Quote:
Originally Posted by pruss
By the way, of the false dilemma between no copyright and copyright forever, I have to go for no copyright, simply because copyright forever would eventually legally kill precisely those books we most want to keep--namely those that are worth reading after hundreds of years. Take, for instance, the works of Plato. On a copyright forever scheme, the copyright in these would still be owned by Plato's descendants, and hence a translator would require a license from them. But it would not be possible to obtain such a license, because (a) there are too many descendants and at least some of them are likely to have crazy objections or want ridiculous sums of money, and (b) we have no idea who the the descendants are. So there would be no legal way to print the book.
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they are the greeks and copyright on Plato would surely help them right now.
BTW, I find the idea of copyright like life+years makes no sense in the case of companies. Companies like Disney seem to never die at all! Someone should kill them, bleed them until bankrupt. Otherwise, they'll keep milking away what otherwise had genuine artistic attempts by real people, such as Bambi or The Lion King in countless watered down sequels...
Just imagine, Plato Company publishing The Republic XXI!