Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
The public may be a beneficiary of public domain, but they aren't a stakeholder here. The public did not create the work, they were not a party to negotiations, and they did not pay for the rights.
Public domain is not ownership. No one owns or controls a work that's in public domain. The public does not pay anyone when a work goes into public domain.
PD is a revocation and thus absence of all protection for a work.
Again: They tried, and they failed. This provision was completely untouched by the last major update to the copyright law, the CTEA. Optimism may in fact be justified.
Artists are already filing, and the record labels are already losing in the courts.
Maybe, just maybe, you ought to be a bit thrilled to be wrong here, since this is a good thing for the content creators. Actually, I'm not very optimistic about that happening. 
Right around "never."
I agree life + 70 is a bit too long, but it hasn't had the devastating effect that its detractors insist. There is no sign of Europe or the US adding further extensions, even though the CTEA is already 14 years old.
Publishers will lose money with the termination of transfer, and that's going to happen. It's already started.
And no, shortening copyright terms is not going to get rid of piracy or increase respect for copyright. We see just as much distaste and corporate gamesmanship over patents, which have a very short duration.
The bottom line is that people want free stuff, and are happy to construct all sorts of rationalizations to get that free stuff. Shortening copyright terms won't change that. |
Kali, who made copyright? The public, through it's government. It
granted all copyrights. It set the terms and conditions of copyrights. To claim the public aren't stakeholders is ridiculous. They set the rules!
You state that -
"Public domain is
not ownership. No one owns or controls a work that's in public domain. The public does not pay anyone when a work goes into public domain."
You're looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The public domain is the natural state of creation. Copyright exists as an
artificial ownership, a limited monopoly, to be precise, granted to encourage the creation of new works. That creation was premised upon the good of the public, not the good of the creators. The public receives it's benefit at the end of the copyright period. The creator receives the economic benefit from the limited monopoly, that is his/her encouragement.
That's the way it's always been since modern Western copyright. See The Statue of Anne (1714), The U.S. Constitution, or read McCauley (1842).
In the end, though, you can make any law you want. People will only follow them if they are perceived to be fair and just. Otherwise, they will break them. Often privately, but they will break them. And copyright, as it is currently envisioned, fails the fair and just perception.