Ddrak wrote:Copyright should last no more than 10 years. If you haven't made your money in that time then it should be turned over to people that can. The current RIAA-sponsored limits of 75+ years are just insane.
Dd
Well, there are two distinct forms of copyright ownership - Personal, and works-for-hire. It is hard to deny the right to profit from a personal work, for the life of the creator. Where the issue must become murkier is the work-for-hire, especially for corporations. The problem here is not that people cannot make their money from it in a brief time, it is the precise opposite - certain things are cash engines in perpetuity. Witness Mickey Mouse. At what point does the right of the public to the creation - whose creator is long deceased - exceed that of the corporation that has, for lack of better terms, nurtured that creation?
The key line in the sand is the late 1920s, and the rise of the first real cornerstone of modern media - the motion picture w/ sound. Once you break that one, more than one major media company is going to be forced to adapt, but until you break them, they're going to fight tooth and nail to save their golden-egg-laying-geese. They're not insane, and the question as to if they're protecting the public interest at large is a fairly complex one. How much damage to the value of Mickey Mouse would occur if he were 'open sourced'? I don't know. I don't think as much as Disney would claim, but, I don't know.
