Dragaera

Artificial release dates and online publishing

Fri Dec 13 11:20:41 PST 2002


Frank Mayhar wrote:
> 
> Scott Ingram wrote:
> > Why do you believe life + 50 is excessive? The only reason I can see that
> > being excessive is in an effort to avoid inadvertant plagiarism.  I believe
> > Spider Robinson wrote a short story proposing that there were a limited
> > number of pleasant melodies out there and that copyright was crippling human
> > creativity.
> 
> "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson, yes.
> 
> One that sticks in the mind.  Apropos, too, at the moment.  We've now
> got what amounts to indefinite copyright, as Congress continues to extend
> it bit by bit.
> 
> Hopefully Supreme Court decision on the Eldred case will alleviate that...

This current SC?  Not likely.  It's likely that, as long as Disney and
other corps who would benefit from copyright in perpetuity donate funds,
copyright will be extended into perpetuity.