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. I honestly see no rational reason why "intellectual" property should be treated any differently.
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As has been said again and again : because it's not property!
Copyright is a (supposedly) momentary monopoly on the distribution rights. If you make some kind of intellectual work, whatever it is, it stops being yours the moment somebody reads/listens/whatever it. From that moment on, it's the
common property of all the people who know it.
I'll add that whatever genius you may have, you didn't create your work in a vacuum, out of nothingness. What you've done is add a
tiny layer of your own work over the heap of knowledge and experience you've accumulated since you were born. Considering most of that experience is part of the public domain, appearances to the contrary; to want to own that monopoly for what is, on average, one and a half lifetimes appears to me hubris on an unbelievable scale.