This sounds far-fetched to me, but I do know that the national parks
now charge professional photographers and videographers a fee to
shoot in their boundaries and that companies can patent
naturally-occurring genes, so who knows what someone might try to do?
I think U.S. copyright laws have changed from a way to protect a
creator's rights and to encourage creativity into a way to protect
corporate profits and discourage creativity. They need changing, but
corporate pressure continues to move them in the wrong direction. As
an example, Walt Disney lobbied successfully to extend copyright
protection duration a few years ago simply to protect Mickey Mouse
from becoming public domain.
As video editors, we're in the middle where we'd like some protection
for our creations so we can make some money from them, but we'd also
like to be able to use others' creations -- like music and graphics
-- in our videos. I'm all for paying living creators for using their
creations, but it's discouraging to have to pay royalties to a
company to be able to use music written or recorded by a long-dead
musician. Those royalties do nothing to encourage the musician to
create more music.
There comes a point in the life of any creation where it has rewarded
its creator amply and should become part of the public domain, a
building block that others can use in their own creations. U.S.
copyright law no longer supports that.
Thanks for putting up with my soapbox rant,
Mike Boom
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