Quote:
Originally Posted by Cosimo
Why should there be a time limit on how long someone can own something? Just because it may no longer be financially rewarding seems to be a very weak reason that control should be taken away from a creator or, subsequently, their heirs.
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There isn't and wasn't a time limit on "how long someone can own something".
But copyright only applies for the type of "thing" that fundamentally isn't really all that much of a "thing" to begin with.
Ideas.
You can't own an idea.
No one really "owns" a copyrighted work -- they have a limited-time monopoly on the reproduction and distribution rights, a monopoly that doesn't exist in nature... whereas owning a house or a chair or a sheaf of paper bound into a "book" with words printed on it IS a naturally existing sort of ownership.
The whole point is that no one would have ever owned the intellectual copyrights for a work if not for the government policy "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" -- and
THAT is why "no longer financially rewarding" is a very very good reason indeed to take away the copyright-enforced monopoly.