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Originally Posted by Iphinome
I'll work in reverse. I'm honestly not sure if there's a way to put something in the public domain other than just making the promise that there is. I suppose putting it in writing might make it a contract but I'm not a lawyer. best guess is if someone did make that statement they'd be laughed out of court if they later tried to enforce copyright. But what I was saying is an author can't decide not to allow things to pass into the public domain when copyright expires. That's out of their control. I'm thinking we've run into a bit of a language problem not completely understanding what the other is trying to say.
For the first point it is in fact unnatural. When you were a child did you ever play with your friends games involving your favorite books or tv shows? Pretend you were in the land of oz? Pretend you lived in bedrock with the Flintstones? That's a form of copying there's no thought that someone else owns the rights or not, its just something you like and want to be part of the fun. Your games as a child didn't just belong to the people who inspired them they became a part of your world and you expanded on it. No to say that those games were not yours but belongs to the original authors isn't a natural thing. When you hear a good joke your impulse is to share it with someone else, that's copying. When someone invented basket weaving the whole world didn't line up to buy baskets from Ugh the caveman, they started to weave their own. That's copying and I bet Ugh the caveman was proud of the basket and went and showed it around to Uhnnga Gork and Bob. Being civilized cave people they didn't take the basket away from Ugh respecting the property right of the tangible object but at the same time didn't feel they were stealing if they didn't give three fish to him every time they wove a basket.
I know the example may seem a little silly but the point is ideas getting around is natural and putting control over them is the artificial thing that came along much later.
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No need to explain. I admit, it was quite a stretch and does not really fit the normal definition of "natural law" (by the way, the same exists in German, so that is not a language issue). More accurate would be to say that it is one of the basic rights that have to be adhered to in order to allow human society to function properly. Something that appeals to our most basic sense of justice. You make something, it is yours.