> Yes, copyright is a royal pain for a lot of artistic endeavors -- even > making many effectively impossible. I've talked to publishing > industry editors who have been unable to include various important > stories in anthologies because they can't find out who currently owns > the rights, too. David Let's face it - the expanding scope of copyright has nothing to do with protecting OUR rights (the little guys) it's all, ultimately, about letting Disney etc keep exclusive rights to thier cartoons for ever. The trouble is though, to do that without making the law ever more complex means you get blanket - unintended - side-effects. Sure, no-one should be able to use your images and sell them without at least paying you (the individual) royalties. But if one of your images appeared as 10% of fingal's eye - where's the harm in that? Indeed, most of the time you (in the sense of any web page designer) placed the image so it would be distributed to my machine automatically anyway. Copyright law, thank god, does not allow you to protect a single pixel - fortunately. Imagine having to pay every time you used R254, G127,B100 :) Sigh Surely Copyright law was envisioned to encourage creativity (by allowing authors to profit from thier work) not stifle it. Bob
