How Long Should the Copyright Term Be?

By Jonathan Bailey • Aug 30th, 2006 • Category: Articles, Legal Issues

I’ve been pondering a question with good friends of mine: What is a reasonable length of time for copyright to last?

There seems to be a consensus that the current term, life plus seventy years, is far too long. However, the question of “what is reasonable?” remains largely unanswered.

Several possibilities have been mentioned. Seven years, fourteen years (the original copyright term), twenty-eight years, the life of the author and more.

I’ve kicked this around some in previous entries, but I want to hear what you guys think. Leave a comment and let me know what you think is a reasonable time frame for a copyrighted work to remain as such.

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Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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  • I can think of few reasons, why the term should be longer than the lifetime of the author, but I don't think it should be any shorter than that. The current situation of life + 70 years is ridiculous.
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