Quote:
Originally Posted by Iphinome
They don't need to worry about money so they make crap... isn't that an argument for shorter copyrights? I also don't understand why you think profit motive is the only reason to create or do anything for that matter. Why did you make that post? Do you make money from it? How? If you don't personally profit why do you expect that to be the sole motivation in other people.
Money's nice, I'm not knocking money at all but I tend to believe that people might do things for some other reason.
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1. By crap out I just meant how amazingly productive they remain. Not that the work is crap. They both still right very good books IMO.
2. As I said, everyone is free to post stuff online for free. Or grant permission to people to use their material etc. No one has to do it for the money. But if they choose to sell it, and do it for the money, they should have control over it at least until their death.
3. Pertaining to the second half of your post--sure it's impossible to have 100% control. But they should at least have legal rights that prevent publishers from reprinting their book and selling it through legitimate channels with them not getting their royalties. Or someone making a movie of their book without getting the rights first, and paying them if they don't want to give them away. Or a song they wrote being used in a commercial without permission/royalty payment etc.
There will always be the second hand market, piracy etc. But copyright can at least last until they die to prevent the types of things I listed under #3 above.
Finally, and yes, I stack the deck 100% for authors. Content creators should be the only ones to benefit
financially from their creations--at least during their lifetimes. I'll never waver in that belief.
Again, everyone has the freedom to decide to not sell their creations and grant others rights to do what they want with it etc. That's always an option, having copyrights last to, or past, death doesn't preclude that in anyway.
But in my view the author doesn't owe society shit. They created a product to sell, people either pay to enjoy it or they don't. And once they die society can have the product to do whatever they want with--assuming the creator didn't wave their rights to it sooner.