Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Perhaps you are unaware of how much copyright changed in the last century?
In the US up until 1977 authors had a maximum fixed term of 56 years from publication to benefit from their work before copyright expired. In the UK until 1911, they had the maximum of 42 years from publication or life+7 years (whichever was longer).
The complaint about current copyright law is that the copyright term has been greatly extended, but that this has not been of any benefit to the actual creators of the works, but has been of considerable harm to everyone else except some copyright holders.
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I have been ignoring this thread due to the urge to write an incredibly rude reply regarding repetitiveness and tedium
Not to you of course.
I am not really up on US/UK copyright law and its changes, and while I see nothing wrong with 42-52 years after publication I still stand by my opinion that the current copyright laws do not measurably harm everyone else but the creators/copyright holders.
Sure they cannot use others works as they wish, but how could they use them if they hadn't been written/published. Lot of things are not published which could help society and lot of things are published which could harm society. I see copyright playing a very insignificant role in the overall picture except that it encourages publication. Perhaps you (or someone else) can give me a very long list of works that were suppressed due to copyright violations that would have benefitted society at large greatly.
Helen