Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
It wouldn't take an amendment. The Constitution authorizes Congress to create copyright laws and patents. It doesn't mandate them.
And I'm not really advocating doing away with copyright as much as I'm wondering whether we should. I think it's worth discussing the ins and outs of it. Yes it would be unfair to some people but so is the present system. We might want to look at which is more unfair and to how many people.
Barry
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I've never been terribly fond of unlikely thought experiments. Dropping copyright isn't going to happen for a lot of reasons. Heck, changing copyright law so that the US is no longer part of the Berne convention isn't going to happen. There is too much money involved. The best we can hope for is a holding action to keep copyright terms from being extended yet again.
As I said before, before you change things, you need to understand why they are the way they are. I would also say, go take a look at Project Gutenberg, poke around and think about if this is really what you want with regards to novels in the future. As noble as the venture is, it's a pretty rudimentary ebook store. That's what happens when no one has any incentive to invest in something.
I suspect that the consequences for your proposal would be much more negative than you think. I also think that your unspoken assumption, that everything worth reading has already been written, is very fairly obviously not true.