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Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Copyright should last as long as the copyright holder wants it to last; as long as the copyright is renewed every "x" number of years (around 10 years or so). Failure to do so will send the work to the public domain.
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I tend to agree with this laissez-faire approach in theory. In practice, it's more complicated...
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We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag …? "What? We don't need a flag, this is our home, you bastards" "No flag, No Country, You can't have one! Those are the rules... that I just made up!...and I'm backing it up with this gun, that was lent to me from the National Rifle Association."
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Ideas are kind of like that. People use an idea for centuries, some guy likes the idea, fills out a form, and no one else can use it.
So, you have to at least strictly define what can be copyrighted and for how long and that is a pragmatic thing. You only want something protected long enough to encourage people to continue to work on ideas then you want to release it to the public domain for integration into bigger ideas.