[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, no---it simply means that someone would have to pay to use tools, forge metals or the like (or, to be precise, to use implements that would make those things easier). And, as was stated previously, however long copyright lasts, it does not stop anyone from reading the works--it simply discusses how long the original creator is paid for the use, or whether you have to borrow it at the library, if you wish to read it for free.

That would certainly crush innovation. With eternal patent, anyone wanting to make a bow and arrow would have to pay the holder of the patents of the pointed stick, the arrow, the fletch, the bow and the string. The number of people who would need to be paid would be staggering. Metallurgy would require paying people for thousands of years of innovations.

With a limit on the period of patent, inventors get the exclusive right to their inventions, in exchange for it entering the public domain. They are free to forgo patent; they can opt to make it a trade secret. If they do so, they can have exclusive use of the technology for as long as they can keep it secret.

There's a constant theme throughout this thread as though when a book is copyrighted, it's locked away forever from the public eye. Nothing is further from the truth; it's copyrighted for the very purpose of putting it in the public eye. If you write a book, (and it is, under US law, copyrighted at that point in time, mind you), registering the copyright indicates that your intention is to put it in the public's hands. You then publish it or are published, and the book is freely available to the public--at a price; or, you walk down to the library to read it for free. Those are the terms. The book doesn't get locked in a vault where you can't get it. It does mean that you don't get it, in a possessory sense, for free. Which, it seems, brings us back to the entire point of this discussion, really.

Copyright - if excessively long - does make works disappear. They cease to be offered for sale and effectively vanish.

I admit I'm a little...taken aback that now this conversation has moved from how long a copyright should last, in a more general sense, to how long a copyright should last so that new authors can use the characters, places or settings from expired copyrights in order to create "new" works. Given the explosion of P&P and Zombies-like works we've seen in the last 3 years (and P&P "sequels" and every other type of continuation of every type of classic book), that industry certainly seems to be heavily inhabited. I don't know how "thriving" it is, in terms of the...creators...being able to make money at it.

I don't see why you should be taken aback, they go hand in hand. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies may not be great literature, but it's far from the only example of derivative works. The Brothers Grimm were free to do as they wished with the stories they collected because they were in the public domain. Mark Twain needed no permission to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Disney was free to do as they wished with the source material for their movies. About every year someone does a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We're better off because people can reinterpret these works.

I'm not advocating for an end to copyright. I'm not even advocating for a reduction in the terms of copyright, merely that it should not be extended without limit.