Indefinitely Renewable Copyright
Indefinitely Renewable Copyright
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无限期可续展版权
DOI：
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
R. Posner
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
W. Landes;R. Posner
在本文中，我们提出的问题，广泛接受的主张，经济效率要求，版权保护的期限是有限的（往往短于目前的期限）。我们表明，正如有形财产的财产权的缺乏会导致效率低下，因此，无形的作品，属于公共领域可能会被低效地使用，因为拥挤的外部性和受损的激励，投资于维护和利用这些作品。虽然无限期更新的系统可能会导致永久版权或非常长的期限，但这是不可能的。我们的实证分析表明，（1）在1883年至1964年期间注册的版权中，只有不到11%的版权在28年的期限结束时得到了更新，尽管更新的成本很小;（2）版权受到重大折旧的影响，预期或平均寿命只有15年左右;及（3）版权的注册及续期对经济诱因有高度反应，因为版权的预期寿命越短，注册及续期费用越高，注册及续期的可能性越低。这反过来又表明，一个比目前略高的注册费和续展费、相对较短的初始期限（20年左右）和无限期续展权（可能受总体最长保护期的限制，比如说100年）的制度，将导致大量受版权保护的作品在创作后不久就返回公有领域。无限期延长的另一个好处是，它将在很大程度上消除寻租问题，这是由于即将到期的有价值的版权的所有者（和用户）将花费真实的资源来试图说服（劝阻）国会延长期限。
In this paper we raise questions concerning the widely accepted proposition that economic efficiency requires that copyright protection be limited in its duration (often shorter than the current term). We show that just as an absence of property rights in tangible property would lead to inefficiencies, so intangible works that fall into the public domain may be inefficiently used because of congestion externalities and impaired incentives to invest in maintaining and exploiting these works. Although a system of indefinite renewals could lead to perpetual copyrights or very long terms, this is unlikely. Our empirical analysis indicates that (1) fewer than 11 percent of the copyrights registered between 1883 and 1964 were renewed at the end of their 28-year term, even though the cost of renewal was small; (2) copyrights are subject to significant depreciation and have an expected or average life of only about 15 years; and (3) copyright registration and renewals are highly responsive to economic incentives for the shorter the expected life of a copyright and the higher the registration and renewal fees, the less likely are both registration and renewal. This in turn suggests that a system of modestly higher registration and renewal fees than at present, a relatively short initial term (20 years or so), and a right of indefinite renewal (possibly subject to an overall maximum term of protection of say 100 years) would cause a large number of copyrighted works to be returned to the public domain quite soon after they were created. A further benefit of indefinite renewal is that it would largely eliminate the rent-seeking problem that is created by the fact that owners (and users) of valuable copyrights that are soon to expire will expend real resources on trying to persuade (dissuade) Congress to extend the term.