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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
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.
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Sorry, Bob, but I'm obviously missing the crux of your argument.
Why do you want the law to encourage people to try to extract every bit of possible compensation that they can? Your "Type 2" people sound a lot nicer to me than the "Type 1"s!
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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?
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Come on, an author is surely entitled to receive income from their works for their entire lifetime, at least? It's the long "after death" period that's really the issue, and that, as you know, is being driven (in the US at least) by political lobbyists who are trying to protect the commercial interests of large companies like Disney.