Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection for old songs

Re:Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection f... by int_19h on Thursday September 20, 2018 @12:03AM (#18029690)

> If copyright protection was 10 years, one would be able to take any 10 year old code and close source it (and sell it) with no legal repercussions.

So? 10 years is eternity in the world of software. If some company wants to fork, say, gcc as it was 10 years ago, and try making money selling that... well, people have the right to ruin their business.

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Re:Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection f... by shagie on Thursday September 20, 2018 @09:38AM (#18032316)

gcc would be difficult to make into a commercial product.

How about 10 year old Linux and not having to jump through any hoops or legal problems of TiVoizing it?

Or 10 year old iText from when it switched to AGPL? Now you can completely ignore that.

I can point to people running even older iText- they would love to update it to something more recent with no copyright protection at all under a 10 year limit.

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Re:Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection f... by int_19h on Thursday September 20, 2018 @06:34PM (#18035959)

Sure, why not? Keep in mind that all these would be competing against up-to-date versions of the same software.

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