Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
As I said in an earlier post, $20 per year in the US *is* nominal. It's less than 50 cents per week. My unemployed sister who is a full time student could afford $20 per year...if it was something that was important to her.
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Just to provide weight to your case an analogy can be made with what a crazed inventor has to pay in order to maintain a patent. Note that I use "crazed" to signify a impoverished inventor or author setting out with the view of making their millions, saving the world, or whatever motive from their works
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In my own country an annual payment equivalent to approximately US$20 per annum has to be paid in order to maintain a patent. So similar to what is suggested for authors.
In the USA in order to maintain a patent the maintenance cost, as I understand it, varies according to the size of the entity and is paid not annually but after 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years - if one annualizes the maintenance cost over the 20 year term of a patent then for the smallest entities (who pay the least, others pay much more) it comes to US$150.50 per annum.
So it looks like we have that impoverished crazed inventors working in their garages can or have to manage to pay those fees, even though I have no reason to believe they have better means to pay fees than impoverished crazed authors do typing away at the kitchen table. But, it seems that the crazed authors, if comment on this thread is typical, are driven to scream and claim hunger and nakedness will result at the mention of maybe they pay just $20 per annum to maintain copyright. I sense an exaggerated sense of entitlement and claims there.
On top of the maintenance fee, a patent applicant is also faced with the high cost of attorneys, patent examination, etc. Those are, of course, are not relevant at all to copyright cases, but somehow crazed inventors seem to manage to pay them as well as the maintenance fee.