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At the risk of seeming insensitive, I have to think of this in terms of analogy to consultants. There seem to be two classes of consultants:
1) Those who have figure some things out and they will extract every bit of compensation possible. They don't answer questions unless they are getting paid. They won't let loose of some helpful scripts unless it's in the contract. They won't give you important answers that they can give in 2 minutes if they think it's valuable info that they might get paid for. And these people are generally empty of value once you get past the facade. They don't have a whole lot to offer as situations change.
2) Those who freely give away the "no cost" answers to questions with business partners. They gladly are helpful where they can be, and tend to give away snippets of code or technical quickies or even important tips on direction. They know that they can provide value to the situations where they are hired, above and beyond those quick answers. They aren't really worried about the obvious generic info, because their true value is the ongoing ability to analyze and use their expertise and knowledge on an ongoing basis to make things work right.
When I hear arguments about copyright, it remind me of that kind of situation, and it feels like we are protecting too many rights of authors with a long copyright protection period and by giving them too much control over how and when and how often the content is used. Even worse, with DRM schemes, people end up buying the same content over and over just because of the DRM or format compatibility issues. I want the law to encourage lots of Type 1 authors & publishers, not Type 2 authors & publishers. (Note that these are broad sweeping characterizations, so there are still lots of questions about how that could even be applied and what exceptions there might need to be.)
But in my mind, the masses are being deprived of great value in what should be public domain works. Why should a 10 year old novel still be protected? The author or publisher certainly makes a good portion of income in the initial years. Sure, authors and publishers want more control and want more revenues and want long copyright periods. Same with music and movies. Sure, there are margin cases that will affect some authors to the point that they might not even write a book if they don't feel the income justifies it, and their motivation is primarily commercial. But at what cost? I think society would, in general, want to trade a few books not being written in order to have free access to a wealth of content moved into the public domain. It's not a moral issue to me, it's a political and lawmaking issue (which in itself means that it won't be determined by what is fair, but by political processes and influence - why else would Disney keep getting to extend their protections?)
Now, the law is what it is, so I'm not saying we should ignore the law. There are potential consequences. There is a fairness issue of compensating the authors for their work, even if the law doesn't seem fair. And there is the moral question of whether breaking the law is justified, because most people agree that there is some extent of civil duty to be a law keeper instead of a law breaker.
Please don't misinterpret this as commendation of piracy. Nor am I trying to promote free large or small scale copying of copyrighted materials. But I am hoping to shed light on why I feel that the copyright controls may be too strong in current form, and that they are overly strong because of the balance of power is in the hands of publishers and content owners who can lobby more effectively.
Okay, that's probably enough to be a full year's worth of ruckus rousing for me, so I'll let it go! And I certainly understand that there are many legitimate viewpoints here, many of which are different than mine. That's all well and good. It's not an easy problem to solve, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. My thoughts on this topic are very much in flux and the more I think about it, the more complex I find it to be. I don't think there are going to be any really simple answers, and at the end of the day we are left with what we started with - opinions and laws.
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