Re: Re: will everyone concerned about copyright please read this

On Sep 20, 2011, at 6:32 AM, Dan Poynter wrote:
> 
> 
> The copyright term or fiction should be forever because the book is a work of art.
> The copyright term for nonfiction should last forever because anyone is free to reprint the ideas but not the words.
Dan,

Interesting argument, but I have to disagree on both points for two reasons:

1) It's already difficult to trace the copyright holder for some books that are only 20 to 30 years old. Imagine a professor 500 years from now teaching a class on the ancient history of publishing. If he wants to distribute one of your ebooks or reproduce pages from your website as course materials, what are the odds he will find a descendant who can prove a valid claim to the copyright? From a purely practical point of view, allowing a copyright to extend forever would be a logistical nightmare.

2) As you said, patents are designed to give people a reasonable period of time to exploit the potential financial gain of an idea. In this respect, I would argue that copyrights are the same. They give you (and your immediate descendants) a reasonable (some would say overly reasonable) period of time to exploit the potential financial gain of your copyrighted expression. After that, I would argue that it is also in the public interest to allow copyrights to expire and to allow that expression to be freely available. Why should it be necessary for someone to re-write (and copyright again) something that was adequately expressed 70+ years ago?

Besides, if Beethoven's descendants (probably his publisher's descendants, since he had no known children) still had the rights to his works, we wouldn't have the disco classic:-) "A Fifth of Beethoven," or if you prefer classic rock, you wouldn't have "A Whiter Shade of Pale," or the three Bach pieces that inspired it, which themselves might have been borrowed from earlier works by others (as was common in those days).

So, yes, allow creators and their immediate descendants to exploit their work, but not forever.

Best Regards,
Richard Hamilton
-------
XML Press
New from XML Press:
WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit
http://xmlpress.net/publications/wiki-how-to-grow








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