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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 1501282" data-attributes="member: 2013">May I suggest perusing <a href="http://yarchive.net/macaulay/copyright.html" target="_blank">http://yarchive.net/macaulay/copyright.html</a>Thomas Babington MacAuley had some more poignant thoughts on this matter; I'll throw some highlights here.  The guy's clarity of vision - his ability to see long-term consequences and forthrightness both impress me.MacAuley does a beautiful job illustrating the effect of a long copyright... it serves not to enrich the authors.  Rather is serves to enrich booksellers (in modern parlance, media corporations) who purchase the copyright from the author for what, over the course of copyright, is a price of pennies on the dollar.He continues with a prediction whose accuracy (perhaps chillingly) fulfilled by the rampant copyright infringement via internet, P2P swapping, CD burners, photocopiers, et al of today.  Emphases below are mine.This, in my mind, does a beautiful job of illustrating BOTH sides of the copyright debate.  Once copyright has moved beyond the term of reasonableness, and society recognizes that the damage done by copyright far outweights the benefits to it, the whole of society will engage in copyright infringement.  Furthermore, he predicts that the dissatisfaction will start because the public will realize that authors do not really benefit from copyright, booksellers (corporations) do.  They further will be frustrated that they cannot utilize the works of those who are dead and thereby have NO MORE NEED for remuneration to promote their contributions to the Arts and Sciences (they're dead - they won't MAKE any more contributions).Once that sentiment arises - that copyrights are too long in their current form, and that society should be able to make use of the works of somone long dead (as society does not easily recognize that someone OTHER than the author should benefit - such as a corporate entity), the whole of society will basically revolt against copyright... and as he says, since society has a hard time making fine distinctions, it will be able to rationalize and go down the slippery slope... "Well, copying from someone 50 years dead is fine... and copying from someone 45 years dead isn't all that different than that... and copying from someone 40 years dead isn't all that different than that...and copying from someone 35 years dead isn't all that different than that... etc... and copying from someone 0 years dead isn't all that different than that... and copying something that was written 5 years ago isn't all that different... and copying something that was written yesterday isn't all that different."His choice of words... that booksellers that "cheat" an author of his copyright are "piratical" and that long copyrights are "intolerable" to society are interesting to me, since the booksellers (corporations) today are trying to turn this terminology around. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Simply put, Macauley recognized full well exactly what the effect of long copyright would be and he told us exactly what would happen.  We have lengthend copyright anyway, and we SEE THE RESULTS - the last stat I heard was something like over 50% of US Adults have used File-Sharing services at one time or another, most likely for copyright infringement.  If that doesn't qualify as "the whole nation is in on the plot" I'm not sure what does.Thus, I'm with Macauley.  Copyright, WHEN SEVERELY LIMITED IN TERM, is a good thing.  Copyright, as it presently exists, is an intolerable burden upon society and needs to see its term SEVERELY shortened. I personally feel 14 years is close to the "sweet spot" for copyright... which is why I will defend recent copyrights, but don't expect me to defend Disney when they lobby Congress AGAIN to keep 100-year-old Steamboat Willie, product of a 50-years-dead Walt Disney, for yet ANOTHER extension of copyright.Heck, given these tenets, I have a very hard time defending the copyright of *anything published prior to 1990*... which includes most 1e and oD&D stuff (that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to put myself in a bad legal spot by distributing it, but it *does* mean I will lobby - heavily - for it to be released into the public domain).  But at least I have what I feel is a reasonable defense of my moral position... the defense that while copyright is okay (because I understand why we need it), the current term of copyright is too onerous.  I think even if you don't agree where the "Sweet Spot" in terms of copyright duration is, I think it's pretty clear that it's somewhere less than infinity - and if I pick a different spot than you (especially given that I would guess upwards of 95% of all revenue that will be made on works created prior to 1990 has already been made), that's a matter of opinion.At the end of the day, this understanding comes from one who makes it a policy to learn about why something he dislikes exists... nobody enacted copyright thinking it was EEVIL... everyone always enacts laws they think are good.  However, I think the original purpose of copyright has been lost over time, and politicians today are not educated - or interested (or if you're more cynical, too much in the pockets of "booksellers") to understand why we have the laws we do in the first place.  In order to understand what to do when you propose change a law, it's important to understand what the reason for installing the law in the first place was.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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