Brian
Put aside the question of the overall merits of copyright for a> moment.
No need to put it aside. Copyright per se is not a bad thing - when applied in the origional contexts (book-texts, paintings, works of art in general). It lets artists (and, for a reasonable duration thier "estate") make a living by rewarding creative effort.
No real argument here. The 'put it aside' was a rhetorical device to focus attention on the 'moving wall' aspect of US copyright law.
I do, however, think that the "estate" part is bogus, and that a term of 30-40 years total would serve quite nicely -- any art still brining in royalties enough to care about after 40 years has probably made the artist quite rich enough already. At any rate and in my view, at a point far sooner than current legal frameworks provide for, the public interest becomes more important than continued royalties.
soIt is fair, I think, to see Disney as a stand in for all the large Intellectual Property holders which manage to lobby the US Congressthat the expiry date on copyright is a moving wall sufficient to
ensure
that nothing ever lapses into the public domain.
But there is something very very wrong about retrospective legislation [ and that's what it is however they dress it up] - especially when it's done solely to allow some mega-corp or other to continue to profit from the work of long-dead authors for ever and a day.
No, I'm sure the real intent of the changes is to benefit starving artists. How cynical of you ;-)
(Did you see us as disagreeing on this point? I don't.)
Copyright infringement - for personal use - is not something "the great unwashed" consider morally wrong. In the UK anyway at least home taping (audio and VHS) was all but ubiquitous even before "digital".
IANAL and I am too lazy to surf to be certain of the details but:
I'm not sure how we managed to pull it off, what with our various free-trade deals, but here in Canada, it's been ruled that it is permissible to exchange music that is subject to copyright so long as you aren't charging or doing it on a mass scale.
With that, our relatively liberal drug laws, and legalized gay marriage, I expect we will be invaded by the US any day now ;-)
Imagine a world with no "public domain".
I agree that would be a horror, and fear it is not entirely 'tin foil hat' paranoid to have concerns here.
Best,
Brian vdB
