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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Certain corporations have been trying to define content as "intellectual property" partly so they can insist that copying that property constitutes theft, for quite some time, and it appears that some people have bought into it. It's not the same thing, though.
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Perhaps not, but in many cases infringement can be very close.
"Piracy" is not limited to Jane Doe downloading a few songs here and there. It also includes people who sell pirated movies, CD's or software (very common in China and SE Asia, less common but still happens in NYC for example), or people who sell counterfeit goods. IP is routinely ripped off for profit rather than individual enjoyment.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
....They quite deliberately conflated the idea of taking something away from its owner, who then can't use it, and who has hence lost the value of all that staff time doing the writing, with the idea of copying that item, which, if they hadn't found out from other sources, they would never know had happened.
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Or, they treated it like someone getting unauthorized possession of an item, not unlike shoplifting.
Regardless, infringement is still infringement. The inaccuracy of the description doesn't change the fact that it is still illegal and, arguably, unethical.
Or to put it another way: It is completely unnecessary to conflate "copyright infringement" and "physical theft" in order to admonish people for the former. They are two separate acts; the law treats them differently; we can still assign them distinct ethical status.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Pensions, life insurance, and so on don't equate either.... It has nothing to do with this situation.
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You've missed why this was brought up. Kitabi asserted that people don't pass on income-earning assets, when in fact they do.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
[The copyright clause] doesn't mention "for the enrichment of the first person to claim authorship" -- it's for the benefit of society as a whole (promotion of progress), and the benefit to an individual is a way of achieving that, by making it possible to make a living as an author.
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This has been examined in subsequent legislation and judicial review. From what I can tell,
Schnapper v. Foley concluded that Congress was not limited by the "preambular" part of the Copyright Clause.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
This was less of an issue before ebooks because a publisher was necessary to the creation and dissemination of a book. Now, however, that's not the case....
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Where have you been for the past 20-odd years?
Digital distribution is not new.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Let's go back to Shakespeare, again, for those of you suggesting perpetual copyright.
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No one here is suggesting perpetual copyrights. Sonny Bono is not participating in this discussion.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Shakespeare's plays were not, strictly speaking, original. He used plots, themes, characters, even whole plays, that predated his own work....
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Contemporary copyright does not exclude such things, unless the derivative work is adopting highly specific aspects of that creation.
E.g. I could easily write a play that covers the same topics as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" or "Death of a Salesman," I simply cannot reuse the specific characters in those works without the author's permission.
Plus, drawing counterfactuals from Shakespeare is not terribly persuasive. Many of his works drew on history, and others were completely invented. It's also rather clear to me that if for some reason Shakespeare was unable to use a specific character or situation, he was more than capable of writing equally good work.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Some people have this idyllic ideal of the great-grandson of a successful author living the good life on a Caribbean island off the profits from the work of someone he never actually met.
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...or, the income goes to the estate; or no one is interested in reading the work. The scenario you describe (someone sells the book rights to some type of clearinghouse) seems rather rare to me.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
A corporation is not only expected but legally required to charge as much as possible while delivering as little as possible....
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I concur with PKFFW, this is a ridiculous claim. No such legal obligations exist. In fact, a company can lose money and drive itself into debt for as long as its creditors will support it; non-profits can also hold copyrights.
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
If you finished the book 5 minutes before a bus ran you over, it's in copyright for X years; if you wrote it 2X years ago, it goes out of copyright when you die. That protects the statutory privileges (the monopoly) of the author, and it protects the rights of society.
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Congratulations, you've managed to come up with a more complicated scenario than the current one.
At any rate, most nations are signed to the Berne Convention, which has Life + 50 as a minimum, and many use Life + 70. It may not be to your tastes, but I think you'll survive with a slightly longer copyright term, as will society and culture at large.