response 40 of 80:

May 13 17:01 UTC 2005

Re #35: Agreed.

A few decades ago, a work could be copyrighted in the US for a couple of
dozen years or so (I think it was 29 years); the copyright was renewable
once, for an equal period of time.  After that, the work went into the
public domain.  With those time limits, copyright was in reasonable sync
with authors' expected lifetimes.  An author had economic incentive to
create, yet the public interest in free dissemination of information was
served as well.  The great American literary works of the 19th century
and most of the 20th century were created under these time limits.

A couple of decades ago, they started lengthening copyright lengths
drastically.  I think this was not about incentives to create or serving
the public interest, but all about certain politically influential
corporations wanting to protect their profitable franchises.  Sonny Bono
should've stuck to singing and/or appearing in John Waters movies.

Somehow, knowing that some publisher might be getting rich off of
exclusive publishing rights to my novel 100 years from now is no
incentive at all for me to write that novel.  Spare me the arguments
that long long copyrights encourage creativity.

The patent system is also badly broken, as Mike points out in #35.