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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 4683320" data-attributes="member: 1003">I really appreciate Old Timer's description of the Scandinavian Tradition of attribution as the only benefit of authorship. I hadn't seen that before.But I come down with DaveMage: Copyright is good, but the current term is way too long.Just to sum up where that comes from:1. Ceteris paribus, society is better with more art than less art. I think we can all agree that (regardless of any other strengths and weaknesses) Venice and Rome are more pleasant to visually behold than Moscow or New York. We are all better off (happier) with Shakespeare the playwright than Shakespeare the accountant. Etc.2. As a matter of general economic principles you get more of a good (any good) when you pay people to produce it.2.a. If you want more art, artists need to get paid.3. There are any number of ways we can pay artists (in order to get more art (in order to be happier)). And pretty much all of them have been (and continue to be) used to one degree or another.  Artists work on commission, take salaried positions at universities and non-profits, get grants from public tax coffers, produce a physical work and sell or auction it at galleries, etc. etc. 3.a. Copyright is just one more way of getting artists paid. The public grants to the artist a temporary (but very narrow) monopoly on the otherwise perfectly legal activities of painting, writing, etc. to the extent that these activities are "copies" of his work. It's a public contract (sometimes called "law") between the art-appreciating public and the art-generating public; "We want art; you produce art; we'll voluntarily give up the right to paint and write these "copies" in order to provide an incentive to you to do original work."There's nothing moral about it in my opinion. It's just a contract of convenience written in law. Each side gets what they want (art / a living). In the absence of this law each side would be free to do as they please (including producing art that's just a copy of someone else's art - after all, the copier may not be original, but how would you propose stopping the whole public from engaging in copying activities? Would you ban the ownership of paint or writing tools? That certainly would not leave society better off, for then we'd surely have Picasso the pencil-sketcher instead of Picasso the painter).But because it's a contract between two public groups of people (the art appreciators and the art producers), each side can go back to the table and renegotiate the terms if they feel like they're paying too great an amount for the benefit received. Right now I think the art appreciators are paying far too much, given the length of copyright.  Any many of them are demonstrating they agree with me by "opting out' of the legal arrangement and acquiring the copyrighted works by extra-legal means. Further, recall that copyright is created in the first place to increase the public good (by encouraging the production of original art). But as it stands the great length of copyright term is harmful to the public good because art is "lock up" for a century and cannot be recycled back into the creative mix. Don't we all enjoy a good Ravenloft campaign? Do you think Ravenloft would have been written if Dracula had still be under copyright to someone? Probably not, as the licensing negotiations would have made what was supposed to be a one-off adventure module just not worth it.  We (the gaming public) are better off with Ravenloft, the re-mix of gothic novels and D&D adventuring, than without. And copyright would probably have killed it.So it's a balancing act of term-length, seeking the maximal point on the parabola of societal value. As a legal right, copyright is a gift to the artist from the public, and so the public has the right to name the terms of the gift. The artist has the right to not produce art if he feels the rewards are insufficient.</blockquote>

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