Quote:
Originally Posted by BadBilly
Ah! Here is the problem. You have copyright law backwards in your mind. Society has granted creators limited control over the works to reward and encourage creation. Before copyright law, anybody was free to copy anything as they wished. Any rights creators have are because they were given to them. They did not start out with complete control and have that whittled away over the years.
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That is the American version of copyright law, not the much older origins of copyright elsewhere. (Originally copying was difficult to impossible, so there was no reason for copyright to exist.) Somebody creates something, he or she is free to do with it as he or she pleases. That is one of the basic premises of any society that accepts the principle of private property. All rights are rights granted to you by society (before there were rules and laws you could only protect your rights yourself), so if society decides tomorrow your house is not yours anymore you would be fine with it?
And once such rights have been granted they should be enforced by society.