The Case For Perpetual Copyright 547
Several readers sent in a link to an op-ed in the NYTimes by novelist Mark Halprin, who lays out the argument for what amounts to perpetual copyright. He says that anything less is essentially an unfair public taking of property: "No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind." This community can surely supply a plethora of arguments for the public domain, words which don't appear in the op-ed. In a similar vein, reader benesch sends us to the BBC for a tale of aging pop performers (virtually) serenading Parliament in favor of extending copyright for recording artists in the UK. Some performers are likely to outlive the current protections, now fixed at a mere 50 years.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
There is no intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)
So much insanity in that article I don't know wher (Score:3, Insightful)
"Freeing" a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, "The Garden Party," while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.
Has this guy heard of the internet? Where anyone can 'publish' for almost no cost.
Copyright is Public Protection (Score:5, Insightful)
So society promised authors/creators/artist a limited time monopoly as incentive and society gets the benefit of the artwork/creation and later having it in public domain.
Don't forget, having copyright in the first place causes a strain on society. IP is not a natural right. Copyright is a mutually beneficial contract between creators and society. The article's author wants to subvert the contract completely in the favor of one side. In U.S. contract law, for contracts to be valid, both sides have to have had a clear benefit for the contract to be considered valid.
Copyright already has been subverted to the one side so often (copyright extensions) without any clear benefits given for the other side, I would have to start arguing that the contract is not valid anymore. I don't believe anybody is owed rights that place an undue burden on society unless society also benefits in some way. This is not the case here.
If you want your thing protected forever, lock it in a vault, don't let it see the light of day, and don't tell anybody about it. Let it die, along with you eventually.
Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange, in his article Helprin doesn't mention anything about HIM paying royalties to Shakespeare's descendants for his use of the title Winter's Tale [wikipedia.org] for his novel (it is the name of, and a reference to a Shakespeare play). Presumably he should cough up something for the use of a similar plot device too.
No mention either of what he should be paying the descendants of every innovator in printing technology.
The funny thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
... so-called "intellectual property" already is far more protected than real property.
A few years ago I decided to play devil's advocate in a discussion about copyright and promoted the concept of "permanent copyright" in which the material never passed into the public domain. It was a fascinating thing to try to promote, because quite rapidly it becomes clear that the permanent copyright is simply untenable.
20 years' copyright protection is enough. I'm not an author or an artist, and like most people I get paid for today's work once rather than getting paid over and over and over for the rest of my life. The position that someone should work once and get paid perpetually for doing so is not workable.
Re:Copyright is Public Protection (Score:5, Insightful)
What everyone is forgetting is that society agrees to enforce copyright but it has costs. I agree to let you and only you sell your work (without taking it, just copying it or doing whatever I would wish with it) because then you have an incentive but there is no reason for me to spend lots of resources to ensure that you keep all the gain if there is no give back.
The cost on enforcing copyright is paid for by society with the idea that it gains. If there is no gain, why spend enormous resources protecting copyright?
Copyright is not some inherent right and I keep thinking everyone keeps forgetting this.
they will buy the public domain (Score:5, Insightful)
no good case for degrading the spirit and mind. (Score:5, Insightful)
no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind
I agree entirely, there is no good reason to put physical limitations on ideas and doing so degrades them. Good ideas can be immortal, a story is retold, a song is sung, inventions are shared and implemented long after the death of the person who conceived the original. As one candle lights another, ideas flow between people and enrich all. A society that would put unreasonable restrictions on these things will extinguish them. The ultimate reward for any author is recognition and imitation.
Perpetual copyrights will be used to crush people with new stories, songs and ideas. "What is yours next to our collection, which [contains tens of thousands | spans the entire history of recorded music | includes the work of Einstein]?" they can ask before dismissing you. Every day we come closer to losing the right to read [gnu.org].
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike physical property, "intellectual property" actually infringes upon others' right to think.
Imagine the future. It is clear that some day, maybe soon or maybe distant, we will know how to interface computers directly with the mind. We will quite literally expand our own minds. What is the difference between a book stored in your digital memory and a book stored in someone's birth-given photographic memory? What is the difference between DRM in a computer and DRM in a mind? How can you have preemptive systems that stop the transfer of information without affecting the computers connected to our brains? This is, literally, the path to third-party mind control.
Are we going to have "intellectual" laws that make it illegal to remember something for too long, or too precisely? Will we have laws that make it illegal to communicate something you know? Because, at its base, this is what intellectual property is. It will become more and more evident as humans gain physical control over their own minds.
Sure, but no restrictions on "license" then (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if someone tries to sell you a horse that you can ONLY ride on your lawn you call that person nuts.
Re:So much insanity in that article I don't know w (Score:3, Insightful)
The insanity starts where it usually does; the Mr. Helprin confuses a monopoly with property (which, of course, is the entire point of calling it intellectual 'property').
What if the maker of the chair had the perpetual monopoly right? Nobody else would be allowed to make chairs. What if the maker of the house had a perpetual monopoly on building houses? Well, Mr Helprin wouldn't have a problem with the government taking his house when he died; he wouldn't have a house.
Property is the right to own what you make or buy. Monopoly rights is the right to prevent anyone else from making the same (or sufficiently similar) thing. Wether the copy is made by hand, or by machines makes no difference to the essence.
Re:Authors (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare this to a novelist, who often spends YEARS of his life on a single novel. Can't exactly sell out football stadiums full of fans to watch you carefully develop characters and fine-tune the same passages over a period of months. If a novelist isn't making money from the sales of his novel, he's probably not making money off it, period.
Re:People should be paid but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, even if copyrights were perpetual, it is very likely that descendants would eventually get rid or forget about their rights to their ancestors's work.
IMO, life (up to the last living actor/director/writer/etc. involved in a team production) + 25 years should be plenty sufficient... or maybe a flat 100 years from initial publications.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
With perpetual copyrights, we would have perpetual heritage disputes (who owns the works of Aristotle these days?), and all important works locked away. This is just stupid.
Greed is unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The copyright is already too long by about 50 years (in the US). I can imagine detailed arguments over the fine details, but 10-20 years is the right range. And corporations should not be allowed to own copyrights, only to license them from the owners for a limited period of time. Also copyrights should die immediately when the owner of the copyright dies. Families don't have any respect for the artistic integrity of the works of authors, so why should they be allowed to control it. (Sometimes I don't like what an author does, and prefer an earlier version of his work, but I respect his right to alter it. I don't respect the grant of that right to the works of dead authors for people who don't bother to read and understand the original. Here I'm thinking of Eric Flint and the incongruous prequels to the Dune series. E.E. Smith, OTOH, did have the right to write "Skylark DuQuesne", however much it mutilated the world of the previous Skylark books.)
I will grant that this will mean that families won't be able to protect the integrity of the works of their ancestors. They don't anyway. They usually don't appear to even understand them. (Christopher Tolkien may understand, but he's not the writer his father was.)
Also, neither Cinderella nor "The Beauty and the Beast" were Walt Disney originals. Finding the original sources, however, has become a challenge. Or try a somewhat tougher one: What were the traditional words and tune to "Geordie" (not the Joan Baez version). The indefinitely extended copyright has caused it to be VERY dangerous to attempt to create music on a traditional basis. Somebody is likely to have copyrighted a part of any variation of it that you can make (which also sounds good). Actually, they're quite likely to have copyrighted the traditional version as their own. Proving this, however, is difficult. A copyright that expires in a reasonable amount of time minimizes this problem (and it's quite reasonable that ressurecting a traditional favorite DOES deserve SOME reward...but not an unending copyright.)
Re:People should be paid but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they still have unlimited time to 'commercially exploit their material'. The limit is only on the time that the ability is solely theirs.
When the copyright expires on Madonna's stupid Bananas song, she doesn't lose the ability to make money from it. She can still sing in it concerts, sell CDs/MP3s/whatever, and anything else she wants. Others will be able to sell CDs/MP3s of it, but they will still be completely unable to BE her and sing it live in concert.
And for her to stop making money on the CDs requires the assumption that nobody will pay for the official CD. Collectors, fans, and others who simply enjoy the music will continue to buy the original to support the artist.
What removing lengthy copyrights DOES do it remove the bullshit from the system. No more price-gouging for CDs. They can't pay the artist $.07 a song and sell them for $1.30 anymore. They'll have to actually have reasonable rates because someone else WILL sell it for a reasonable rate.
(My apologies to those of you who actually like the Bananas song. All 3 of you.)
Why should artists get paid in perpetuity? (Score:3, Insightful)
So again - why do some artists think they ought to do work once, then collect checks in perpetuity? I have an answer for that, but I would love to hear from someone who thinks it doesn't involve "cheap lazy selfish narcissistic assholes who don't understand that their work is not nearly as original as they think it is."
Don't forget his other flaw. (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead and skip paying the property taxes (unless you're a church) and see how long it takes the government to take those away.
If you want to treat "intellectual property" the same as physical property, then let's start with taxing it. Even if it doesn't make a profit for you. If you've released it, it goes into Public Domain unless you keep paying the taxes on it.
I actually believe that this would be the best "middle ground" between the the two sides. 99.999% of the stuff published would NOT be valuable enough to keep paying taxes on, year after year after year. Say $5 per item (single song, single story, single program, etc).
The items that ARE that valuable are so valuable that the owners (not necessarily the original producers of the work) can BUY legislation that extends copyright indefinitely for EVERYTHING. Even the 99.999% of stuff that isn't worth it.
As a published writer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm inclined to suspect that this is a trial balloon floated by the big publishers & Disney-oids to complete the rape of the pubic domain. How long before things like Shakespeare, the Illiad, the Bible, Darwin's work are auctioned off to big money (in return for big campaign contributions) and stolen from the public. Hey Halprin, if you don't like finite copyright, DON'T PUBLISH! Shove it up your ass, instead. That'll fix us. Who are you, anyway, your stuff seems to be almost invisible to Google. One unrated listing on Amazon. Not the next Shakespeare or Toynbee.
So sorry for the terrible things society has done! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't stand the thought of society getting something after you are dead, after you so clearly benefited from society. then you are simply an arrogant spoiled human being. Being selfish and having an obsession with ownership are not exactly redeeming qualities.
Profit from your toil while you are alive, then pass that profit on to your children if you wish. But a baker cannot make a loaf of bread and sell it many times over on into many generations. But she can certainly create wealth around baking and establish a business that can sustain her children into old age as long as her children can be smart enough and work hard enough to maintain this means of production.
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Wouldn't we both come out richer, each having both ideas?
No, because the idea in and of itself is not worth anything. It just kinda sits there. But ideas can turn into real things: a hardback book you can read, a machine that makes it easier to harvest corn, a medication that saves your life. Ultimately, you can sell that thing to somebody, and they'll swap you money (or something else valuable.)
If I'm a big manufacturing corporation, I'm only to happy to swap my idea for using two crayons at the same time to write my name for your idea that saves me a lot of money on each widget I manufacture. We both now have to ideas. But I also have widgets I can sell you, and you have some pretty pieces of paper.
The point is that ultimately intellectual property and real property are not quite as different as your quote would have us believe. They both have economic value, and "giving away" your idea is in fact an economic benefit to somebody else at a loss to yourself.
Some of us produce stuff; others produce ideas. To claim that the ideas have no economic value is to put those who make ideas for a living out of work.
Re:So much insanity in that article I don't know w (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why I'm in favour of the public domain, and in favour of it sooner rather than later. When your idea, or you implementation, or your song, or your algorithm, or your sheet music go into the public domain, it fosters innovation. The short-term monopoly you are given fosters the actual creation, but when it enters the public domain the real innovation hits. Look, for instance, how hiphop artists are sampling old public domain records. Look at code that's free to be changed. The examples are endless.
But at the end of the day the real challenge is not people extending copyright and treating patents like warheads and trademarking the "Apple". The real challenge is, instead, educating the masses why what you create isn't yours naturally. It's ours. It's the way it's always been: what humanity creates belongs to humanity. You can try to stop it, of course. But you'll fail.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
But real property infringes on the right to travel freely. I'm not saying I have a right to build a highway through your house. But nobody has a right to control huge swaths of land to restrict access to the other side. For instance the US doesn't not have the right(though they do have the might) to prohibit me from traveling through from Mexico to Canada, by air or land. And they really don't have the right to prohibit me from stopping to take a pee either. Property rights should only serve to protect the person and his/hers effects. And corporations should not in any way be given the same types of property rights as a person. Regardless of what the supreme court said about corporations being people. We should not allow it.
Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, as you state it, one could understand it as if the bible was the source of those moral themes, and not only a fairly known and old writing concerning ethics.
Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
-The Republic
-Books by John Locke
-Karl Marx
-John Stuart Mill
-Adam Smith
-Immanuel Kant
-Niccolò Machiavelli
-George Orwell
Since cultures are melding modern western writing is also influenced by all the various religions and writing from other cultures. Buddhism is a good example and one not based on the bible in any way.
Furthermore god did not write the bible thus it is the jewish people who are owned said payment. Of course the bible is simply a reiteration of already existing views and themes (most of the morals existed before it and many we no longer value anyway) so we'd need to go back even further. Since it is not only literature that is copyright able but any performed work even the ancient oral stories on which everything is based are subject to it.
Missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, in light of the original goals of copyright, it's hard to argue that copyright is even necessasry anymore. Thanks to technology, everyone has the means to publish and distribute their works.
Personally, what I'd like to see is not longer copyrights, but shorter ones that may extended for a period through a for-fee registration process. If you really believed copyrights are intended to provide incentive to create, then they ought to expire quickly so that people need to create more often to reap the benefits. In a practical sense, it's quite rare that a copyrighted work yields profit. Of those that do, most realize their commercial value within 10 years.
I'd also like to see copyrights made non-transferrable rights granted to the author(s). "Works for hire" would cease to transfer copyright away from the author, but rather represent a limited-term exclusive license arrangement (for example, a record company would never own an artist's work, they would just receive a limited term exclusive right to marketing and distribution). Group authorship should be treated as each individual as an original author and a licensee of the work (like a work for hire).
Re:Greed is unsurprising (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone makes a product from my idea I win by living in a world where that product is made
Not a good parallel (Score:4, Insightful)
Information always had value. But by limiting its availability, it also gets a price.
Re:Copyright is Public Protection (Score:3, Insightful)
After all didn't Newton say " If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
Re:Copyright is Public Protection (Score:3, Insightful)
Disney finds out about the guy and then sues the guy into oblivion (mickey mouse pancakes sold at any disney theme park)
as it is currently any time you sell or distribute anything that comes close to some companies "iP" you will get sued
Re:Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
The author is making a philosophical argument, not a legal one. So the fact that titles happen, currently, not to be copyrightable is irrelevant. If you follow the author's reasoning, then every idea under the sun ought to be indefinitely copyrightable, whether it be a book, a song, a title, a slogan, a recipe, or the barest concept. After all, what is the moral justification for protecting the livelihood of an author and not that of a slogan-maker? Besides which, titles and slogans can to some extent be trademarked [uspto.gov] if defined as part of a brand (e.g. Conan(TM)the Barbarian) and perpetually with the proper forms and fees.
I suppose under this argument, fair use is likewise an abomination. Why should critics and satirists be allowed an easement over property they can just as easily avoid?
Re:Missing the point... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, let's see. I got my Constitution here, and it says in Article I, Section 7...
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries;
Hmm, it does not appear to agree with what you are saying. What do you make of this?
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:5, Insightful)
Note too that the artist with the perpetual copyright would in fact need to pay a fee to the manufacturer of the paint he or she used. After all, the work that the paint company went through to create the paint needs to be recognized.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perpetual copyrights are today's equivalent to burning down the Library at Alexandria.
Re:Don't forget his other flaw. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:an argument does exist (Score:2, Insightful)
In addition, it would be necessary for the entire world to shift toward the same system, and much of the rest of the world have had very bad experiences with dynastic styles of public policies that grant special favors to particular families. You might find that you just can't push this sort of idea through other culture's social filters.
Anyway, the killer argument against it is that in the history of ideas there have been some very powerful and important ones, and it would be too risky for society to allow a single family to control some of these ideas forever. Are you seriously suggesting that the Edison family should still hold the entire motion picture industry [loc.gov] in their vice like grip? The Ford family? Disney?
-P
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:5, Insightful)
If I do some work, I get paid for it once and that's that. What's so special about artistic work that means artists should get paid again and again and again for the same bit of work?No, of course not. He has the right to sell the paintings he paints, and his descendants have the right to sell any paintings he didn't sell in his lifetime. Just as an author has a right to sell the stories he writes. Just as a builder has a right to sell the houses he builds. That's all perfectly fair.
However, I don't believe a painter's descendants have a right to demand money every time someone looks at one of his paintings, and I don't believe an author has a right to demand money every time someone reads a story he wrote. They can make money by doing work and then selling it. If they then want to make more money, they can do more work, just like everybody else has to.And they manage to make a living just fine without perpetual copyrights, so what's the problem?Why? What the hell gives a child the right to earn a living from his parents' work? If you want to have a living, you should have to do your own work and earn your money, not sit back and expect money to roll into your pockets because of someone else's hard work. Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing? What's fair about that?
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, when you create something and share it, you've given up your exclusive right to it. It "belongs" to society, simply because locking it up requires an unnatural effort to prevent an idea (or information) from being expressed. That's why physical property and intellectual property are just naturally different things. As I said, I'm willing to tolerate an artificial "lending" of that property back to its creator long enough to create an economic incentive to create, but the laws as they stand now are ridiculously imbalanced.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they could, but only at the expense of giving up their claimed "moral high ground"...
Not that I think it is the moral high ground in any case...
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biOFnAlXrV8 [youtube.com]
UFO Potcake Film! Check it out!
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, exactly. DRM and DMCA: both are attempts to create an artificial scarcity in the face of a technology that reduces the costs of distribution to near zero. Good point.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to keep control of an idea, don't tell anyone about it. Nothing the government can do will keep people from imagining that Harry Potter had one more adventure. Eventually an idea will grow beyond control no matter how strong the copyright laws are.
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know, would you deny a plumber the right to make money every time you use your faucet or toilet, or would you want to pay an architect every time you opened your door to your house? How about "his" family after he's dead? Anyone can be an artist or writer and there is no certification or even skill required to produce it so why we would treat what would appear to be the least qualified people as though they were better than truly skilled and certified artisans is beyond me.
This seems akin to how our society is obsessed with completely defying natural selection by making sure we warn the idiots and retards of society that it's not wise to bring a plugged-in toaster into the shower with you; it's little more than making it easier for the idiots, whose only valuable contribution to society might be one single work of art, to live a long and comfortable enough life to breed and produce even more idiots. Real artists who want to make money should have to work, like the rest of us, to reap "repeating" benefits and their families can reap them IF the artist was wise enough to invest it for them. If they can't produce enough good art to survive then maybe they're not cut out to be an artist.
What such a thing would encourage would be our entire society to give up any education in hopes of making one single piece of art, visual or auditory, that will actually sell decently so they can live as though they are entitled to a comfortable living because of that single work, making our society even dumber than it already is. What we call an IQ of 80 would soon be our 120.
Think about how stupid the average person is and then realize that half the population is even dumber than that. --George Carlin.
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to share freely, don't do it at all. You're not a special and unique person, and you have nothing earth shattering to say that would justify participating in a system that restricts access to information and culture based on money for no justifiable reason whatsoever.
If you have so little passion for what you think and so little pride in what you create that you would prefer not to share it with the rest of us unless you are bribed to do so, then I would suggest you go get a job at MacDonalds and spend you free time on the beach working on your tan.
You're just contributing to the ever growing pile of soulless trite commercially driven crap that dulls the mind and obscures the work that has merit anyways. We won't miss you.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is not that we landed on the moon - the point is where would we be in the astronomers of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, and India had been able to work together since the beginning.
Instead we have entire continents that went to fire and sword as one empire after another fell. With them fell their knowledge, their science, and their arts. Perpetual copyright is tanamount to having the most beautiful spouse in the world... but being unable to touch them or speak to them.
It's a trap (Score:1, Insightful)
We all know that the current copyright term is too long. An author writes an opinion piece saying that copyright should be perpetual.
And we fall straight into the trap. Instead of arguing that copyright terms should be shortened, now we are arguing that they shouldn't be lengthened.
If we continue down this path, we have already lost.
Re:There is no intellectual property (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know the best solution to this situation. Clearly we want to reward people to create patterns for a living: writers, musicians, filmmakers. Just as clearly, doing so using the same mechanisms as physical property is no longer workable. (It was, at one point in the past: an author traded his book to a publisher for money, who then had the exclusive license to print physical copies. That no longer holds in a world where such things are sold electronically.)
Like I said, I don't have any solutions. I do know that I find the attitude that "if I can copy it I should be able to" (which I see a fair bit of on Slashdot) rather self-serving: people are taking their newfound ability to copy music, movies, etc. and objecting to any attempt to limit it as if they were entirely entitled to it. The sellers are still working under an old paradigm, and it's unfair to tell them that they're the losers until somebody manages to come up with a new paradigm.
I'd be less upset if Slashdotters showed any interest in coming up with that new paradigm. Instead, the attitude seems to be, "Hey, free music/movies/etc!". Tremendous effort is put into breaking any new copy protection (which, I concur, will be ultimately futile) and none into suggesting a new business model.
(Well, there's the ever popular "musicians should play more concerts" model. If I ever meet such a person in person, I shall ask them if they've ever tried to play concerts professionally, and if they haven't I shall spit in their faces.)
Re:they will buy the public domain (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm... Taxes cease at death. Both are inevitable, but they're also mutually exclusive, so no double dipping.
copyright economics (Score:2, Insightful)
If works are purely seen as economic objects, then a permanent copyright serves to make them more 'object-like'. However, as many people point out, there are philosophical problems with treating artistic works in this way: many cost virtually nothing to replicate (which makes the demand/supply curve meaningless unless there is a copyright enforced monopoly); and their value can be lost almost accidentally (because the copyright holder is no longer willing to supply copies for whatever reasons). In a capitalist system, copyright law is highly interventionist, which just demonstrates that the marketing corporations and their supporters are not as laissez-faire as they like to believe.
However, there are other reasons for copyright, such as preserving the attribution of works. Unfortunately this is not the intention of copyright law; so in (for example) the academic world, plagiarism is primarily countered by public opinion rather than legal process. So called 'copyleft' (eg GPL) attempts to subvert the copyright system to force attribution of code (and to break the artificial monopolisation of code); unfortunately copyright is a blunt instrument here (though I applaud the attempt). If this were the prime purpose of copyright, it would be reasonable to argue for indefinite copyright.
Sadly we think primarily in terms of economics rather than in terms of the social value of the copyrighted work. Sometimes copyright works (for example, reference works with only short-term currency), when people will only pay what the work is worth to them, and the income just happens to correlate well with what the work cost to research and produce. But all too often, there is a clash between public interest and corporate economics, and it can only get worse if copyright periods are extended. There are too many cases where either the author receives insufficient recompense for their effort, or the publisher receives too much recompense (for any reasonable definition of 'insufficient' and 'too much'); sometimes even both!
I do not know the solution to this, but I don't think it lies in increasing copyright periods. This will break the clumsy structure altogether. But perhaps that is a good thing...
Re:Copyright is Public Protection (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this a problem? He found a business model that worked, and we have his works today. If anything, that example demonstrates that copyright is *not* necessary for great artistic works to be created and published.
idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
14 Years (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that Mr. Halprin is a strong contender to win the Douglas Feith award for 2007.