Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
And so to copyright. When the Government "extends" the terms of copyright, at the behest of and to the economic benefit of the lessee, i.e. the copyright holders, is this not "stealing", by your own definition of Stealing? It's stealing from the people who granted the lease (through their government) in the first place.
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Firstly, I'm not arguing that copyright laws are not in need of changing.
However, in your example the Government(being one party to the agreement) granted the lease on behalf of the people. Being that the government is one party to the agreement they have every right to change the agreement, again on behalf of the people. If that change is to the benefit of the other party(the creator) then they would be foolish not to accept it. Just as, if the Government changed the agreement to the benefit of the people the creators would be foolish not to attempt to stop them from doing so.
So they are not stealing simply by the fact they are benefiting from a changed agreement. Like it or not, the agreement has been changed to the acceptance of both parties.
Cheers,
PKFFW