Quote:
Originally Posted by Hrafn
Speaking for myself, none of the above. Copyright (and ownership thereof) should be limited because copyright is a monopoly, and it is a basic fact of economics that monopolies impose deadweight costs on the economy. The only rationale for allowing such monopoly-costs is to encourage creation of new content. Thus the extent of the monopoly (length of the copyright) should be limited to the extent that it continues to provide a substantive additional incentive to create. Individuals generally don't decide on whether to create something based upon the chance of royalties decades hence, and companies generally discount future cashflows that far out sufficiently, so that both can be reasonably ignored as incentives.
Also as technology changes decrease the difficulty, cost and ease-of-detection of unauthorised copying, they raise the deadweight cost of enforcing the monopoly, so act as an argument for further reducing the monopoly (possibly by allowing more generous exceptions for non-commercial copying).
Yes, there are business-related protections of 'abstract properties', trademarks and trade secrets, but both the law and the underlying economic patterns of both are sufficiently different from copyright that it is highly questionable whether they are directly comparable.
That is not to say that I believe that the copyright should not be able to be sold or inherited, just that it should be stringently limited, both in its duration, and in the generosity of non-commercial exceptions allowed.
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Excellent analysis. Copyright has some property-like attributes, but it is not property. Under natural law, if you have a dining room suite then you have something of value that you can sell
once. Under natural law, if you have a story you have something you can copy unlimited times and sell,
along with everyone else. Copyright is an artifact created by statute law to temporarily overcome natural law. The purpose of copyright is to enrich the commons by giving creators temporary protection. If they can't capitalize on the monopoly during that window, they shouldn't expect us to subvert the intent of the law by extending their privilege indefinitely.