Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
"No copyright" isn't the same as "limited copyright" (nor "perpetual copyright"). So that's no logic to choosing either extreme over the other.
But while "none" means "none," "perpetual copyright" can be limited in scope, so it actually covers all versions of copyright, strict to lax, right up until "none."
Therefore, choosing "perpetual" is more logical than choosing "none".
And anyone who chooses "none" is therefore illogical, QED.  |
You are absolutely correct that there is ambiguity in the "Copyright Forever" end of the poll. (Few of these polls would qualify as rigorous.)
But that ambiguity seems to me to weigh the question
in favor of the CF position, because it allows the person who answers the question to fill "CF" with whatever meaning he or she cares to read into it.
In other words, it seems more likely than not that anyone who favors any degree of copyright would choose the CF position over the No Copyright position.
If I'm right about this, the overwhelming anti-copyright response should be very troubling to those who believe that the current state of copyright law is within the range of the reasonable.
My own interpretation of the CF position turns on the "forever" part. I don't think that any part of copyright should endure forever.
Nor, apparently, did the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, who were really vigorous advocates of property rights in other respects. I think that this is because they regarded copyright as an exception to a general rule that there are no ownership rights in what we now call "intellectual property".
It is not "fair use" that is an exception to copyright; it is copyright that is an exception to fair use.