Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
I'm very serious. Copyright should exist to protect property rights in perpetuity; not to grant them for a limited period of time.
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Let me fully flesh out your statement.
In perpetuity can only have meaning if it is retroactiovely applied to the first writing. Otherwise, it's just a self-serving statement - I get free stuff, you don't.
So for anything that has been written, in order to reproduce it, you have to provide a clear, unbroken line of ownership. If you can't, you can't contract the rights to make a copy, or use it in a variant of the work.
Anything without a clear ownership chain cannot be copied and is therefore lost whenever the last legal physical copy degrades.
Any unauthorized copy or use should be suppressed, at least until legal rights to copy it have been obtained, if they can be. Otherwise, they should be permanently suppressed.
So what should we suppress?
All historical information, and literature from the fall of Rome on back.
All Disney productions using current Public Domain until the copyrights are cleared, if possible. Otherwise, suppressed.
Any dead author without a clear inheretance chain, or a chain that has played out, just like a title of Nobility.
Any subsidiary worked based on uncleared pre-existing work.
All performances of material without clear copyright.
All folk songs.
All oral tradition stories.
Shall I go on?
This is the clear implications of your viewpoint. If you think I am overstating the case, please point out the overstatement and I'll show you my logic chain.
RSE