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Originally Posted by Iphinome
Well there's public school, universities that receive public funds, government grants and similar thing but I wouldn't argue that entitles me to anything from a specific person, these things benefit society it's in yours and my interest that people know how to read and write and do basic math and the other useful things one learns in school..
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But public schools do entitle you to something--not just society. If you're a state resident--and as such you (if you worked in high school) parents paid taxes that helped support that university (and other's in the state).
As such, you can go to school for MUCH cheaper than people from out of state. In the state I teach, the out of state tuition is 4 times as much as in state.
The only reason a public domain exists is to make sure classic works from long dead authors are available when the content creator is dead and there's a risk that there's no one to keep trying to make money off of it so it will fade away.
It's not there to make current works from still living folks alive, that's what libraries are for. It's there to make sure works stay around for posterity when there's no financial incentive for anyone to keep printing them etc.
All the other public stuff like universities, k-12 schools, PBS, NPR exist because they're needed for a healthy society and they are public as the public pays for them both with taxes and donations. Works created privately aren't tied to the public and only enter the public domain as way to keep them around for posterity.