Michaelwagner Wrote: > But their families might. > > Regardless of how you personally feel about it, society as a whole > decided, not just for music but for all copyright issues, decades ago, > that copyrights last for some period of time after the copyright holder > has died (I think it's 50 years). > > Notice that has nothing to do with the artist. The copyright holder is > the person who wrote the music, the words or both. S/He might even be > alive, even though the performer is dead. It often happens that they > don't die at the same time :-)
I realize this is an old thread but let's be clear on this point: Society as a whole did not decide anything. The entertainment industry has amassed the world's largest group of lobbyist and experts whose sole job it is to purchase legislation from Congress. Because the issues of digital copyright have become so complicated and because Congress has become so corrupt, the industry has found a glorious loophole in our form of government that allows them to get what they want by paying for it. The current excitement on Capitol Hill surrounding Jack Abramoff admitting that this is how business is done in our government is a fine example. The system stopped working on behalf of "society as a whole" a few decades ago. There remains hope that the Abramoff debacle will help bring about corrections to this kind of corruption but until it does, the only people deciding on U.S. copyright laws are the entertainment industry who write them and the Congressmen & women who agree to pass them for a fee. (yes, I realize that the corruption isn't as clear cut as in-the-open bribes but hiding behind corrupt campaign finance rules and vacations and all of the other things we're hearing about in the Abramoff case show that the corruption has merely been obfuscated to make it harder for the American people to follow) The obvious response is, "well you have the opportunity to vote against these people." The obvious answer is, "no, you don't." Both parties in our system have constructed things to make the entry of third party and independent candidates virtually impossible. Individuals no longer have a say when it comes to copyright. The debate is between electronics manufacturers and the entertainment industry. Both sides are interested in earning our dollars - neither campaigns for the rights of individuals. We've lost our voice. -- icky2000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ icky2000's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3428 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18642 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
