Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggleton
For most of written history, copying others work was expected and encouraged. Copyright is the anomaly. An embarrassment according to Jefferson.
It has been said that ideas cannot be copyrighted but that is simply not true. The form of an ideas expression is tangential to the idea itself. If you must have your copyright, then we must ask for a more limited time than currently given.
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I can imagine that copyright was a very difficult thing to cope with when it was originally introduced, there would have been a great many technical and practical difficulties. I think you should think carefully before deciding that you wanted to return to the way things were pre-copyright ... not that that is an option anyway. Things have moved on, now we are faced with different problems.
I am not entirely certain I follow your logic behind "ideas expression is tangential to the idea itself", there may be instances where this is true (or almost so, thinking here about early software battles that tried to use copyright to protect "look and feel" - which didn't work) but it is hardly seems universal, and I think doubtful it is significant.
I find it difficult to find any justification to reduce copyright other than the practical issues surrounding orphaned/unavailable works, and I think there are probably other ways around those problems. All the rest seems a strange sort of acquisitive "I am entitled to it" sort of grab that I simply don't understand at all.