notes-copyright

here's an idea for copyright reform that is more radical than (U.S.) Founder's Copyright, but less radical than abolishing intellectual property. i'm not advocating this idea (because i haven't had time to think about it much yet), i'm just throwing it out there.

Founder's Copyright (2 terms of 14 years apiece), plus the usual fair use exemptions, plus the following exemption:

Once you have had a work in your possession for 2 years, 2 years have commenced since the completion of a "substantially different" derivative work, you may distribute this substantially different derivative work. The substantially different derivative work may not include an unmodified copy of most of the original work, unless for some reason it would impede usage for the reader/user to have to separately refer to the original work.

For instance, you may distribute a translation of a book in a different language, or a new edition of a math book with corrections, additions, and problems interspered, or a new and ("substantially") improved version of a computer program, or fanfiction; but you may not distribute a selection of essays about a book with the original book included; or the original book with one new chapter, or with a few typos corrected; or a new version of the computer program with a few minor bugfixes; or a new computer program that depends on the original work as a library (b/c in this case the user could separately procure the library and link your program to it).

Note that the "2 years" is from the COMPLETION of the new work, which must not have begun earlier than the date of YOUR possession. So, if the original work was published 10 years ago, and then you buy it, you can't publish a derivative work earlier than year 12; and no one else can publish another derivative based on your until year 14 (unless both you and the original work's owner waive).

In addition, if you make money off such a derivative work, 1/3 of your revenue must go to the original works that your derivative was based upon (not including works that you own), in rough proportion to how much each work that you derived from contributed, and an additional 10% is paid in a special tax (to subsidize the courts for all the extra work this will cause).