[Harmon]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

It may be a condensed version, but he was the one who condensed it. I don't care what he said in his book, in this article, he explicitly calls for eternal copyright. So is he lying in his book or lying in the article?

You are changing the subject. The question is not whether he is "lying" in one place or another. The question is whether his article is open to two different interpretations. I take it that you have now conceeded that point.

Let us stipulate for the moment that property only exists as a creation of government. Helprin claims that copyright is a natural right, not a created right.

If I am mistaken in claiming that property is meaningless without law, and property is whatever government says it is, then Helprin is certainly mistaken in claiming that copyright is a natural right, let alone eternal copyright. If property is whatever government says it is, then the public domain can't possibly be "stealing", let alone analogous to slavery.

I think that you are right.

I am not arguing for the abolition of copyright, I'm not even arguing to shorten copyright, just that copyright should not be eternal. Continually extending copyright so that nothing again enters the public domain is no different than eternal copyright. Maybe we should just give a special copyright to Mickey Mouse so that other works can enter the public domain. Without the public domain, the great majority of works die.

I agree with this, too. In fact, I think that Mickey Mouse represents an entirely new dimension of intellectual property, radically different from that which copyright has historically been aimed to protect, and that the mechanisms protecting writers (and composers and other artists) are not appropriate for protecting that new industry. We have copyright, patents, and trademarks. Rather than lump Mickey Mouse in with copyright, we probably should give him trademark protection, or something entirely new.