Neeum Zawan wrote:
>     But that does serve the reason provided, which somebody was suggesting need not
be the main reason.

Sure. I was just pointing out that it's not necessarily encouraging the
*next* piece of art. It could very well be encouraging the piece of art you
just paid for, that would not have been started without copyright.

>> Neither does copyright. Your Pheonix BIOS proves the point. Copyright
>> only prevents copying, not independent invention.
> 
>     In terms of stories, copyright prevents me from producing stories 
> that are too similar. 

No, it doesn't. That's the point of the Phoenx BIOS example. It doesn't
prevent you from making similar stories. It prevents you from copying
someone else's stories too closely.

If you wrote a superman story never having heard of superman, you wouldn't
be violating copyright.

> barring patents.

Patents are worse. You can be prevented from practicing your invention (in
the US at least) even if you never heard of the other guy's invention.

>>> For the creator of a piece of art, copyright serves *only* for profit
>>> motives (from _his_ perspective).

Actually, I think the whole "moral copyright" shows this to be wrong. If I 
don't want my religious work modified to show support for abortion, I can 
use copyright to do that, for example.

>> Copyright is a recent phenomenon because copying is a recent phenomenon.
>> When it takes almost as much work to make a copy as it does to create it
>> fresh, there's not a whole lot of need for copyright.
> 
>     Granted, the ease of copying was a big factor, but what about song 
> lyrics? A thousand years ago, I create a song, which is easily copied 
> (lyrics and tune). I don't know if there was a notion of copyright for 
> those things back then (haven't looked).

I don't know. I imagine that since you needed performers (like a symphony or 
something) for anything more than a small gathering, perhaps it was more 
that performers would refuse to play an opera that the author didn't attend. 
  I must admit, however, that I know bupkiss about this.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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