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Originally Posted by HansTWN
No, not really. If you want to know how people stand include the option for limited copyright. This means absolutely nothing, it is the same as asking: "would you rather I shoot your mother or your father?" And then you decide "boy, people hate their fathers!"
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The example is a false analogy, because it does not represent positions that people actually hold, nor do it represent any apprehendable principles, as the debate over copyright does.
The fact is there is a very large percentage of the population that does favor perpetual copyright(such as tubemonkey on this forum, who is hardly a wacko), as there is also a very large percentage of the population that favors the abolition of copyright (such as giggleton and other posters on this forum). The CTEA Act of 1998 was named after Sonny Bonno, who was an ardent believer in perpetual copyright. Much of the testimony given in support of the CTEA were from people who support perpetual copyright. Their have been numerous articles published in mainstream magazines and newspapers arguing for perpetual copyright. Repeatedly on this forum copyright supporters have echoed the same sentiment: "Copyright is property, so why should the government have the right to come in and take away that property from my heirs after 70 years."
So really, the "copyright should be perpetual" position is not extreme; if you believe that copyright is property, then why shouldn't you believe ownership should be perpetual? Now, you can believe that there are other interests at stake which puts limits on copyright that aren't put on other forms of property, but by no means is supporting perpetual copyright an extreme position if you believe copyright is property; indeed, it is the most intellectually coherent position. Consider this from the New York Times, hardly a purveyor of radical ideas:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/op...pagewanted=all
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WHAT if, after you had paid the taxes on earnings with which you built a house, sales taxes on the materials, real estate taxes during your life, and inheritance taxes at your death, the government would eventually commandeer it entirely? This does not happen in our society ... to houses. Or to businesses. Were you to have ushered through the many gates of taxation a flour mill, travel agency or newspaper, they would not suffer total confiscation.
Once the state has dipped its enormous beak into the stream of your wealth and possessions they are allowed to flow from one generation to the next. Though they may be divided and diminished by inflation, imperfect investment, a proliferation of descendants and the government taking its share, they are not simply expropriated.
That is, unless you own a copyright. Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren. To the claim that this provision strikes malefactors of great wealth, one might ask, first, where the heirs of Sylvia Plath berth their 200-foot yachts. And, second, why, when such a stiff penalty is not applied to the owners of Rockefeller Center or Wal-Mart, it is brought to bear against legions of harmless drudges who, other than a handful of literary plutocrats (manufacturers, really), are destined by the nature of things to be no more financially secure than a seal in the Central Park Zoo.
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This is the sentiment expressed by a whole lot of copyright supporters.
Likewise, if you believe copyright puts unneccessary and unproductive restrictions on people's liberty (the right to reproduce something you possess), or that copyright is not property, or that it is immoral to try to make something that is not scarce scarce, or that "freedom of information" trumps other concerns, or that copyright is a relic of the 18th century, or that there are more effective and efficient means of compensating artists in the digital age, or that copyright laws turn the vast majority of the population into criminals and the costs of enforcing copyright are greater than the returns to society, that the enforcement costs of copyright in the digital age would entail severe abridgement of arguablly more important rights, or that creative expression is such a fundamental part of human society that it needs no government enforced monopolies to be supported, or that humans are ingenious enough to figure out ways to make profits off their creative works in the absence of government protection, then it is by no means extreme to support abolition of copyright.
If you are a believer in Free markets, then you might point out that the purpose of markets is to allocate scarce resources efficiently, and that copyrights, which are government enforced monopolies, create inefficient allocations of capitals.
Both represent coherent philisophical positions on the nature of copyright, and both sentiments have been expressed by a number of posters on this forum, not all of whom are crazy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by miguel1626
It would be like making a poll asking whether theft should be punished by death by dismemberment or not be punished at all.
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That would be a valid poll, especially if there were people in society that took the position that theft must be stopped at all costs, even if that included death, life imprisonment, random searches of housing and belongings...
In the examples given on this poll, there is clearly a position that one or the other would be the most beneficial for society. Those that argue for perpetual copyright do so because they believe it is a form of property that should be respected the same as any other form of property. In the latter position, people might argue that copyright is obsolete, and therefore society is worse off for continuing to enforce it at all.
Additionally, you both seem to be assuming that the extreme position is always wrong, or that the moderate position is always right, which is a form of extremism itself. I think it was Thomas Sowell who said: "An extremist says let's burn everything down now. A moderate says let's burn everything down over a period of five years."
Okay, that quote illustrates something a little different from what I was trying to say, but I thought it was amusing.
