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Originally Posted by meromana
Yes, your'e right. There's a big difference between physical property (what I was decribing) and intellectual property or art. My analogy would not apply there.
However, what I was trying to get at was the issue of entitlement. Some seem to think that if a piece of art was ever presented to the public for a price, that it has automatically become the permanent property of the public, and they should have access to it in perpetuity. I don't buy that. If a book is no longer in print, anyone who has previously paid for the item should have permanent access to it, ie, in your library example, the library should be able to loan the book out forever, but can they make 12 copies and loan those out, too? I would say no. If they needed more copies, they should have bought more when it was for sale; now it's too late.
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Well, I think to a certain extent, the sense of entitlement is justified. The Constitutional Basis for Copyright (in the United States), essentially argues that the purpose of copyright is to encourage authors to publish works so that they will ultimately enter the public domain. Up until copyright was amended to Life +50 years, this was more or less built into copyright law in the sense that rights holders had to explicitly renew copyright after a certain period ... the understanding was that copyright would only be extended on works that were still profitable enough for the rights holders to substantially benefit.
I think much of the current attitude expressed by many here is an indication that more recent copyright law has tended to ignore the primary purpose of copyright law in favor of perpetual benefits to the rights holders.
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Absolutely. And this is why we keep ending up in all these philosophical discussions  . The laws are hopelessly out of date with the way that "art" is presented nowadays, and many issues remain unresolved. I would like to see more cases coming up, so we can begin to understand what we do or don't own and what we're legally allowed to do with it!
--Maria
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Its a shame really, that this issue is not considered more important by more people.
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Bill