On 12-7-2009 19:38, Warp wrote:
> somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
>> licensing it? I would suggest that copyright should be perpetual, rather
>> than an arbitrary number of years.
> 
>   That would not benefit the society as a whole.
> 
>   Historical pieces of art would be lost because it would be illegal for
> anyone to copy them in order to preserve them. There are *tons* of art
> out there who nodoby knows who owns currently the copyright (because the
> author has died and it's unclear who is currently the owner; even the
> legal owner himself may be completely unaware of the fact).
> 
>   Of course people who are dedicated to preserve historically important
> pieces of art could copy them anyways, but they would then be breaking the
> law. This might be something that respectable entities just can't afford
> to do, even if there were no consequences.
> 
>   I have no way of knowing for sure, but I estimate that way less than 1%
> of all existing art actually makes money for someone. Perpetual copyright
> of *all* art just for the sake of that less-than-1% makes no sense. It's
> detrimental.
> 
>   Also in the long run you end up in a situation where *everything* is
> copyrighted, and nothing new can be done anymore before breaking the law.
> Like technology (which is protected by time-limited patents), also art
> cannot move forward if every single piece of it is protected forever.

I think you also need to define more precise what is copyrightable and 
what not. E.g. is Mickey Mouse copyrightable as such or only the 
individual images that were made of him? For MM and DD it may be 
possible to define the individual, but can we ever again make an image 
of a clown fish after 'finding nemo' without breaking copyright?

What about painting my house. Painting it in a single color is not 
copyrightable, but when I use a recognizable set of colors (e.g. white 
and green, like our local tradition)? what if I add an even more 
elaborate scheme? At what point does it become impossible for future 
owners to repaint it differently without violating my copyright?

Your fear of everything becoming copyrighted seems a bit over the top, 
but when somebody does something for the first time it may be hard to 
see what is a copyright infringement and what is something in the same 
sort of style. I can imagine that if someone had build a stone house 
with windows and doors for the first time the second one might have been 
prosecutable as a copyright infringement under current law. Now that we 
have seen the multitude of variations we know better, but what if we 
never got that far?
What about the second one to use pointillism or cubism in a painting?
Or would that have to be covered with patent laws?

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