New (and calmer) Copyright discussion thread (split out from "Publishing a Sequel")

I don't think so, either. I think the government is there as the central depository for such records and creator of the laws to be enforced.

James D. Macdonald said:

Peter Pan is a special case: Under normal circumstances the work would have long-since reverted to the public domain. That particular work was granted perpetual copyright by act of Parliament.

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And even that is just in the U.K. Comics writer Alan Moore's controversial "Lost Girls", which featured characters from Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Oz, had release troubles in the U.K. (and some say by extension in the EU) due to its special status. It had no such troubles elsewhere, such as in the U.S., where it did very well. It has since been released in the U.K.

aadams73 said:

Bullshit. If I create something, it's mine, and then it belongs to my children if that is what I choose. If you steal it and use it for your own gains(which is what you are trying to do here), then you're a thieving sack of talentless excrement.

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I was under the impression that this was the calmer thread intended for civil, rational discussion. No need to drag things to this level. Reasonable people can disagree on this philosophical issue without attacking one another in this one. Despite people's disagreements with his views, Omega has been nothing but respectful to the people disagreeing with him. I would respectfully suggest that we can extend him the same courtesy.

I smell troll-bait. You've done nothing to present a good argument WHY there should be a more limited copyright.

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Actually, early on in the discussion there was indeed talk of the original intent of copyright, what it sought to do, and why it was more limited in duration than it is now. You might have to go back to the last thread, prior to when the name-calling and accusations began, but assuming those posts have not been deleted (I didn't double-check) you can still read them.

Omega said:

Tying it to the lifetime of the author makes little sense to me, because it makes the copyright about the author's profits

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Of course it does! The author created the work - why shouldn't they profit from it? Would you prefer to profit from your own stories, or someone else?

Omega said:

and not the benefit to society, which, again, is the entire purpose of copyright.

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Omega said:

Or here's another way to look at it: copyright does not give the content creator rights. It limits the rights of everyone else.

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Limits how? This is the point I think you're probably not getting across. The copyrights on my favourite books do not limit my right to enjoy them. I reread my Tolkien books every year because I love them so much. Copyrights don't prevent me from enjoying anything, which ultimately I think is the goal many writers have: to create something others can enjoy. I know that's my goal, at least. The only thing copyright prevents is someone else profiting off of them. I still don't understand how that's bad, nor do I see how anyone is limited in any way except from profiting from someone else's work.

Omega said:

I want content creators' grandchildren to have the same rights as the rest of us: to inherit tangible property, and to enjoy works that are in the public domain without legal restraint.

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Tangible or intangible I think is irrelevant. To draw a similarity, people can get compensated for emotional abuse. That's an intangible abuse, because there's generally nothing physical about it, but the courts still recognize its legitimacy. It's still real. The fact that my stories and my characters are intangible does not lessen the fact that they are my property, and I decide who does or doesn't get to touch them. The day a work gets created doesn't automatically mean it's part of the public domain. My thoughts are not part of the public domain, and so therefore anything that results from them are not part of the public domain until I determine that.

MacAllister said:

Actually, Eric, when I split the thread, some of the more heated posts got transferred across to the new thread, too. So it's not actually all that fair to chastise someone for a post originally made in a different context.

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I'm not aware of any context other than the one I see, i.e. a thread that purports to be a calm discussion of copyright. If some posts are holdovers from before that point, fair enough.

M.R.J. Le Blanc said:

The fact that you keep arguing in favor of limiting current copyrights from what they are now does in fact point back to your fanfiction and desire to publish it. Current copyright prevents you from playing in Asimov's playground, and the only reason I can see for you to argue lessening copyrights is so that you may one day have the chance to publish it without getting permission or waiting a very long time.

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As expressed earlier, I am someone who dislikes and does not understand the want, need or desire to do fan fiction, and am somebody who believes current copyright laws have exceeded there they ought to be. So where do I fall on this?

I've never written a derivative work in my life and have never had a desire to. I just don't understand the appeal; I want to create my own things. I have very little interest in reading (most) derivative works from others, too, yet I believe that lifetime + 70 years is too long and not in keeping with the original intent of copyright law. So with that in mind, I can certainly see how Omega's views are not necessarily driven by selfish desires.

Really, his viewpoint is not as controversial as some are making it out to be. Many are the people who oppose the so-called Sonny Bono Act. These people are not necessarily in opposition for selfish reasons, either. It's simply a philosophical difference. Nothing wrong with that. Reasonable people can disagree.

As some point out, patents provide a limited period of protection during which the patent holder can profit from their innovation or invention, after which said innovation can be tapped into by the public at large. Someone early was making an analogy about inventing a great widget. This would be covering under patent protection. The widget is yours to profit from for 20 years, after which anyone can copy your widget. This benefits all parties involved; the inventor by providing protections that allow him or her to exclusively profit by the innovation for a time, and society by preventing important innovations from being held by a single entity.

Yet changes to copyright, pushed in large measure by huge lobbyists like Disney, have far outpaced patent protections. If patent protection reflected current copyright protection, the right to produce the paper clip may well still be held by a single individual or entity! (It was created in the 1880s. At lifetime + 70 years, it's possible the originator''s heirs would still own the rights to it.)

Anyway, my point is simply that this issue is a larger one than this guy's desire to do work based on Asimov's works. One need not have selfish motivations to be against exceedingly long copyright protections. It's a issue worth discussing.

James D. Macdonald said:

This is a bogus argument. There is, in fact, a limit.

"The rest of time" isn't the term of copyright. In the specific case of Song of the South, under current copyright law, it will enter the public domain in 2041.

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Actually, film preservation is one of the strongest arguments against current copyright law, and against the Bono copyright extension.

A film like "Song of the South" exists in the world because film prints of it exist. Film is a fragile and organic substance that can be damaged or can decay. With every passing year, the condition of the film master and existing prints of "Song of the South" deteriorates.

Technology exists to restore films by using a combination of well-maintained prints and the original negatives to find the best source-material possible, and then extrapolating the images contained on damaged frames from surrounding frames.

Film runs at a rate of about 24 frames per second, which means there are 172,800 individual frames in a 2 hour movie. Each frame of an older film must be examined in the restoration process. This is labor intensive, time intensive and resource intensive. This process creates a digital master, which cannot deteriorate (though the resolution may be below future standards).

Disney has performed restorations on several of its early films, including "Snow White," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Pinocchio." But if Disney doesn't want to re-release "Song of the South," then it likely is not taking every step to preserve the film.

Fortunately, the major film studios have generally been careful stewards of their film resources because they have long recognized that their back-catalogs can be sources of future revenue. Disney keeps its film masters stored in a climate-controlled vault which reduces the rate of deterioration.

But when "Song of the South" lapses to the public domain, Disney may not be cooperative in sharing the physical resources held in its vault, and other existing prints may not be in salvageable condition.

There are many films from smaller or defunct studios that have been, for all practical purposes, lost because of the physical deterioration of the sources. Unfortunately the law doesn't have any provisions for voiding copyrights on material that the rights holder intentionally keeps out of circulation.

Sage said:

And, I'm sorry, but I honestly don't see, from a philosophical standpoint, where the crime would be in this. If this meant that only one family-owned company would create paperclips, then so be it. Or that the family would have to be compensated by any company they allowed to create paperclips, well why not? If the inventor or family chose not to release the product for sale, I'm sure someone else would eventually come up with another product with the same purpose and sell it. So I'm not seeing why it's actually a bad thing that the heirs would own rights to the product.

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Then I think we may we have a fundamental disagreement. As a society, we have decided that monopolies are a bad thing. We do not want complete power over a single service, product, resource, etc. to be in a single set of hands over a long period of time. I agree with this. I used the paper clip example simply because it's an innocuous, ubiquitous thing we don't even think about*. The thing is, it's much larger than that.

Allowing the perpetual or near perpetual holding of an idea that may be of benefit to society -- say, a medical breakthrough or important piece of literature -- to be held by a single entity for 100, 120, 140 years (and that's assuming no further extensions) is little different in my eyes. If an important medical device is developed by Joe Blow, do we really want Joe Blow and his heirs to have sole control over it for multiple generations? For several decades, sure, but for generation after generation? I would submit that the answer is no.

You can disagree, of course. If so, our disagreement is at a core enough level that we can't really go anywhere else on this topic.

I would also submit that the realm of ideas and literature and philosophy and art is just as vital to society as such inventions -- as writers I doubt we'd want to argue any different -- and therefore ought to be treated with a similar philosophy. Maybe not exactly the same. As noted, I'm in full support of copyright protections for creative works. But philosophically, the two things are not that far removed.




*It would be easy to drum up countless examples of inventions and innovations great and small that are a key part of your life, and are only a key part of your life because the patent protection ran out, thus allowing others to bring them to the masses. Imagine a world in which all the patents Alexander Graham Bell held (and often stole - but that's another topic) never left his hands or those of his heirs. Or technology for your computer, or radio, or car, or that scan you had at the doctor's office, and on and on and on. Envision a world in which so many of the cornerstones of modern society do not belong to society. Imagine the ramifications for innovation, for the costs involved, and on and on and on. It shouldn't be difficult to see why this would be a Bad Thing. It's why our laws on patents and on monopolies are the way they are.

Why should it be? If I owned a Picasso painting, owned it, I could set fire to it and dance around the ashes. It would be well within my right as an owner. No one would arrest me, though I'm sure there would be several tear filled protests about destroying history and blah blah blah.

Disney does not owe anyone the physical resources of anything they've made. It belongs to them.

I get the desire to preserve and dabble with things that have been created, and I get the good will of society and so on and so forth, but there's still a line between private property and public domain. Public domain does not start until well after the creator has died and his family, rightfully so imo, I want my kids to be okay if they need to with my work, and not some random stranger looking for an easy payday.

As for works being available, well part of that depends on the owner of the copyright, if they destroy every last copy through legal means and the piece is gone forever, that is within their right. If they don't, well then, when it becomes public domain, have at it.

Maybe I'm not sentimental enough?

James D. Macdonald said:

This is a bogus argument. There is, in fact, a limit.

"The rest of time" isn't the term of copyright. In the specific case of Song of the South, under current copyright law, it will enter the public domain in 2041.

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Also, the argument that copyright extension legislation like the recent Bono act effectively made copyright unconstitutionally "unlimited" was used by lawyers in attempting to overturn the act. The Supreme Court deferred to Congress in the case testing the Bono act, although the argument will surely be raised again if Congress passes another copyright extension.

"Song of the South" will only enter the public domain if rights holders are unsuccessful at lobbying Congress to extend copyright again. In the past, they have been extremely adept at getting copyright law designed to suit their interests.

Particularly egregious are the statutory damages provisions associated with infringement. A song sells for $1, so downloading a song illegally has actual damages of, at most, $1, if we accept, for purposes of argument, the highly dubious assumption that each illegal download costs the rights holders a sale.

Statutory damages are about $150,000 per song. So if you download a CD off of a file sharing service, you can get sued for somewhere around two million dollars.

These provisions, which were obtained through industry lobbying, allowed rights holders to file thousands of harassing lawsuits, mostly against teenagers and college students, and force those defendants to settle for between $2000-4000 because they couldn't afford to defend themselves, or to risk the statutory damages.

Rightsholders should be able to enjoin derivative works and obtain actual damages for unauthorized copies. But the legislation is written by lobbyists to further the agenda of the RIAA, and it's really pretty outrageous.

djf881 said:

Actually, film preservation is one of the strongest arguments against current copyright law, and against the Bono copyright extension.

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Many are the landmarks of silent film that would likely have been lost to time had they not fallen into the public domain, only to be lovingly restored by outfits like Kino and Criterion, who make it their mission to restore and release landmarks of cinema. The rights and licensing of film is often far too expensive for such small companies to justify the work involved in restoring these films, given their niche status. They simply aren't money-makers. Without that hurdle, though, important artistic landmarks like Nosferatu, The Birth of a Nation, and countless others can be preserved and made available to the public. This is a Good Thing. Otherwise, it's likely that in the majority of cases the cost would preclude the restoration and release work from ever happening.

(As it stands, we've lost a shocking amount of early cinema, thanks in large part to shoddy storage practices of the early studios and a lack of respect by their keepers. It's a real tragedy for the world of cinema ... but that's another discussion altogether.)

If one family owns the rights to sell paperclips, they are distributing those clips and licensing the purchaser to use them as they see fit. When you buy a paperclip, you pay for this right. Likewise, should you want to use something else in another medium developed by a single entity, then you pay for the right to use it.

The "what's best for society" logic is what allows gov't to go in and claim imminent domain over personal property for the sake of a highway or park to "benefit" society as a whole without giving the actual owner proper compensation - and it's a horrible system - but since people as a whole are more concerned with getting what they want when they want it than they are defending the rights of their neighbors it happens. If a drilling company wants to come in and pump gas out from under that same highway, they have to go back and find every single landowner who was displaced to build the road and pay them royalties. They complain, because by their logic the person should no longer have rights to those minerals, but they do.

If someone else makes it, just because it's of mutual benefit, doesn't mean you have the right to commandeer something that doesn't belong to you for free. If you want to use a car, you ask then you pay to put back the gas you use. If the owner says no, you don't use it... even if you really really really really really want to.

It would be like someone coming along and telling you that a man on the verge of curing cancer needs a new heart, and guess what -- you're a perfect match. Since he's of more value to society as a whole, they've decided to let him have yours.

Omega said:

But why should you and your descendants get paid forever for you doing one thing? You should get paid something, for some period of time, but in perpetuity? Yes, you want this, because you benefit from it. But you also prevent other people from benefiting from their own work. "Because it's good for me and I want it that way" is not a sufficient answer to why it should be this way. Once again, copyright term is all about balance between the good of society and the good of the content creator. What you are proposing benefits the content creator and his descendants forever, and benefits society not at all.

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This has been said and said again (Yes, I've followed both threads.), but apparently needs to be repeated. What's this "paid forever" stuff? I don't recall anyone here saying that copyright should be in perpetuity. It isn't. As others have said, it was extended some time ago, but there's still a limit.

As for the preventing "other people from benefiting from their own work" bit, I find your protest deeply ironic. People can benefit from their own work. People do benefit from their own work. As long as that work is original, no problem. It's when you use someone else's original work, when you build on someone else's original work that there's a problem -- unless that work is in the public domain.

And as has been stated more than once, the fact that copyright does expire, and original works do pass into the public domain, is where the "benefit to society" as you define it comes in.

If that doesn't happen on your own personal timetable, tough.

Omega said:

I read it several times. Arguing that only because something becomes part of the collective psyche makes copyright law difficult to define is... well, frankly, silly. The law is clear, and she seems to be arguing that it's not. I, on the other hand, am arguing that the law should be changed. Not in any way that makes Twilight not protected, because I believe copyright should last a bare minimum of ten years, and I'd prefer more like twenty. You'll note that this would still keep me from publishing my book for another ten years, since I use characters from a book published in 1999, so this still isn't about getting my book published.

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Ten or twenty years? Pardon me, but I have works twenty years old. Works that did not earn me all that much twenty years ago but which are now, finally, earning some nice change. Earnings which I believe I am entitled to and which may pay colleges costs and mortgages and stuff like that for me and my descendants. Under current copyright law, of course.

Now, I realize that standing where you are, only ten or twenty years of protection for IP might seem perfectly reasonable. Come talk to me twenty years from now, if I'm still around, and if you ever get anything original published.

I'm fairly certain your attitude on all this will be different.

scarletpeaches said:

It is clear you are ignoring the things people in this thread are saying. Why is this? Do you feel the need to patronise me for telling it like it is? Does this require you to accuse me of being angry in order to justify your ignorance?

Oh, and regarding anger - yeah. Thieves make me angry. I'm kinda funny like that.

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QFT. And because I love a good, sharp retort.

Memnon624 said:

I'm sorry, but copyright has nothing to do with the betterment of society. It's about protecting the hard work of a creator from those who would profit illegally from it. Copyright, then, is about the protection of a creator's sole right to profit from his/her works. Personally, I think the span of time by which a work goes into public domain should be decided by the creator, not by anyone else. If the writer/artist/what-have-you wants to open their world up for other to play in, then so be it. Slap a Creative Commons notice or whatever it is on it and have at it. But, it should be within that same creator's rights to deny use to any but those who license the work from him/her. I don't want you playing in my sandbox, Omega. I don't want your kids or your kids' kids puttering around with what I created. After I die, I want the rights to the world or worlds to pass to the person I designate as my heir, so they might benefit monetarily (if possible) from what I've done for them.

Basically: screw this "betterment of society" crap. I will give my toys to whom I choose, and god help those who try to take them without my permission!

Best,

Scott

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Also QFT. Yes, copyright was also designed to balance the rights of the creator with the rights of Society, because Society determined that building on original work could, in many cases, benefit Society. Or, at least, entertain Society.

The point -- again, one that has been made more than once in both these threads -- is that if the creator were not protected, for at least some amount of time, from the efforts of others to take his ideas and characters and stories and use them for their own personal gain, then most such creators would stop creating.

Which would be a giant loss for Society and easily outweighs any perceived benefit to Society of having no copyright protections.

Omega said:

Or here's another way to look at it: copyright does not give the content creator rights. It limits the rights of everyone else. After all, if something is my property, like this piece of paper, why shouldn't I be able to copy the same information onto another piece of paper that also belongs to me, and then sell that paper for a sum of money? Isn't that my right as a property owner? But my rights as a propertyholder are limited, because overall it is better for society.

Or I could say, as you have, you know what? Screw the betterment of society. I have a piece of paper, and I want to sell it. Why is your right to control the flow of an idea you had more important than my right to do what I want with my property? The two are in direct conflict. Limited copyright term is the balance between them.

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And again. We already have limited copyright terms

You just don't agree with the term, that's all.

And luckily for most of us, you don't get to decide, all by your lonesome, that it needs to be changed.

WHY? Nobody answers the question WHY? You all keep saying the way you think things should be, I keep asking WHY you think things should be that way, and nobody answers the question! Yes, laws are the way they are. I think they should be changed because they hurt society as a whole. You think they should stay the same because they benefit the rightsholders. But why should the rightsholders benefit outweigh the benefit of society by expansion of works in the public domain? That's the question that has yet to be answered by anything more than "because it's his work" and increasing insults to my integrity and my work. If the only answer is "people should benefit forever from their creations because they should", then you're assuming your conclusion, and there's nothing more to discuss, because your conclusion has no support.

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You claim existing copyright laws hurt society as a whole, but you have yet to, as far as I can see, lay out exactly how society is being hurt by them.

So, how?

Because I'm looking around and, you know, I'm seeing lots and lots and lots of original creations being thoroughly enjoyed by Society. And I don't hear Society whining about the original works they can't enjoy because ... Oh, wait. You're not talking about original works. You're talking about works built on the original works of others.

No ... I don't hear Society whining about not being able to enjoy those. At all.

icerose said:

Why should it be? If I owned a Picasso painting, owned it, I could set fire to it and dance around the ashes. It would be well within my right as an owner. No one would arrest me, though I'm sure there would be several tear filled protests about destroying history and blah blah blah.

Disney does not owe anyone the physical resources of anything they've made. It belongs to them.

I get the desire to preserve and dabble with things that have been created, and I get the good will of society and so on and so forth, but there's still a line between private property and public domain. Public domain does not start until well after the creator has died and his family, rightfully so imo, I want my kids to be okay if they need to with my work, and not some random stranger looking for an easy payday.

As for works being available, well part of that depends on the owner of the copyright, if they destroy every last copy through legal means and the piece is gone forever, that is within their right. If they don't, well then, when it becomes public domain, have at it.

Maybe I'm not sentimental enough?

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In publishing, authors retain the rights to their work and license publication. However film, television and music are owned by the corporate entities who finance their production. This results in a handful of entities being the stewards of much or even most of the last century's popular culture.

Corporate rightsholders, who are not necessarily equivalent to creators (for starters, they do not "die" in the way that natural persons do). "Song of the South" isn't owned by Walt Disney and his heirs; it's owned by Disney Corp. which is a very different thing.

When this content exists on a decaying substance, we rely on the rights holders to care for it. Other sources may exist in the world; a film print is a piece of physical property, but without the right to exhibit and distribute the film, nobody but the rights holder has any economic incentive to preserve or restore the work.

The copyright lasts so long that it will be very unlikely that acceptable sources for many works will exist in the hands of any third party when the property finally enters the public domain. While Disney withholds it, "Song of the South" is literally rotting away.

If you believe that films and television and music are important, it's natural to be a little bit concerned about how much history is deemed to be the exclusive property of a conglomerate like Warner or Disney. And it's sub-optimal policy for them to allow historically important works to decay because they see no further commercial value in them, while the copyright duration stretches on for decades and decades because these same companies finance extensive lobbying campaigns for copyright extension to preserve their exclusivity on certain valuable properties in their older catalogs.

Kitty Pryde said:

Disney is protecting the public from seeing Song of the South because it's raging with racism. It would be TERRIBLE for Disney's business to rerelease it, because of the ensuing crapstorm of protesting and bad PR. It would also be TERRIBLE for the kids of the current generation to watch. It's not a rights issue, it's an offensiveness issue. They own a really offensive thing and they don't want to let it out. You keep on talking about benefit to society. The minor benefit to society of the scholarly value of releasing SOTS is FAR outweighed by the damage it would do to society. (Says me, who owns a copy of SOTS and thinks it's actually quite entertaining, except for how it's ragingly racist.)

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It's not unlike Stephen King pulling copies of Rage, as well, in the wake of some school shootings. He's the creator, he had every right to do that with his work.

djf881 said:

In publishing, authors retain the rights to their work and license publication. However film, television and music are owned by the corporate entities who finance their production. This results in a handful of entities being the stewards of much or even most of the last century's popular culture.

Corporate rightsholders, who are not necessarily equivalent to creators (for starters, they do not "die" in the way that natural persons do). "Song of the South" isn't owned by Walt Disney and his heirs; it's owned by Disney Corp. which is a very different thing.

When this content exists on a decaying substance, we rely on the rights holders to care for it. Other sources may exist in the world; a film print is a piece of physical property, but without the right to exhibit and distribute the film, nobody but the rights holder has any economic incentive to preserve or restore the work.

The copyright lasts so long that it will be very unlikely that acceptable sources for many works will exist in the hands of any third party when the property finally enters the public domain. While Disney withholds it, "Song of the South" is literally rotting away.

If you believe that films and television and music are important, it's natural to be a little bit concerned about how much history is deemed to be the exclusive property of a conglomerate like Warner or Disney. And it's sub-optimal policy for them to allow historically important works to decay because they see no further commercial value in them, while the copyright duration stretches on for decades and decades because these same companies finance extensive lobbying campaigns for copyright extension to preserve their exclusivity on certain valuable properties in their older catalogs.

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While all this is true, it's still theirs. It was created under their dollar and direction. If copyright changes for the big corporations to where they cannot choose what to do with their own productions, that smacks us with an even bigger stick for those lower on the pole who do not have the money and resources to protect our own work.

ETA: I have seen Song of the South, I saw it when I was a little girl and I was so sheltered I didn't even know it had racial connotations. We even had the book.

I'd posted a few times in the locked portion of this thread, and I had to catch up all over again. Thankfully, though, CeCe has made my points for me.

CheshireCat said:

Now, I realize that standing where you are, only ten or twenty years of protection for IP might seem perfectly reasonable. Come talk to me twenty years from now, if I'm still around, and if you ever get anything original published.

I'm fairly certain your attitude on all this will be different.

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Speaking as an author whose first novel is releasing this fall, this 10-20 years thing just boggles me. The idea that another confessed writer thinks I should lose the copyright on MY book, MY character, MY world 20 years from now just....



So yeah, what CeCe said.

CheshireCat said:

The point -- again, one that has been made more than once in both these threads -- is that if the creator were not protected, for at least some amount of time, from the efforts of others to take his ideas and characters and stories and use them for their own personal gain, then most such creators would stop creating.

Which would be a giant loss for Society and easily outweighs any perceived benefit to Society of having no copyright protections.

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Bingo!

CheshireCat said:

You claim existing copyright laws hurt society as a whole, but you have yet to, as far as I can see, lay out exactly how society is being hurt by them.

So, how?

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My question, as well.

Furthermore, how can anyone guarantee that derivative works are in any way comparable to the quality of the original? Have you ever seen Fanfiction.net, Omega? That is the largest depository of derivative works I've ever seen, and the majority of it is crap. But those derivative works are written for pleasure, and while they are still in violation of copyright, the writers make no attempts to profit with those stories, so copyright holders generally leave them alone.

Just because someone sits down and decides, "Hey, So-n-So's books are in the public domain, and I love this book, so I want to write another book using those characters," DOES NOT mean it's publishable. So this vague "benefit to society" does not exist, because there is no benefit to society. There's this single writer who's writing a story he loves, using characters he loves, that no one else will ever read.

If an author wants to write a novel based on a copyrighted work, there are ways to get permission.

But really, can some kind soul PLEASE give me at least three derivative works published in the last century, post lapse of copyright, that should they be removed, would cause some detriment to society?

And if anyone says "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," I will smite you.

ChaosTitan said:

And if anyone says "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," I will smite you.

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I bought that book, and like it better than P&P, which bored me.

*awaits smiting*

Sage said:

From this argument, why should we bother paying for the materials to make the next wave of technology?

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And yet we've been doing exactly that for far longer than you and I have been alive, and in fact even longer than the notion of patent protection. We, as a people, have invested huge time and resources and energy and money into developing new ideas, technologies and innovations -- this despite knowing that after a time others will be able to profit from our efforts, too.

Given your stance, I trust it is safe to assume that you believe patent protections are currently too short in duration?

scarletpeaches said:

I bought that book, and like it better than P&P, which bored me.

*awaits smiting*

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You're excused from smiting today. Liking something does not equate to detriment to society as a whole.*



*except for the Society of Scarletpeaches

ChaosTitan said:

You're excused from smiting today. Liking something does not equate to detriment to society as a whole.*



*except for the Society of Scarletpeaches

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In the new world order there will be no need to say that in small font.

Oh yes.

It will be so.