Dragaera

Artificial release dates and online publishing

David Dyer-Bennet dd-b at dd-b.net
Thu Dec 12 20:03:04 PST 2002

"Gametech" <voltronalpha at hotmail.com> writes:

> Copyright, IP, Patents restrict the rights of the 'whole' for the increase
> of rights for the entity (often a corporation).

For the purpose of making the work possible in the first place.
You'd lose most of the writers, most of the musicians, and nearly all
of the movie makers if they couldn't make a living at it.

Setting the term of the legally granted monopoly is always tricky.  I
feel that the current copyright terms are grossly excessive.  I
thought life + 50 was too long.  You can argue for a long time about
what the "right" term for copyright on a book is (and it's not
necessarily the same as the right time for a movie, a song, a
recording of a performance of a song, or any other type of work).  

But no point arguing how long it should be until there's some general
agreement that some sort of intellectual property protection is
necessary. 

Do you disagree with the whole concept of *some* kind of mechanism to
let people benefit from the creative work they do?  I'm wide open to
discussing different ways to approach the problem, and they could look
*totally* different from what we have now.  It could be done without a
concept of property, even, I think.  
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net  /  http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
 John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
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