TLDR: Yes.

Unfortunately, I can’t find it now, but yesterday or the day before I read an article in which the writer bemoaned the fact that writers enjoy such generous copyright terms. Basically, at least in the UK (and many other countries I think) a writer’s work remains their copyright for the rest of their lives, and then 70 years beyond that. The writer of the article suggested that this stifles creativity, because other people might want to use a writer’s ideas. Therefore, copyright protection should last only a few years before the work becomes public property.

There are several arguments against this idea:

Disincentivisation

One of the attractions of writing is that you get to own the copyright in it, and can therefore earn money from it. If I thought for one moment that the time and effort I put into writing a book could result in that book being public property in a few years’ time, why on earth would I bother? Not only might the book take me three years to write, based on 30 years’ worth of knowledge, but some books are a perpetual earner, and others are a slow burner. Some don’t even start to sell until they are rediscovered after the author’s death. Which brings me on to…

The writer’s estate

One of the penalties of being a writer from their family’s point of view is the amount of time they spend not engaging with the rest of the household. It seems to me that a writer’s spouse and children deserve to continue receiving royalties after the writer has died.

In any case, we don’t say this to other kinds of freelancers or entrepreneurs. We don’t say, “Nice factory you’ve built up there, but it’s unfair that you get to keep it for more than a few years, and even if you do, you can’t pass it on in your will.” Who would bother investing their own time and money in the enterprise if they thought that would be the outcome?

Investment

That concept of investment is an important one. As a writer I spend hours crafting articles and pitching magazines. If you look at the average yearly earnings of writers, both here and in the USA, you’d almost certainly be better off getting a job stacking shelves in a supermarket (or being a delivery driver for a supermarket). It’s not good enough to say “Ah, yes, but you enjoy your work, so it’s not just about money.” No, but the point is that the time I spend writing with no monetary benefit is costing me the money I could have earnt instead.

Also, I spend time and money on books and courses to help me improve my skills. In what universe would it be fair for someone else to derive the benefit from that investment, perhaps even before I’ve been able to recoup it in the form of increased earnings?

Are we living in a dream world?

I wonder who the writer of the copyright article thinks might benefit from works going out of copyright? Perhaps other writers, and almost certainly greedy companies. I have already written about being offered work in exchange for no income, no copyright and the opportunity to indemnify the publisher should the occasion arise.

I was offered work in exchange for money recently, so I asked if I could see a sample contract in order to check the copyright clauses and the fee. I’ve heard nothing since.

Alternative approaches

To anyone concerned that allowing writers to retain the copyright in their work is unfair to other writers in some way, I suggest the following ideas:

• If you cannot come up with your own original ideas, perhaps you shouldn’t be writing anyway.

• If you wish to use or build on other people’s writing, you could do what the rest of us do: ask the writer’s permission, or the permission of their literary estate manager.

• You could look for works released under an appropriate Creative Commons licence and start from there

There’s an interesting-looking conference on the future of copyright in the UK coming up in February 2021. I’ve also written my own reflections on the future of copyright.