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On 07/12/09 12:07, somebody wrote:
> Why?
It's a fundamental difference I have. I don't believe in equating
intangibles with property. I do believe in copyright, as an entity
recognized and enforced by the government which gives the owner certain
rights.
And I believe in it for only one reason: Providing certain protections
will promote the production of art and enrich (in a non-materialistic
manner) the society and culture. I have no other reason to believe in
it. Were it not for this, I'd move to abolish it.
In particular, I do *not* believe that it is an individual right to
have copyright (in the sense of universal human rights). The main idea
is to benefit society, and not the individual. Copyright merely gives
the individuals some privileges to further that goal. In the bigger
picture, the individuals don't factor in.
Taken straight from the US Constitution (or so some web site claims):
"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".
The stated goal is to progress science and the arts. Not to provide
some arbitrary rights to people.
To get to my point, when the copyright period is too long, then the
incentive to promote the arts is greatly reduced. If you have lifetime
copyright, then the person who produced a piece of art has a lot less
incentive to produce more pieces of art.
Take Star Trek. It almost disappeared. The series were all dead, and no
movie had been made for what, 8 years? If they hadn't resurrected it, it
would have vanished, despite there being a continual demand for Star
Trek related material.
On the flip side, a product (like Star Trek and James Bond) will be
milked to ridiculous extremes, resulting in little incentives for proper
innovation.
Copyright hurts by protecting both possibilities.
> What's the difference between someone toiling for decades to build a
> house and leaving it for their kids to benefit by renting it, and someone
> toiling for decades to build art and leaving it for their kids to benefit by
The difference is that ownership of physical property is considered
more or less a human right. Few disagree - not even communists really
disagree with that. Intellectual property is not generally agreed upon
to be a human right.
In other words, the burden is on you to explain why they should be
allowed to benefit from it. Specifically, why do you even think there
should be copyright?
Note that I'm not saying that individual works of art can't be owned
and passed on after 20 years. Whoever owns the Mona Lisa still owns it,
and it is still valuable. Copyright, though, is about copying and not
ownership.
> licensing it? I would suggest that copyright should be perpetual, rather
> than an arbitrary number of years. Worth diminishes naturally anyway, be it
> of material or immaterial things, but that should come naturally, not
> through decree that the commercial worth of an artist's life work becomes
> zero at his deathbed, or after an arbitrary number of years since creation.
You say "naturally". There's nothing natural about copyright. It's a
contrived and relatively recent concept.
--
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little
sign of breaking down in the near future.
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