Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
You can't have it both ways. Intellectually, it's the exact same thing, but you are just ducking the question because it's an issue you want to dismiss with a wave of the hand. I've already pointed out how some authors have extracted money via suits because another work was kind of, sort of like their story. This is the problem with drawing the line. When enough money is on the table, people are going to push the envelop.
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What's to ignore. There WAS a time before copyright. People copied freely. There has been a time of copyright. People can no longer copy freely.
Every prediction of what doom should occur because of "endless copyright" should ALREADY be visible. Already you can't copy pretty much anything anyone currently wants to. I sincerely doubt the "Count of Monte Cristo Fan Fic" is anything like the Harry Potter or Star Wars or Twilight Fan fic. Of course, since the Count of Monte Cristo is in the public domain it wouldn't be fan fic.
What we DO have now that we didn't before is a whole class of professional authors who get paid....not by Kings and Queens or other wealthy patrons...but by the public who buy their works. We have so much more content being created than in days prior to copyright.
So one dude sues the Terminator movie production company and the company pays. Terminator is still made. Other "AI controlled machines take over the world" books and movies are created by the truck loads.
People who want to specifically work in another author's universe, with another author's characters....need to acquire rights to do so from the rights holder. But nobody HAS to write fiction based on another author's work. That's a choice.
Fan fic exists even though -- it violates copyright. Most rights holders don't do anything about it. Some actually encourage it. So even "fan fic" isn't squelched by copyright.
With copyright, intellectual property has been monetized and because of that we have SUPPLY. The SUPPLY itself is the public good.