Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
[...]First of all, both people are free to plan for their own future, by taking the profits of their labor, and investing it as they so choose.
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What your examples are missing is the understanding that the period of copyright is about acquiring "the profits of their labour" (or trying to). Example one is being paid as he goes. Example two is hoping that he will eventually get paid something. When person one dies his superannuation and outstanding wages are still his, they don't fall into the public domain just because he died.
The second may, eventually, also get money to invest the same way as example one, but he's also lost the investment period between the labour and the income (if any) for that labour. This is not trying to "cry poor", it's merely pointing out that they are different income models and such simple comparisons don't hold up very well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
[...]But wait! The creator was having organization X produce the copies of this perennial bestseller. Organization X will lose their guaranteed profit from the perennial bestseller. This is considered unfair by organization X. Organization X lobbys the government for an extension of copyright to maintain their profits on the perennial bestseller.
Is this right? Fair? Moral? In my opinion - <BLEEP> NO! Everybody knew the terms, everybody agreed to them upon the release of the copyright creator's work. They all should be held to them, just the same as if they were pensions or annuities. I find this extending morally repugnant, and a priviledge over and above those that anybody else in society gets. Not ever creators of other forms of "intellectual property" get them. From my perspective, it's theft, every bit as much as "piracy". Only this "piracy" is legally sanctioned. Who is being stolen from? We, the public. We, the public, granted the copyright, and it's terms and conditions, and they should be held to.
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I do have a certain amount of sympathy for this view - that the retrospective changes to copyright may seem unfair, it wasn't the original bargain. But aside from the few outliers, the evil corporations who gain large profit from this change, I don't actually see the change as that significant overall - not in its real value impact to the public domain. (But, as noted earlier, my own priorities lean heavily toward wanting original, not derivative work.)