[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Why? Because there is a small slice of work that you want to go into public domain ahead of schedule?

I want the works that were released under 26+26 year copyrights to be held to that arrangement. I want back the content that was stolen from the public, the content we were contracted to receive after a set number of years. Everything produced in the US before 1954 should be in the public domain. Dealing with the later L+70 stuff is negotiable.

Works, I might add, that would have totally slipped into obscurity if ebooks had developed, say, 50 or 75 years later?

I have very little interest in pondering the amount of human art & culture that's vanished because nobody figured out how to record & transmit it. There's a lot; if circumstances were different, there'd be a lot more. I don't see how that's relevant.

There is nothing about the formal structure of copyright and public domain that requires an artist acknowledge a "shared heritage."

Let's say a Chinese artist, who is extensively aware of Chinese landscape painting and ignorant of Western art, moves to Los Angeles and produces work. Those paintings are still protected by copyright, and go into the public domain when copyright expires.

I don't see your point.

The Chinese artist, he didn't invent paint, did he? Didn't invent the concept of landscapes as art. Didn't invent paintbrushes, or canvas or parchment. Didn't invent a market for landscapes, or the concept that they were more suitable for hanging in public than pictures of naked ladies. He found a new way to use the tools and skills that other people created. He added his own individual flourishes to a long history of artistic methods. He shouldn't have indefinite control of what he made from others' contributions.

The purpose of the public domain is to acknowledge that cultural expression belongs to all of us, not just the people who record bits of it on paper or phonograph.