Quote:
Originally Posted by acidzebra
To come back shortly to broken systems, what do you think of companies like Disney who take most of their stories FROM the public domain and then turn around and try to make sure their work won't end up there anytime soon, preferably never? What of the fact that they are partly succeeding (copyright extensions)?
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I think that the role that Disney have played in extending copyright terms in the US is utterly represensible. I condemn them unreservedly. Fortunately not every country has gone down the same road; here in the UK, for example, the government recently rejected a proposal to extend copyright terms on the grounds that doing so would not be in the public interest.
There's nothing wrong, however, in "taking" stuff from the public domain. The whole point of the public domain is that anyone can do anything with anything in it, including reselling it commercially, etc. If you want to take a Shakespeare play from the public domain and publish it commercially, that's perfectly legal.