Copyright is an issue. While, on the one hand, we have authors who can and should benefit from their creations, on the other hand, we have companies like Disney that have lobbied for decades to prevent cartoons from falling into the public domain and companies like Nintendo that use legislation to steal the monetization of YouTube channels that use 10-second snippets of any Nintendo material.

The truth is that there are now more flexible copyright models, such as Creative Commons, but nothing like what would be the original legislation on copyright, where you would have exclusivity over the use of the work for about 30 (thirty ) years and then it would enter the public domain. It would be a very reasonable time, in my opinion, since some classics of the games, for example, like Super Mario Bros and The Lost Vikings could already be used in works of fans, as well as other characters, like Batman, Constantine and the films of Star Wars. However, current legislation in virtually all countries allows works to remain in the private domain for decades after the author is dead and buried.

One of the most absurd examples is the Lord of the Rings saga: it's a saga published almost eighty years ago, but if you try to create something based on them, you can be sued by Warner Bros. That's because copyright legislation in most parts of the world is completely absurd. In Europe and Brazil, for example, copyrights continue to apply to the work for seventy years after the author's death. This means that, as Tolkien died in 1973, legally we will only be able to make works based on Lord of the Rings from the year 2043. In the United States the time is even longer: 95 years after the original publication (if the license is renewed). This means that in the United States no work published after the year 2027 that has had its copyright renewed can be used by anyone other than the copyright holder. This is complete nonsense.

In my view, thirty years is a pretty reasonable time to use a work before it falls into the public domain. It also won't hurt smaller authors as much as large corporations would have you believe: games and movies sold individually generate most of the profit during their first five to seven years, and books during their first fifteen years. So unless you write or produce some cult work that will only be acclaimed by your grandchildren, the impact on your bottom line is minimal.

There are some more radical people who even say that the complete end of copyright would be a better way out than that. Personally, I don't agree. Having exclusive use of a work for a certain time is a great attraction for new content writers, apart from the disincentive to plagiarism (the famous “copy and paste”).

But and you? What do you think about this? Leave it in the comments 😆😊