Re:Copyright doesn't need 95 years to get the job done
by Dylan16807 on Monday January 03, 2022 @06:20PM
(#29788507)
> I have photographs that I took 20 years ago that I occasionally sell a print of. You are suggesting that that material now be part of the public domain?
Have you been selling the prints for 20 years? Then sure, that's probably fine. If you didn't make enough money off those sales, encouragement to go take new photos is a good thing.
> For that matter, you're suggesting GCC version 3.0.3, Emacs 21.2 and all prior versions be public domain and not have any copyright or copyleft protection on it? And thus, I could take the source code for them, modify it, close source it release my own version.
But you also get to take any closed-source program from X years ago and it becomes public domain too. I'm comfortable with this tradeoff. Though I'd like to go further and force companies to register a copy of the source code when they register their copyright, to be released upon expiration. And we could always add specific open-source legislation...
If you really don't like 20 years we can do 30. But I think half an adult lifetime is long enough to profit off any particular work.
Have you been selling the prints for 20 years? Then sure, that's probably fine. If you didn't make enough money off those sales, encouragement to go take new photos is a good thing.
> For that matter, you're suggesting GCC version 3.0.3, Emacs 21.2 and all prior versions be public domain and not have any copyright or copyleft protection on it? And thus, I could take the source code for them, modify it, close source it release my own version.
But you also get to take any closed-source program from X years ago and it becomes public domain too. I'm comfortable with this tradeoff. Though I'd like to go further and force companies to register a copy of the source code when they register their copyright, to be released upon expiration. And we could always add specific open-source legislation...
If you really don't like 20 years we can do 30. But I think half an adult lifetime is long enough to profit off any particular work.