The purpose of copyright law is to promote the arts and useful sciences according to the constitution which grants Congress the authority to create that class of law.
One microsecond after I'm dead, there is no span of time you can give me a monopoly on my works that will entice me to create another work.
You could make an argument that investors in my work should get a chance to recoup their investment for some time, but a fixed time should be able to accomplish that. Give someone 35 years to make back their investment, and if the person dies they can pass it onto someone else.
What's happening instead is that this absurd length of monopoly is meaning that works are being erased from history because the copyright length is so long there's no way most works are maintained that long despite having no commercial value. That's the opposite of the stated goal. You can make an argument that something without commercial value isn't valuable and it doesn't matter if it was destroyed, but we have examples where something that was allowed to enter the public domain back when that was possible became valuable after the public discovered it and started to make use of it.
I put my money where my mouth is, and the graysonian ethic has something written into the legal page that releases it into the public domain 15 years after first publishing.
One microsecond after I'm dead, there is no span of time you can give me a monopoly on my works that will entice me to create another work.
You could make an argument that investors in my work should get a chance to recoup their investment for some time, but a fixed time should be able to accomplish that. Give someone 35 years to make back their investment, and if the person dies they can pass it onto someone else.
What's happening instead is that this absurd length of monopoly is meaning that works are being erased from history because the copyright length is so long there's no way most works are maintained that long despite having no commercial value. That's the opposite of the stated goal. You can make an argument that something without commercial value isn't valuable and it doesn't matter if it was destroyed, but we have examples where something that was allowed to enter the public domain back when that was possible became valuable after the public discovered it and started to make use of it.
I put my money where my mouth is, and the graysonian ethic has something written into the legal page that releases it into the public domain 15 years after first publishing.
Disney is a particularly good example of the benefits of a robust public domain: They made much of their fortune on derivative works of public domain works.
Disney didn't create Snow white, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, The story Sleeping Beauty was based on, the little mermaid, Alladin's wonderful lamp, the hunchback of notre dame, or Hercules. They took works that were in the public domain and created new works based on those stories that were massively popular in their own right.
One of the reasons the Internet is so vibrant and creative compared to the establishment media is that it isn't really following the rules, so it takes content and remixes it or reimagines it and comes up with all kinds of completely new stuff. There's entire communities and subcommunities and sub-subcommunities doing that sort of thing, and if copyright were being properly applied then it would all immediately disappear.
Meanwhile, the establishment wallows in the one hundredth remake of Superman's origin story! We've got the copyright until 2033, might as well make the most of it!
(Turns out it wasn't life + 50 years, it was life + 70 years for works created after 1978 since changes to the copyright act made in 1998 which expanded the term from life + 50 years)
Disney didn't create Snow white, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, The story Sleeping Beauty was based on, the little mermaid, Alladin's wonderful lamp, the hunchback of notre dame, or Hercules. They took works that were in the public domain and created new works based on those stories that were massively popular in their own right.
One of the reasons the Internet is so vibrant and creative compared to the establishment media is that it isn't really following the rules, so it takes content and remixes it or reimagines it and comes up with all kinds of completely new stuff. There's entire communities and subcommunities and sub-subcommunities doing that sort of thing, and if copyright were being properly applied then it would all immediately disappear.
Meanwhile, the establishment wallows in the one hundredth remake of Superman's origin story! We've got the copyright until 2033, might as well make the most of it!
(Turns out it wasn't life + 50 years, it was life + 70 years for works created after 1978 since changes to the copyright act made in 1998 which expanded the term from life + 50 years)
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I mean... They can't. They're breaking the law when they do.
And the Internet is getting more buttoned down by the day. It's going to come that day where you have to follow copyright laws, and then it's all over.
And the Internet is getting more buttoned down by the day. It's going to come that day where you have to follow copyright laws, and then it's all over.