You make as much sense tired as I do perfectly active. ;)
This increases innovation, which after all is the reason why the bill of rights allowed for copyright and patents to restrict the freedom of the press/speech, a freedom which otherwise was supposed to be infringed by no law.
I was thinking about this exact thing yesterday, actually. It seems to me that the innovation part works reasonably well with the patent regime. A patent expires twenty years after filing, and so after a reasonable period of exclusivity, the invention goes into the public domain. But copyright term is life+70 years. That's a very long time, which makes me wonder what sort of "innovation" is really contemplated by copyright protection. It seems to me that some amount of exclusivity is necessary to encourage dissemination of original ideas, but you're talking (in most cases) of protection that lasts over a century. I think this is total overkill.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 02:36 pm (UTC)This increases innovation, which after all is the reason why the bill of rights allowed for copyright and patents to restrict the freedom of the press/speech, a freedom which otherwise was supposed to be infringed by no law.
I was thinking about this exact thing yesterday, actually. It seems to me that the innovation part works reasonably well with the patent regime. A patent expires twenty years after filing, and so after a reasonable period of exclusivity, the invention goes into the public domain. But copyright term is life+70 years. That's a very long time, which makes me wonder what sort of "innovation" is really contemplated by copyright protection. It seems to me that some amount of exclusivity is necessary to encourage dissemination of original ideas, but you're talking (in most cases) of protection that lasts over a century. I think this is total overkill.