Quote:
Originally Posted by Kolenka
If we agree with the original intention of copyright, then how can we justify violating the original intention just because "the other side" commits a wrong? The behavior helps to discredit individuals who do want shorter copyright durations (why adjust copyright at the request of those who won't even honor the adjusted terms?).
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That's not his argument. What he is saying is that what we have in the current state of the law is not an agreement, but the result of the application of illegitimate power.
The other side has not "committed a wrong." They have altered the terms of the agreement in a fashion that renders the original agreement totally irrelevant, even though it appears to be still on the books.
The "social contract" works when all parties agree that each of them have legitimate interests that should be protected as much as possible. It stops working when one side disregards the interests of the other.
And that's what's happened in copyright law in the digital world. One side has managed to extend copyright to the point where the other side's interests are meaningless because for all practical purposes they have been abolished.
When that happens, there is no longer a moral argument that can be made to support the side that has seized all power.
Things get a little confusing because the people who have seized power are not, in fact, the people that copyright was supposed to protect - i.e. the creators and the consumers. The middlemen have seized all the power from both.
If you say that the answer to this is to not buy books, and to not pirate books, you are missing the point. The point is that the copyright system was intended to create a system in which books could be sold, by protecting the economic and cultural interests of everyone.
It's a little easier to see the situation by looking at Disney. The point of copyright was to secure an economic incentive for someone to create Mickey Mouse, so that after a reasonable period of time, someone who never had anything to do with creating Mickey Mouse could nevertheless use Mickey Mouse in a new cartoon.
The man who created Mickey Mouse is dead. Yet a corporate entity continues to control the cultural uses of Mickey Mouse to the point where no one who is alive today can ever make a Mickey Mouse cartoon.
That wasn't the agreement.