Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
But with all this odd discussion about "intent", I do not see how the "progression of art" inherently requires a public domain.
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No one here said progression of art "inherently requires a public domain".
Art and science will always make progress, now matter how jailed it is. It's not interesting to talk about
whether or not there is progress - of course there is
some progress under any model.
What's interesting is how can access to works of art/culture/science be
maximized - for maximum effect.
Consider the effect of copyright on Mickey Mouse:
years 1-8: provided Walt Disney sufficient incentive to create Mickey Mouse
years 9-75:
* blocked creators of derivitive works from contributing Mickey Mouse-based works to society, thus reducing the potential number of works created by tens of thousands of pieces of new material
* kept a market-rate price tag on the content for 65+ years, thus hindering the number of viewers it can reach
* reduced the reproduction of it to a single entity, and those they grant permissions to, further reducing the number of viewers reached
* discouraged innovation from creators of non-derivitive works that would incidentally be similar enough to Mickey Mouse to be cause for litigation and liability
100 years later: interest in derivitive and similar works lost because Mickey Mouse got old, and thus it's too late to counter the damage from years after ~5-10.
It's easy to justify ~5-10 years of copyright on Mickey Mouse. Very hard to justify the following decades, unless you've made the means the ends, and erroneously believe the creator is the intended beneficiary of copyright and not society. Benefits to the creator are purely
incidental to ensuring society gets the most of creative works.
Getting that backwards is damaging. Making the creator the intended beneficiary of copyright has a perverse effect that actually hinders the amount of access people have to creative works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
But as far as the original intent goes, in order to promulgate the spread of art, no PD is needed.
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Of course PD is not
needed for spread to happen, but why would you find that interesting to point out? What's interesting is how PD
increases the propagation of creative works. PD is absolutely needed when propagating
for maximum effect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
All I'm saying is, copyright was NOT the result of someone saying "how can I make sure content creators can get money", but neither was it "how can I ensure the public domain grows".
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Agreed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
It was "how can I ensure people create more things".
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Indeed - that's the short of it. But it's a little more complex because it neglects the very important expiration on copyright - which ensures that more people get access to more works (which is the bigger picture - the reason to get more things created in the first place).