Quote:
Originally Posted by zosthegoatherd  I am skeptical about any attempt to extend the reach of copyright holders. While I am sure you and almost everyone on here are a hard working individual just trying to make a living, the fact of the matter is that even before piracy became the huge problem that it is, large content holders were trying to wiggle out of releasing material into the public domain once copyright had expired, as well as trying to prevent fair use. |
But this is just really a fairly bogus argument. We all know that probably 90+ percent of copyright violation is for material that would not be out of copyright even if it were only five years probably. Because it's the current, popular stuff that is most stolen and on which people depend the most on for their revenues.
If companies are trying to extend copyright, OK, fine, go deal with that as a separate legal issue. But it makes no sense to use that as any sort of argument at all relative to the problem of downloading, because it just doesn't have anything to do with it.
And I hardly think it represents any sort of power grab. The time limits that existed previously weren't really reflective of a world (and economy) in which IP was so important. So I think that the recent adjustments are reasonable. Anything that still has any value after that period of time is clearly of cultural significance. The vast majority of stuff does not and is created purely as a for profit business, and therefore a copyright period that allows the value of such non-long term merit material to completely devalue doesn't seem odd to me.
The point of copyright was never to let people get stuff for free really. It was to encourage the creation of works of cultural value and then let them enter the public domain. If something still is of value 75 years after the creation of it, then it's clearly something of long term cultural value.