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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
I may resurrect that thread later, if I have a chance. 
However I don't think copyright is going anywhere, nor should it (see above). DRM may or may not, but that's also a separate issue.
I concur that one should chastise and/or punish unethical corporations. It gets a bit problematic though when your ethical standards make it all but impossible for any company to behave in a moral fashion.  (There are also many people who do not even try to make any distinctions, and just loathe the mere idea of corporations and/or copyright.) Lobbying is far from a perfect system, but it is legal, and the desire to restrict it runs smack into our (yes, citizens' as well as organizations') legal right to participate in the electoral process. |
Should corporations have the right to lobby? They don't have the right to vote. Perhaps we should restrict the right to lobby to individuals with the right to vote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
True, but copyright laws have been revised several times, and put under legal review, so it looks like the extension process is legal / constitutional (in the US at least). If the contract specified that the rights are owned by the publisher for 50 years and then revert to the author, then you have a "time limit" which is contractually binding. I.e. I don't think the idea that "copyright extensions are violating the contract" hold up.
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What about me? I, as part of the public, have been robbed of my patrimony of public domain items. I, as part of the public granted the right in the first place. The public wrote the contract. And it was abrogated through bribery (by my definition of bribery.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
As a member of The Public I'm not terribly put out by some of the extensions. Many of them actually make sense, since life expectancy and the ability to distribute content has grown significantly since the first copyright laws were established. If extension on extension keeps getting piled on, that will be problematic -- but at some point that process will violate the "limited time" principle and won't fly. |
As a member of the public I
am put out. The 2003 Supreme Court decision didn't put any limit on "limited" time. An extension for 1 million year would pass their muster, because a million years is still "limited". Of course, these are the same people who brought you the
Kelo decision.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
I also don't think that everything needs to go into public domain; it really doesn't bother me that you can't legally make a t-shirt that depicts Mickey Mouse smoking a spliff (unless you're doing so as a satire or parody, which iirc is a form of protected speech). Offhand I don't know how you could draw the line, especially without creating a huge loophole. Either way, I don't view this as anywhere near as egregious an offense as failing to (or choosing not to) pay royalties to an artist.
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That's not what's is in the US Constitution....
We founded this country on limited government because our founding fathers knew there was nothing more dangerous than an uncontrolled government. In I.P. we seem to have created one....And it's not even competitively priced.