something else to remember: Originally copyright was a two-way street. the original copyright holder had exclusive rights to his/her creation *for a limited time*. the government would enforce this right be preventing others from infringing on the copyright, but only for a limited time. copyright would expire after a couple of years, and the work would enter the public domain where all of society could benefit from it. the protection clause would supposedly be an incentive for people to create stuff, because it was easier to make a living on it than if everyone could take your work and run with it.
Nowadays big Media still enjoys the protection, but the public no longer gets to enjoy their end of the original bargain which was the free use of the works in question after a couple of years went by.
The whole point was to give people/companies incentive to create new works and enrich society as a whole. In my opinion, the current model has greatly overshot that goal. Do you really think that disney would get out of the new content creation business if they didn't have sole ownership of everything for perpetuity?
the entire *meaning* of copyright has been twisted beyond the original intent, thanks to the lobbying efforts of a hand full of large corporations over the last century.
especially in the computer age, what is the point of essentially locking up software for a century at a time? As mentioned above: Atari 2600. There is absolutely no commercial viability left in a 2600 game by the company that originally made it. There is no incentive for them to still produce copies. they're gathering dust on a shelve, being essentially abandoned. but according to current copyright legislation, it's still illegal for others to make a copy -- which is pretty much the only way to get access to the item. How does that benefit society as a whole, as copyright was intended to work? Now it's just a government-enforced protection racket, without the content-creators having to live up to their end of the bargain...
Nowadays big Media still enjoys the protection, but the public no longer gets to enjoy their end of the original bargain which was the free use of the works in question after a couple of years went by.
The whole point was to give people/companies incentive to create new works and enrich society as a whole. In my opinion, the current model has greatly overshot that goal. Do you really think that disney would get out of the new content creation business if they didn't have sole ownership of everything for perpetuity?
the entire *meaning* of copyright has been twisted beyond the original intent, thanks to the lobbying efforts of a hand full of large corporations over the last century.
especially in the computer age, what is the point of essentially locking up software for a century at a time? As mentioned above: Atari 2600. There is absolutely no commercial viability left in a 2600 game by the company that originally made it. There is no incentive for them to still produce copies. they're gathering dust on a shelve, being essentially abandoned. but according to current copyright legislation, it's still illegal for others to make a copy -- which is pretty much the only way to get access to the item. How does that benefit society as a whole, as copyright was intended to work? Now it's just a government-enforced protection racket, without the content-creators having to live up to their end of the bargain...