Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
In a philosophical way, I'm frustrated about these conversations not really talking about the root issues. Is money the most important, and even only important, consideration when thinking about copyrights? Will anything change so long as we have political systems that make political contributions a legal form of bribery for directing the passage of laws? To me, current trends in copyrights are canaries in the coalmine showing the erosion of law-making for the greater good.
Here in Canada, the length of copyright terms is going up due to pressure from the American government, under the direction of large corporations. That's just disappointing in so many ways.
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Well, the whole lifetime movement for copyright was pushed by a wealthy author (Victor Hugo) who was peeved because he thought that copyright was his personal right. So Disney is simply following in his footsteps. Long copyright is purely about protecting commercial profits of a small number of works. The vast majority of authors get the vast majority of sells in a fairly short time period.
Of course, as I've pointed out before, books really doesn't move the copyright needle much. It's mostly driven by movies these days. It's not exactly a surprise that the US joined the Berne convention about the time that box office outside the US became an important market for film makers.