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Originally Posted by HansTWN
Of course, a good argument can be made for unlimited copyright. At least it makes 100 times more sense than no copyright.
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Unlimited copyright is nonsense on stilts. The idea of it both ignores sense and the history of intellectual property law and is totally ridiculous. Copyright was always understood to be a limited monopoly, a gift to the creator to encourage creation, not a way for the creator to lock up ideas forever. And why should someone be able to lock up an expression for all of time? It's not as if ideas spring fully formed from an author's brow; they're the organic mixing of ideas the author has been exposed to plus his or her own creativity.
To treat ideas and expressions like they are any other kind of tangible property is barely worth arguing about it makes so little sense. I'm honestly hoping I've totally misread the tone of your post and you're making a joke.
Someone else who makes a modest proposal for eternal copyright:
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Imagine you're a new parent at 30 years old and you've just published a bestselling new novel. Under the current system, if you lived to 70 years old and your descendants all had children at the age of 30, the copyright in your book – and thus the proceeds – would provide for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.
But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the "public good", simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they'd just make it worse.
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