Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
Jaime:
Copyright in the US is an explicit trade: Content creators get a temporary limited property right in the content they create, thus "ensuring" that they have the opportunity to profit from their work. In exchange, all content enters the public domain on expiration of copyright. The key idea -- which is explicitly stated in the Constitution, by the way -- is that the opportunity for profit is intended to provide an incentive for content creators (writers, artists, programmers, etc.) to create more content. For the creators, it's a chance to make more money. For the public, it's a chance both to have paid access to the content early on, and free access to the content later.
Thus, here in the US, if you are "pirating" content you are reneging on the Public's side of the deal by failing to compensate the creator according to the terms he has set. That's the "[...] property right" part above. Libraries, access for the blind and disabled, and fair-use access fall under the "limited" part of "limited property right."
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Works expiring into the public domain??
Oh my. Thank you. After all this work I've done today, I needed a good laugh like that.
I'm sorry, I think you (and other authors) deserve to get paid for you work, but this idea of "an agreement" has long since been shot to heck. You will never see anything enter the public domain. I will never see anything enter the public domain. This "agreement" you speak of is simply theoretical. It's never really going to happen. As was previously stated, copyright is up to life +70 years. Copyright started at 14 yrs, and was renewable once. Unless the laws are repealed (which, let's face it,
never happens) nothing will ever move into the public domain again. As each previously established time frame for items to pass into it came due, the time frame was extended. And when life+70 comes along for the first big-name item with attorneys to fight for it, it'll get extended again.
The public domain is dead. Shrinking, really. Snow White is a public domain story, try doing your own movie-version of that and see how it goes.