Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
There's an obvious reason to treat the work of an author and a furniture builder differently, and that's in how they get paid. - I bake you a bread, build you a chair, mow your lawn, teach you how to knit -- I do a job for you, you pay me for it, I get enough from you to cover my expenses and get a decent wage. We're done.
- I hold a concert -- I do a job for a lot of people, all of them pay me a part of the total cost, and all together, I get enough to cover my expenses and have a decent wage. We're done.
- But: If I write a book, or make a computer game, or design a new type of chair, I need a lot of people to each pay a part of the total cost, the payments will be spread out over time (unlike the concert), and I'm vulnerable because someone else could copy my work in a fraction of the time I spent, sell it much cheaper, and rob me of the fruits of my labor. So we need laws and cultural norms to protect the creators' rights in these cases.
Life + (small amount of time) will be enough to protect the creators' wages, eternal copyright gives no advantages to society, and a lot of disadvantages that have been described in this thread. |
Well said, and I guess our only disagreeance might possibly be how long that "small amount" of time is. And I am not sure, that you can apply the same amount of time to something an author wrote early in their career as compared to something they wrote decades later. As surely over that time, they have met that criteria you mentioned for others.