On 10/23/07, Martin Banner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If someone creates something, physical or intellectually, shouldn't > that person be entitled to some sort of financial benefit for his/her > entire lifetime, regardless of how long?
Whether they should or should not, they certainly are under current law, and then some. In the US Constitution, copyright is not a right at all but rather privilege that may be bestowed (and has been bestowed) by the Congress. The assumption is that all intellectual creations belong to the culture and public, but their creators deserve compensation for a limited time period. The reason copyright appears in the Constitution at all is that framers wished to foster and encourage creativity. The problem with the absurdly long term limits we have now is that they do the reverse. They stifle creativity. For example, a music publisher now has more incentive to hoard and extend the copyrights of its current properties than it does to seek out and promote new properties. Furthermore, no creation comes into existence in a vacuum. They build on the creative efforts of others. Current laws discourage the use of anything pre-existing artifacts younger than about 100 years old. They discourage scholarship about creative works more recent than that as well. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
