Why public domain

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Nobody forced Platon, Herodot, Aristotle, Newton and many great thinkers of the world to write - for our own good.

On the other hand, the libraries and bookshops are full of all kind of stupidities written by authors that are forced by contracts to publish a book a year.

We also arguably have more great fiction coming out than the ancient Greeks did. As well as more science based books, philosophy though debatable if there are as many of equal caliber, etc.

No one forced those authors to sign those contracts. They chose to. I’d also argue the quantity of quality we get is worth the dreck we need to shift through.

[leebase]

I suppose if we are ok with Royalty and the Church to finance pretty much all of our works...we could go back to those "good old days"

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

We also arguably have more great fiction coming out than the ancient Greeks did. As well as more science based books, philosophy though debatable if there are as many of equal caliber, etc.

No one forced those authors to sign those contracts. They chose to. I’d also argue the quantity of quality we get is worth the dreck we need to shift through.

And every single one of those books was produced knowing that it was subject to a limited time copyright. So it doesn't seem to be causing an issue, does it?

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by leebase

I suppose if we are ok with Royalty and the Church to finance pretty much all of our works...we could go back to those "good old days"

Can we also bring back the authoritarian control those two bodies had over what gets written? I’d sure like to live in a geocentric galaxy again.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

And every single one of those books was produced knowing that it was subject to a limited time copyright. So it doesn't seem to be causing an issue, does it?

Ask Disney if it's an issue.

For the vast majority of works, it's not an issue.

Should we have trademark limits? By now, Coke should be owned by society, right? Why shouldn't we all be able to sell sugar water named "coke"?

Time to take the NEXT step in improving the value chain of intellectual property. Those types that are not scarce, are not time limited.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Ask Disney if it's an issue.

For the vast majority of works, it's not an issue.

Should we have trademark limits? By now, Coke should be owned by society, right? Why shouldn't we all be able to sell sugar water named "coke"?

Time to take the NEXT step in improving the value chain of intellectual property. Those types that are not scarce, are not time limited.

Actually, like Kleenex, I suspect the word coke has become generic and lost it's trademark protection. I could be wrong. Certainly, in the South, one uses Coke for any carbonated soft drink. If you order a coke in the south, you likely will get a Coca Cola, but you also might get a Pepsi.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Actually, like Kleenex, I suspect the word coke has become generic and lost it's trademark protection. I could be wrong. Certainly, in the South, one uses Coke for any carbonated soft drink. If you order a coke in the south, you likely will get a Coca Cola, but you also might get a Pepsi.

I’d be rather surprised if Disney or Coca Cola wanted to try and crack down on people using Coke (or suitable Disney replacement) in common speech. It’d certainly earn them a black mark in terms of PR. An example of this is seen on one of Gordon Ramsey’s shows where a restaurant owner trademarked the term ‘hon’, and aggressively went after those who used it, which nearly cost her her business since of course no one was rooting for her success (the food wasn’t great either).

Just try selling something you label as Coke which isn’t Coke on a wide scale and see if you get a cease and desist letter.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

I’d be rather surprised if Disney or Coca Cola wanted to try and crack down on people using Coke (or suitable Disney replacement) in common speech. It’d certainly earn them a black mark in terms of PR. An example of this is seen on one of Gordon Ramsey’s shows where a restaurant owner trademarked the term ‘hon’, and aggressively went after those who used it, which nearly cost her her business since of course no one was rooting for her success (the food wasn’t great either).

Just try selling something you label as Coke which isn’t Coke on a wide scale and see if you get a cease and desist letter.

Oh, I suspect that if you label something as Coke and try to sell it, you will get a cease and desist letter. That doesn't mean that it's a trademark that would hold up in court though. Lawyers use cease and desist letters regardless of how solid their case is since at least a large percentage will follow it.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Actually, like Kleenex, I suspect the word coke has become generic and lost it's trademark protection. I could be wrong. Certainly, in the South, one uses Coke for any carbonated soft drink. If you order a coke in the south, you likely will get a Coca Cola, but you also might get a Pepsi.

I can assure you, Kleenix is still a defendable trademark. You might say "hand me the Kleenex" and point to a box of Puffs....but just go ahead and sell your own Kleenex branded tissues.

You can't even put your sugar water in a bottle the SHAPE of a Coca-Cola bottle as Coke has trademarked the shape.

And yet, we have all manner of brands of sugar water. There is no scarcity to brand naming...just as there is no scarcity to fiction. I'm for permanent copyrights just like we have permanent trademarks. As long as a company or individual is using their trademark/copyright, it should be their intellectual property.

The prior statement was a statement of opinion. It's the correct opinion to have.

The prior statement about the opinion being correct....was itself a statement of opinion.

[SleepyBob]

What does "using their copyright" mean to you?

[Philippe D.]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

And who exactly has control over the rate of inflation? The government in need of more money.

No, and even if they did, it still would not make inflation into a tax.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Nobody forced Platon, Herodot, Aristotle, Newton and many great thinkers of the world to write - for our own good.

Newton deliberately declined to write for a mass audience:

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Albert Einstein, by contrast, wrote for both specialist audiences and for a general readership. Examples of the latter:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ory-of-gravit/

https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Sp...=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Without copyright, specialists would still write articles in an attempt to convince other specialists that they should get tenure, and just for the joy of advancing science. And some would blog. But there wouldn't be the editorial teams required to produce first rate popular science.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

I’d be rather surprised if Disney or Coca Cola wanted to try and crack down on people using Coke (or suitable Disney replacement) in common speech.

That's a weird take. Nobody is saying that calling softdrinks Cokes (common in the South of the US) or tissues "kleenex's" in conversation is something a company is going to worry about.

But -- just because a trademark takes on a generic meaning for the whole category doesn't mean a company has lost it's trademark.

Trademarks don't have a time out. As long as a company is still using the trade mark, it's theirs.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

That's a weird take. Nobody is saying that calling softdrinks Cokes (common in the South of the US) or tissues "kleenex's" in conversation is something a company is going to worry about.

But -- just because a trademark takes on a generic meaning for the whole category doesn't mean a company has lost it's trademark.

Trademarks don't have a time out. As long as a company is still using the trade mark, it's theirs.

I don't believe that's true. You can lose a certain level of trademark protection if the trademark falls into common usage. I'm not sure what the actual distinctions are.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by leebase

That's a weird take. Nobody is saying that calling softdrinks Cokes (common in the South of the US) or tissues "kleenex's" in conversation is something a company is going to worry about.

But -- just because a trademark takes on a generic meaning for the whole category doesn't mean a company has lost it's trademark.

Trademarks don't have a time out. As long as a company is still using the trade mark, it's theirs.

Pwalker seemed to assert that the common use of Coke to mean soda/pop/soft drink implied CocaCola was unable to pursue those individuals because the trademark protections had lapsed.

I was just pointing out that companies are generally wiser than to try to enforce usage when there's no explicit attempt to exploit a brand name for another product. And that the lack of them doing so shouldn't be taken as a sign of anything except a smart PR department that corporate actually listens to. Since, as noted, trying to pursue those cases would be a PR nightmare and wouldn't gain them any profit.