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Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT

3 recommendations

Rekrul

Member

More, more, more...

Don't any of the SOPA supporters (here, not in the entertainment industry or DC) find it disturbing that no matter how many 'rights' copyright holders are given, it's NEVER enough?

Copyright was originally supposed to last 14 years, renewable for another 14 years. 28 years total was the entire length of copyright. And that covered publication only.

The entertainment industry has gone back to the government over a dozen times begging that copyright be extended. We now have things like performance rights, broadcast rights, streaming rights, etc., and copyright holders are allowed to impose all sorts of limitations on what can be done with their products. Copyright today is such a mess that probably half of the movie studios' catalogs of movies can't be released on DVD because nobody knows how to work out all the rights to them. Hundreds, maybe thousands of old films sit in vaults rotting away because of copyrights.

The supreme court just ruled yesterday that corporations can take works out of the public domain and put them back under copyright! So not only do the corporations refuse to contribute anything to the public domain (which is where all copyrighted works are supposed to end up after a limited time), they now get to take public domain works and re-claim them, making criminals out of everyone who had been legally using those works.

Yet, despite having all these rights which go far, far beyond what the original creators of copyright ever intended, it's not enough.

So what will be enough? When copyright lasts forever? When the public domain no longer exists? When fair use has been outlawed? When copyright infringers are executed for the first offense?

Honestly, how much is enough?