Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
It's funny how in nearly 300 years of copyright law, no government has ever reduced the length of copyright. And so it's gone from 14 years to about 120 years.
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What incentive would they have to do so?
The original intent of copyright was to provide incentive to creators by giving them exclusive rights to their creations.
You can blame a good bit of current rights changes on DisneyCo, who want to insure Mickey Mouse and friends never enter the public domain. While I understand the motivation, it drags a lot of other rights along in its wake.
My suspicion is that an appropriate solution is a recognition of different rights for individuals vs organizations. For an individual, copyright might be "Life + X years". A corporation like Disney
doesn't die, so rights held by them might just be considered in force as long as the corporation still wants them.
I don't care if Disney retains the rights to Mickey and friends. I'd just like other work to eventually lapse into the public domain.
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Dennis