I think Lemurion hit the important issue here... but there are inaccuracies in your own statement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBlueSky
There are four inaccuracies in that statement 
1. I, don’t require your permission.
2. No you haven’t.
3. Yes I can.
4. Information has rights too — it wants to be free. |
There are laws in place that handle certain sticky issues with copyright like the concept of First Sale, and so on... In that case, you are right that you don't require the author's permission to resell the copy. The fact that the author is offering a copy for sale to you is
implicit authorization to have a copy of their work. There is nothing in copyright that says they MUST sell it to you or let you have a copy, so in fact you do need their permission. But under the law it is implicit, rather an explicit in most cases. This is a key distinction.
Producing copies outside of what implicit authorization is given to you via law is a copyright violation. A lot of the rationale behind this concept in law is that if 10,000 copies being made without permission can kill an individual's livelihood, than 1 copy is still harmful (just a fraction as much). If you start getting in the business of trying to set the bar for what is harmful and what isn't, you open loopholes to be gamed.
Personifying 'information' doesn't help an argument either way. Does information being freely accessible benefit society? The original concept behind copyright seems to agree that it does.
That is what is important when it comes to the concept of the public domain. We can argue that the terms of copyright have been extended to harm the public domain, and I'd agree... but I don't think that makes the concept of a time limited monopoly as a carrot to give someone an incentive to turn education and entertainment into a career any less valid. It's a balancing act, and views at the extremes ignore the benefit they get from the other side. The time limited monopoly encourages people to actually make a full-time career out of things like research, book writing (educational, editorial, and entertaining), and so on. This provides more content for public domain than volunteers and part-timers could do alone. But without the expiration of copyrights, then the public domain is left in the same state as if you had no copyright in the first place.