>Personally, I'd like copyright to be a bit more like trademark -- works out
>of print more than a few years would rever to the public domain quickly
>(The reason? Vast amounts of books, magazines, films, and records are
>literally rotting way, NEVER to be recovered, while the century+ copyright
>clock ticks slowly on.) -- but it ain't gonna happen.
Actually, many of the original drafters of the constitution felt as you do -
that copyright should be more like patents, and a very short time (7 years
or 20) should elapse before they expired. The rationale was exactly the one
that the OGL is based on - that the community could then use those works to
make better works. Another part of this was that a good writer/artist/etc
would be motivated to continue creating - because he would lose exclusive
rights to his work rather quickly.
See:
http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html
. . . for an interesting timeline.
Faust
See the Open Game FAQ at:
http://www.earth1066.com/D20FAQ.htm
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