Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Perhaps you'd feel a little differently if you depended on intellectual property rights for your livelyhood.
I have a right, as an author, to benefit from my work for AT LEAST my lifetime. I also feel that I should be able to pass on the "fruits" of my work to my descendents, just as I can with my other property.
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Not one whit more than a bricklayer, or a carpenter.
And certainly not with the public dime maintaining that extended income in
ANY way.
Copyrights provide a benefit to society, That is why they exist at all. But there is an optimal period for beyond which the cost to society outweighs the benefit. This period is not entirely abstract and can be statistically measured, such as in
this rather dry academic meme. If you look around academia it is still generally quantified as a twelve to fourteen year range.
Now you may wish to have an extended copyright, and there is no doubt that that would benefit you personally. There is also no credible refutation that it is a drag on the society in which you live and that as much as writers and publishers whine about the cost of enforcement the cost therein is no where near enough to pay for what the process costs society.
Extended copyrights are not morally or ethically justifiable.
Expect to be fighting a losing battle stumping for them in a community full of scholarly nerds who will read every link and footnote in the debate