rest of his immortal years, and plainly he had no more interest in crafting exciting new adventures for his widely beloved characters. I, however, had great ideas about how to revive the franchise, and place it once again at the top of the entertainment pyramid. A complete reboot, employing the writerly skills I had inherited from Dad, but had never been able to utilize. Rajah Robot would no longer have access to multiple bodies, you see, while little Poxy Toff would have to grow up at last into attractive womanhood. As for Flora Aurora and Badfinger Bill—

But it pained me even to contemplate these thrilling changes. I would never get to initiate them, so long as the stubborn and passive old man lived. He was an insurmountable roadblock to my own happy future, and to the potential new enjoyment of billions of eager percipients.

And so I saw no other recourse than to commit a despicable patricide.

Plumage from Pegasus (Thanks, Paul!)

(Image: The secret of Longevity!, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from tom-margie's photostream)

• [tnmc]

  Why not create new characters loosely based on the originals?  It’s not entirely satisfactory, but then this kid could write!

  • [retepslluerb]

    Yeah. Just look at Kurt Busiek’s Astro City and Alan Moore’s take on Supreme.

  • [Dan Huby]

    Rajah Robot, Poxy Toff, Flora Aurora and Badfinger Bill?Maybe this is one franchise that is better off without the reboot ;)

• [Frederik]

  Perhaps you should read the whole story rather then just the opening paragraph…

• [That_Anonymous_Coward]

  You can tell its Sci-Fi… he managed to make enough money to survive on. 
  This implies the gatekeepers were gone, we all know their zombie heads will keep running the corps for a long time.

• [Chentzilla]

  Hey, I’ve once invented something similar to Rajah Robot: http://mjr-blayne.livejournal.com/93463.html

• [HeartlessMachine]

  Am I supposed to feel bad for this character, because he wants to write stories about some very well-known characters someone else invented, rather than create his own characters?  Is this guy supposed to represent a good reason to rewrite copyright laws?  As a creator of things, I find this whole idea absurd.

  • [digi_owl]

    Quite a few of the  Disney classics came from retelling older stories since gone public domain. Humanity has long told and retold stories, with likely telephone style outcomes.

  • [Sagodjur]

     As a fellow creator of things, I’m surprised you’re so blind so as to not see how derivative everything is, including the things you create. You don’t live in a cultural vacuum. Your ideas come from somewhere – pre-existing culture, experiences, other people, etc. Even the language you use is learned from others. Unless you’re creating a new language to write stories in (which has also been done before), you’re not really ever coming up with anything “new” per se.

    Star Wars is a great example. It’s World War II dogfights in space with samurai laser sword fights and medieval dark knights and old west style gunslingers and kitschy Buck Rogers space opera adventures and mythic hero journeys into the underworld. The only “originality” is in how you mix the elements together.

  • [thunderhammer]

    You won’t feel that way after you’ve read my Harry Potter fanfiction.

• [mcs212]

  Funny enough, the concept that human imagination is limited, resulting in a finite amount of original ideas, and the consequences of extending copyrights was addressed in another short story, “Melancholy Elephants.”

  http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html

  • [digi_owl]

    A classic that should be handed to any judge that ever is to decide on a copyright issue.

• [Fazal Majid]

  What if the father had himself cryogenized? He wouldn’t be legally dead and thus copyright would still be active.

  • [digi_owl]

    Please, do not give those corporations any ideas!

  • [Vickie Kostecki]

    Read Robert Sawyer’s Mindscan for an interesting take on this very subject. Wealthy woman has herself downloaded into a robotic body, and her son will never come into his inheritance. Lulz ensue.

• [Benhamish Allen]

  One day, when we have achieved immortality via Kurzweil machines we will need to recontemplate this “copyright” but that day is not today. It is good to think of these things before hand though…

  I don’t normally call myself an extremist but it does seem that when it comes to copyright there are only two options, perpetual or none. The interesting thing is that universal access is required in both cases but a new non-anonymous network would be required to institute the former.

• [jhertzli]

  I have a related question: Should we change the term of Supreme Court justices from life to something limited (e.g., three score years and ten)?