Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
You seem to be confusing copyright with patents and trademarks. Copyright does not protect an idea and imposes no constraint over anyone else's original creation.
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I think rkomar is right. To word it another way, literature has long been considered a long conversation that began thousands of years ago. It is a conversation conducted in public and provides a skeleton or structure for our civilizations. Anyone can join the conversation but when you do, it is with the knowledge that your contribution will be put in the public arena.
Recently, important parts of that conversation have been at least partially hidden from public view. To take one example, the publisher of
To Kill A Mockingbird refuses to publish it in eBook form despite the efforts of the work’s author to have it published. In this case, Harper Lee had to go to the expense of a lawyer in an attempt to regain control of her work.
You could argue that restricting it from digital form doesn't hide a work but the truth of that will be unknown for another decade or two. Besides, there are many more examples, but the point is that laws that intend to protect an author’s income can result in infringement of the public right to access that important long conversation.
I don’t know if limiting the length of the copyright will achieve the dual goals of protecting authors and protecting the public interest, but there is no doubt something is wrong with the current rules and similar limits have worked in the past.