Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That would be dangerous, in my view. Copyright protection gives the important right not to publish, as well as the right to publish. Removal of that right has important privacy implications, when it comes to having the right to decline to publish private diaries, for example.
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No one can compel you to publish anything, regardless of whether copyright regimes existed or not. There are plenty of other right that would protect you from being compelled to publish, such as privacy, personal property, and so forth. Something physical you own is your private property and others cannot dispossess you of it. It's not like, absent of copyright laws, a government official will come to your home whenever you write a journal entry and force you to publish it. Even if what you wrote wasn't copyrighted, it's not like people would have the right to break into your home or hack into your computer to obtain the works to publish. Don't want to publish private diaries? Just don't publish them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
This poll is a great example of how the way the question is phrased predetermines the outcome of the poll. It was obviously designed to give two unacceptable choices and thus try to get people to vote for no copyright at all (as the lesser of two great evils).
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Even just offering the extremes helps clarify where people really stand. It is clear given the choice between no copyright and perpetual copyright, most people would choose the former, even though clearly our legal and political systems are moving towards the latter. It provides perspective on where we are on this issue.