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Originally Posted by tompe
No. it is about re-mixing. Creating new versions of other works, using other work in a new creative way. Zombies and Jane Austen ought to be a good example of that.
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Walt Disney made a living mining the public domain. If copyright was eternal, he couldn't have done that. We've been telling and retelling the same stories, with various alterations and reinterpretations for as long as humans have sat by the campfire telling stories. The public is the default - people aren't being "given" something when a work enters the public domain. I'm all for copyright, it meets its purpose of incenting people to create new works. But that point is lost if copyright is eternal. The public domain is an essential element of culture.
If we had eternal copyrights, why not eternal patents? It's the same principle. But if we had eternal patents, advancement would end: making fire by banging to rocks together that would be someone's patent. Stone tools? Someone's patent. Forging metal? Someone's patent.