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Originally Posted by leebase
Premise....copyright is a good thing. Without that premise, nothing else works.
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I don't buy that premise.
In itself, it's a bad thing. It is artificial scarcity. It doesn't simply protect the author's ideas and goods, it interferes with what other people can do with their own ideas and their own goods.
Now *not* compensating creators poses its own problems, and other ways to compensate creators pose their own problems. Some argue that copyright for limited terms is better than the alternatives...
It's worth noting that the Illiad and Odessey were spoken into an existing body of legend.
Now a lot of the legends of our time, such as the *Lord of the Rings*, are privately held. New authors are supposed to create new universes, instead of add to existing ones. I doubt this fragmentation is a good thing.