Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
You might equally well say that society should not spend time and money preventing people from copying someone else's fiction, because fiction has no practical value.
I am fully in favour of copyright in the lifetime of the author. I am even in favour of a time limited copyright after an author's death. My favoured copyright length would be 50 years from publication or the lifetime of the author, whichever is longer. I certainly don't favour abolishing copyright altogether.
But arguing for a perpetual copyright for fiction because it's of no practical value rather misses the point of a shared cultural heritage.
Fiction is part of our culture. Spending time and money protecting an excessively long copyright to enrich people who had nothing to do with the creation of the fiction is not sensible or fair.
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Preach on, brother, preach on! (it's a southern saying)
Looking at it from a cultural point of view, I'm fine with a longer pure copyright that has the requirement that the work is available for purchase at a reasonable price. (yes, one can argue what a reasonable price is, but this sort of deal is fairly common with regards to patents and standards) I would make a derivative copyright much, much shorter, more like the 27 year mark. That gives the creator plenty of time to make money while allowing for the sort of creative work that artists typically use PD for.
The issue is that there are very few people who actually care about copyright and the vast majority of them are people who profit from longer copyrights, a la Victor Hugo.