Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
It is, if you actually comprehend it.  To be explicit yet again: Copyright law requires that at a certain point in time, works go into the public domain. In a contract-only environment, no such law exists. Therefore, publishers could legally write a contract that permanently holds the rights, or the rights could revert to the author at a certain point. I.e. in a contract-only environment, works will never go into public domain unless an individual or organization explicitly chooses to surrender the rights. Plus, companies wouldn't need to lobby Congress for extensions, since they'd have hold perpetual rights via the contracts. Not to mention that you'd have to agree to a contract every single time you buy an object -- a process that would drown us all in legalese. Or, that retailers could design highly restrictive rights, treat all purchases as licenses or leases of limited duration, deny you the legal right to lend or resell works, deny you the ability to parody or quote for fair use, etc.
You could add a law saying "regardless of contracts, works must go into PD after x years." But then you'd have the exact same potential issue of legislatures adding extension after extension, and there is no improvement compared to the current situation. |
Contracts are only binding on those who sign them. Without copyright, a company can make whatever deal with an author it likes, but it will still be unable to prevent other people and companies from copying and distributing the author's works and making derivative works based upon it. At worst, the contract would prevent the author from writing anything else.
Now, there ARE ways to try and enforce this kind of scheme without the legal weight of copyright. DRM might be an issue, for example, but that is not at all different from the current situation. And DRM will just continue to be defeated by tech enthusiasts as it previously has been.