[Good Old Neon]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

actually i consider locking down works which should have entered the public domain for our collective good years ago to be a pretty serious wrong inflicted on *all* of us.

How? How has our culture suffered as a result of other people’s works not being free? I’m not trying to be a pain in the arse, but it’s one of those frequently made statements that really cannot be qualified – imo.

so, a writer should be able to write one book at the age of, say, 20 years old, and continue earning money from it (presumably, enough to live on) even if they never write anything again ? wow, if only that applied to graphic design !! i'd love to make one website and then coast on that till the end of my years as i kept getting paid over and over and over and over for that one site ! (and webdesign is in fact a creative work as well as technical, which requires a lot of study and practice to do well, including ongoing training to keep up with evolving techniques and simply to improve one's craft, so the analogy is not so farfetched...)

Sure, why not? How are you, or society in general, harmed by some now sort of obscure author continuing to profit from his or her work 60 years after publication? The work is available for sale, in libraries at no charge, at used books stores, etc – it’s not as if you wont have access to it until the copyright runs out.