Personally, I don't see why any author should have to pay anything to anyone in order to establish and maintain a copyright forever. It ought to be inherent to the creative process.
Copyright was originally intended to give the author limited control/ownership, in exchange that the works would become public domain when copyright expired.
Otherwise, Shakespeare (and other valuable works) would be owned by the individual (or in todays context, corporations) forever, and noone would be able to use them without paying the copyright owner a fee (no more Macbeth on the stage !)
But now the corporations pay our (yours, since I can't vote) representatives to extend copyright, and will most likely keep doing it forever, so that Mickey Mouse doesn't go into public domain, allowing ppl to use Mickey in porn without Disney's consent.
And now the USA is muscling every other nation to use the US guidelines for copyright
-- Michael O'Keefe | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Live on and Ride a 03 BMW F650GSDakar| [EMAIL PROTECTED] / | I like less more or less less than |Work:+1 858 845 3514 / | more. UNIX-live it,love it,fork() it |Fax :+1 858 845 2652 /_p_| My views are MINE ALONE, blah, blah, |Home:+1 760 788 1296 \`O'| blah, yackety yack - don't come back |Fax :+1 858 _/_\|_, -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
