Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
@AnotherCat:
I can tell that you're not from the US. Your idea is that the government "grants" copyright to writers, as if they are the ultimate arbiters of what's right. In the US, we feel that law exists to codify rights with which we are already imbued, like the codification of the rights to free speech, worship, etc., in our Bill of Rights, etc.
I'd argue that copyright law exists to protect the pre-existing rights of creators to their OWN BLOODY creations. It's not some magnanimous "grant" of rights from The Government.
Copyright law exists for the simple reason that without it, people wouldn't bother to create valuable (by which I mean, provides value to the reader, of whatever kind, fiction, non-fiction, etc.) written products like books. Why would they, if those could be taken by anyone who wants it? Without recompense? We ALL, ALL, want payment for our labors. There's hardly anything indecent or abnormal or GREEDY in that.
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You may like to instruct me that my idea is "that the government "grants" copyright to writers, as if they are the ultimate arbiters of what's right" with the sense that you have some route of familiarization as to what is in my mind beyond what I said in the thread. But I think that you are reading things into what I have written which is neither said nor in my mind. What I have said is everything to do with the rights of all citizens.
Yes, I do not live in the USA, and we do not have a Bill of Rights, nor do we even have a Constitutional document as the constitution is represented in the whole body of legislation, court decisions and conventions, and in being a representative democracy. This may all mean that we, and those in other countries like us, cannot "feel that law exists to codify rights with which we are already imbued, like the codification of the rights to free speech, worship, etc." like you say US citizens do, but I suspect not. Also, somehow we managed to sign the Berne Convention over 50 years before the USA did.
I have nowhere said nor implied that there should be no copyright; going by your second to last paragraph in the snip above you seem to have created in your mind that I did. I am well aware that some with strong attachments to the status quo see even talk of change as being a threat of complete demolition. But in this thread you will see that all I have been about is that their should be rights on both sides and that those seem to me to be very lopsided towards rights holders compared to those of everyone else.
I have no need to address in any length
your firm words (that sounds better than calling them a "rant"
) regarding the protections provided to right holders, because I have pointed out above that I have nowhere said that right holders should be without rights. But it does seem to me that while copyright law exists to foster creativity it does not seem to me that
valuable creativity would be stifled with change. Furthermore, that laudable justification of fostering has over time been distorted by those with vested interests mostly in their own pockets (and allowing myself to poke sticks in eyes
, those vested interests being predominantly in the USA ).