"Emily L. Ferguson" <elf@xxxxxxxx> writes: > At 10:29 AM -0500 6/9/04, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >>"Emily L. Ferguson" <elf@xxxxxxxx> writes: >> >>> And actually, I see no reason that the creator should ever have to >>> part with his/her copyright. Just because Disney is one of the >>> world's creators doesn't mean that permanent copyright is a bad >>> concept. >> >>But there are plenty of *other* reasons it's a bad concept! >> >>First of all, the whole bargain of intellectual property is broken by >>making it permanent. That bargain is, protection for a period in >>return for disclosure. > > Sounds good to me. The sooner we break that bargain the better for > the creator. And maintaining ownership permanently doesn't take > disclosure off the table. It just makes it not for free. I'd change to a life+25 scheme, myself; anything lasting past about college age of the next generation seems excessive to me. It's fair that artist gets compensated, but when the three generations of the artist's heirs start getting too heavily compensated, I think things are out of whack. For artistic works (patents are of course different), the thing that's analagous to "disclosure" is when they can be used as a component in other people's works (you know, the way Shakespeare did all the time). That is, when it enters the public domain. >>Second, the chain of ownership almost always gets broken or lost >>somewhere in the first 100 yeras. One of the major difficulties in >>preparing certain kinds of anthologies for publication is locating the >>rights owners. > > Sure, but if the law provided for permanent ownership, the owners > would have more of a reason to make sure they could be located. The problems I'm talking about are actual problems that happen *today* (the increase to life+70 is quite recent). Quite a bit of work is out of print partly because nobody can find who owns the rights to get permission to print it. This is not good for *anybody*. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
