> Actually, it hurts a lot of people -- it eliminates those who benefit
> from being able to use works in the public domain. For example, if
> modern copyright laws were in effect in 1938, there would have been no
> Snow White, no Pinnochio, no Alice in Wonderland -- at least, not from
> Disney. Grossly overextended copyright law prevents the development of a
> cultural bedrock.
So Snow White, Pinnochio, and Alice in Wonderland were all written in 1938?
There's a big difference between "copyright protection lasts too long" and
"copyright is a bad idea." What you just said, in a nutshell, is an attack
on copyright law.
WOW, this has gotten off topic... say, how many more years until OD&D is
public domain?
Look on the other side--with copyright laws, you have to aknowledge and pay
the person who created the thing you are using to Make Money. OR, they
could take it upon themselves to make their work public domain...
> Why not? The duration was 28 years when the Constitution was written. In
> any event, it is 90 years FROM DEATH OF AUTHOR. Furthermore, until the
> Berne convention, any work not *explicitly* copyrighted did indeed enter
> the public domain immediately.
So? When the Constitution was written, punnishments were cruel, slavery was
a part of life, and "Freedom of Religon" meant that you could pick which
Christian Church to go to. Not to mention most folk who wrote what
copyright protects today were already wealthy...
Say some poor author writes a BRILLIANT play... but since he's not a lawyer,
it's stolen from him and we are deprived of more of this genius's work.
> Do you really feel Disney would say, "No, we won't fund this new movie,
> it will be public domain in only 50 years."??? Given that the term of
> copyright was LESS than that when the original works were created, the
> argument that they would not have been created is rather spurious, eh
> wot?
You'd sidestepping the point. I bet there were blacks in the civil rights
movement who just wanted to smash things--does this mean that we shouldn't
have passed the Civil Rights laws?
(And *YES*, I consider Copyright on par with Civil Rights!)
DM
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