Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
This is a transistional period. By the time today's 25 year olds are 60, copyright will be gone. It will be gone because the populace by then simply won't believe in it and will have voted it out of existance.
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No, it won't, because the reasons copyright were created for, still exist.
Copyrights weren't created to keep you from copying a book longhand and giving it--or selling it--to someone else. They were created to keep publishing houses from grabbing their competitors' books and undercutting the original publisher, thus (1) preventing the author from being paid and (2) getting profit without the hassle of finding a good book, editing it, and promoting it.
Those reasons are still plenty valid, and apply to many marketplaces.
The problems started happening when end users became able to make cheap copies; the laws, which were aimed at being able to punish corporations for million-dollar scams, seem draconian when applied to an individual customer.
That's the part that needs fixing. Copyright laws don't need to end, but they do need to be re-written to address both new technologies, and the difference between corporate poaching and individual user sharing.