> Sounds good to me. The sooner we break that bargain the better forthe creator. And maintaining ownership permanently doesn't take> disclosure off the table. It just makes it not for free.
I think things are out of whack.
Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I think things are out of whack too. I just don't think my heirs should have to lose the value of my work to the public domain. The public can bloody well pay to use my work!
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.
Yes. I got that. I still don't see why having to pay to use someone else's creativity is a bad thing.
> Sure, but if the law provided for permanent ownership, the ownerswould 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*.
With the imposition of television on our society, and the availability for fair use of various forms of copies, I don't see the lack of value to society of the situation you discuss here. Print is on its way out just like film. Rackety methods of communication are already the norm, they're much harder to push aside and they block introspection and creative thought, which is exactly what most people want. So they're very successful and will, sooner than we like to think, push print off the radar.
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Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxx 508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf/
