[erenxuna] Create jobs by repealing retroactive copyright

Dear Senator ___________:
Dear Representative __________:

Here is a bold yet simple proposal to CREATE MANY JOBS while upholding the Constitution: Repeal retroactive copyright extensions.  That is, let works created under a certain copyright term become public domain when their original copyright term expires.

This proposed legislation will CREATE MANY JOBS by spurring innovation. It will cause many old works to immediately pass into public domain because their original copyrights have already expired. (Currently they remain under copyright because of retroactive copyright extensions passed after the works were published.)  The economy will kick into high gear as people will now have the freedom to innovate and build upon these many works newly in public domain. The economic effect will be similar to if tremendous new natural resource were to be unearthed. MANY JOBS WILL BE CREATED broadly in many sectors of the economy to support the innovation.

Innovation is always the driving force behind economic growth and CREATING JOBS.  Innovation never takes place in a vacuum: it always builds upon previous work.  This is why the public domain is very important for economic growth, because it provides a base upon which people may freely build.  Because of the retroactive copyright provisions in the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, exactly zero works have passed into the public domain in the past 13 years.  I cannot help but notice that this very roughly coincides with the current economic downturn, though I do not know of any measurements of the actual economic effect of the Act.

As a concrete example of the economic impact of public domain, consider the 2010 Disney film "Alice in Wonderland" directed by Tim Burton.  Based on gross theater receipts, this film had an economic impact of over one billion dollars.  Based on the listed cast and crew, the film provided 1,492 JOBS, from film editors to caterers, plus MORE JOBS indirectly supported by the film, for example, from projectionists to janitors at the movie theater, or the many uncredited employees involved in the marketing or distribution of the film.  All of these jobs existed because Disney could freely build upon Lewis Carroll's book, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", published in 1865 and in public domain.

This example demonstrates how the public domain CREATES JOBS, such as caterers and janitors, in sectors seemingly completely unrelated to copyright or intellectual property.

The Progress Clause of the Constitution (Article 8, Section 8) empowers Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."  This proposed legislation upholds the Constitution:  it does not impede progress.  It will NOT affect works yet to be published (nor will it affect recently published works).  Such works will continue to retain the full copyright term granted by the 1998 CTEA.  As a consequence, it will NOT decrease the incentive for current authors and creators to create works of progress and economic growth.  In fact, under this legislation, many newly copyrightable "derived works" will be built upon the works newly in public domain, and the promise of a very long revenue stream of royalties (up to 120 years under CTEA) will spur authors, publishers, and other innovators to produce and market such derived works.  This will CREATE MANY JOBS.

The purpose of copyright, as explicitly stated in the Constitution, is to promote progress.  Retroactive copyright extension does not promote progress: for example, retroactive copyright extension cannot cause an author to retroactively create more works.  That would require time travel!  In fact, for many of the beneficiaries of retroactive extension, the original author may be long since dead!  Politically, the motivation for retroactive copyright has been to protect the royalty revenue stream being paid to an estate or corporation.  Such protectionism is not the purpose of copyright in the Constitution.  In fact, such protectionism impedes CREATING MANY JOBS by preventing works from becoming public domain and allowing innovators to build upon them.  In economic terminology, such protectionism causes a deadweight loss to the economy due to monopoly control over production of derived works.

Despite the strong argument that the beneficiaries of retroactive extension did not deserve the revenues from retroactive extension in the first place (they only deserve the copyright that existed when the work was originally published, because that copyright provided sufficient incentive for the original author to publish), these parties who stand to lose financially from repealing retroactive copyright may complain very loudly (and may be politically influential).  For example, they may complain that they have already made business decisions based on the expected revenue stream from the retroactive extension.  In order to appease these parties, I propose a limited-time tax credit to partially cover the documented expected loss in retroactive royalties caused by this legislation.  The tax credit will ultimately be offset by the tax revenues from the increased economic output, the MANY JOBS CREATED, by this legislation.