Scott Ingram wrote: > [Most of the rant elided, since it can more or less be summarized as:] > You all seem so concerned that people may make money off their own hard > work. I've yet to see any CONCRETE examples of how this hurts anyone..aside > from those who wish to steal from creators and benefiting off of their years > of hard work and self-promotion. > > Why are you so afraid that people will prosper? This NOT a zero-sum game! Well, I dunno about others, but _I'm_ pissed off that Mickey Mouse (in the form Disney animated as "Steamboat Willie") won't go into the public domain next year, as it should. Copyright was for life plus 14 years, then Congress extended that to 28 years. Then in 1976 they extended it to 50 years and in '97 again to 70 years. "Perpetual copyright on the installment plan." Read http://www.law.asu.edu/HomePages/Karjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/what.html for some real information about the topic. Yeah, people are prospering under the current laws, but it the problem is that the ones that are prospering the most are the _heirs_ of those who got the copyrights in the first place. Did you know that as of the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act in 1997, _nothing_ will go into the public domain for twenty years? Nothing. People build on the stuff that went before. Steve should of course be safe, but how safe should Disney's works be; the man has been in the ground for almost fifty years! -- Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/