Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
Sorry, I don't really understand what you're saying. I still don't see what you're calling a "land grab." Copyright holders have a right to own their copyrights, and to be paid for their usage. Now, if you're talking about the changes the government has made to public domain laws, I fully agree on that, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean or not.
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Here is an example. Ernest Hemmingway wrote all of his works under the 1909 copyright act, which granted a copyright for a maximum of 56 years. Under those rules, everything he wrote up to 1953 ought to be in the public domain. Everything
everybody in the US wrote should be in the public domain up to 1953. But are they? No Way! Because the copyright agreement has been unilateraly stretched in favor of copyright holders! That's a land grab. Every buck gathered by the owners of those pre-1953 copyrights is a buck wrongfully taken out of the public's pockets. Those works were willingly made under the 1909 laws, nobody was cheated. So why should the heirs and assigns keep getting more and more money, and control access to, these older works? It's not the authors, in most cases, they're dead. And Dead men don't create. No, it's just a land grab for the heirs and assigns, driven by corporations that never die, and who expect their copyrights to have the same benefit....