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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1548050" data-attributes="member: 10201">I disagree. I suspect that most people "know" how long copyright is to sufficient accuracy to support this argument: it's "forever". I'll bet the average person on the street thinks that copyright lasts until the creator dies, or is perpetual. Neither of which is quite correct, but it feeds into the notion of too-long copyrights. The average person on the street probably also does'nt know that older works are pre-copyright (other than, perhaps, a dim notion that the bible is public domain). The average person also probably has radically wrong notions of what constitutes infringing, and what rights copyright governs. Witness, frex, people on this very messageboard (in this thread even, i think), that see copyright as protecting access to content, rather than duplication of content (and thus the notion that if you've bought it once, you should be able to make copies for yourself).The Sigil's argument isn't that people steal stuff that has been protected by copyright for too long. It is that, because copyright protects things for too long, people steal everything (including that which has only been protected for a short while).Not high ideology--unconscious reaction. The claim isn't that people will calmly and rationally violate copyright when the term is long, but that they will "instinctively" seek a way around it when it seems too long--and not only once it has exceeded what they deem a reasonable length. It's a psycho-social thing.  An analogy:around here, they've re-signed school zones for 20mph instead of 15mph. Why? Because they found that more people slow down to less than 20mph when that's the speed limit in a school zone than slow down to less than 20mph (much less <15mph) when the speed limit is 15mph. IOW, by raising the speed limit, they've gotten, on balance, slower traffic flow in the school zones. The more onerous restriction of the slower speed limit leads to a larger portion of the populace either disregarding it completely or only making a half-hearted attempt to comply. The new, higher speed limit leads to greater compliance.</blockquote>

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