|
When a carpenter builds a house he sells the house and no longer has any claim to it. When an artist paints a picture and sells it he loses any claim to it. Why isn't something comparable also fair for authors?
In the USA the original copyright period was 14 years, renewable once. Even that seems ridiculously long to me. If a writer writes a book it seems more than fair to give him 5 or 10 years to recoup the time he spent on it. The point of copyright is to give the author a chance to make money. Five years would give most authors 99.99% of what they'll ever get for most books. If a book is exceptional then he probably already made a bunch from it.
I'm only talking about books. Movies may or may not have different issues. I enjoy movies but I don't care enough about them to have thought about their issues.
Barry
|