If you have some personal beef with me, you know where the Pit is.
If you think I’m breaking any board rules, report it to a mod.
I have no problem with your person. I am annoyed by your pointless borderline-off-topic assertions, which currently form pretty much the entirety of your argument.
I personally think that the ‘natural’ right of a creator to control his work is a proper part of this discussion. As I said, I think that if a person never publishes or sells their work, it is morally incumbent upon us to respect and protect their right to keep their secrets, by the court and sword if need be.
But I don’t see there as being even a fragment of basis in the idea that that moral right can be sold. There are legal rights that can be sold, but there is no moral element to these sold rights. And your attempts to try to shut down discussion about altering or limiting the legal rights due to your affection for those nonexistent moral rights doesn’t fly with me.
Exactly. If anything the really morally questionable part is that someone with more money can take control of a creator’s work and do what they like with it. And take the credit for the work of creation more often than not.
But the economic and legal arrangement between that guy with money and the consumer? That’s arbitrary.
Translation: I can’t argue against you, so I’m going to accuse you of breaking the rules.
I offer the same advice to you. If you have something against the guy, take it to the Pit. If you think he’s broken the rules, report him. What? You’re in the middle? Perhaps he is too.
OP: I like the idea of decreasing copyright. We’ve followed the letter rather than the spirit for too long. My proposition is to do what they do in the music business: anybody can record a cover, they just have to pay royalties. Do that with software, and anyone who wants to sell software that is not being sold by the original company can do so. In other words, give them economic incentive, as that’s the only way you can change the laws in this country.
Don’t think I’ve attempted to shut down discussion. Doesn’t matter whether you characterize a right as “legal” or “moral”. The right to control the distribution of one’s creation exists. It can be sold. Doesn’t matter if you like it or not.
You’re admittedly arguing for a change in current law. The basis for that change appears to be mostly “I WANNA!”. I reject that as a valid basis.
It’s a little more complicated than that- the thrust of it is that it’s being argued that it’s in society as a whole’s interest to have this sort of thing (entertainment software, but a case could also be made for books and movies) available, especially if (and this is a key component here) it hasn’t been used or available in a time frame which is stretching into decades.
To reiterate: No-one is talking about immediately taking away the copyright on a new or “active” product. We’re talking about doing it for decades old, obsolete, unused products that the copyright holder- who, as has been established, almost inevitably had nothing to do with creating the work- has done nothing with in that time.
I’d be happy with a token royalty fee too- 5c a copy or something trivial like that. But the point is that copyright shouldn’t be used to prevent something from being disseminated at all except in very limited circumstances.
Except “I WANNA” is the only reason the present law exists either; it just isn’t working properly. Those “rights” you claim that the owners of intellectual properties have exist because we as a society collectively decided granting those rights benefited us. If they aren’t serving their function properly they should be changed; there’s no grand moral principle of property rights involved here. The justification for these laws is the utilitarian benefits they grant the consumers.
Whether it’s a legal or moral right matters if somebody is basing their entire position on the fallacious assumption that the rights are moral, and thus should be preserved independent of what anybody wants or the good of society. (Hint: That person would be you.)
It only appears that way because you don’t understand my argument. I claim* responsibility for your lack of comprehension - I very likely have been unclear.
It’s a fact that copyright exists for the stated purpose of promoting the creation of arts for consumption by the public, because the government thinks the public benefits when there’s more stuff for them to buy/enjoy. If you think that people have a right to their own creations, that’s your concern, but the law clearly has a different motivation.
Given that the law’s motivation is to get more materials into the sphere of public consumption, we can conclude that when copyright is stymying the public from having access to things, that copyright is backfiring and acting counter to its own purpose. This is the current situation when things go out of print - the items are basically locked away from public consumption until the copyright expires.
I have no interest in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but if there are ways of modifying copyright to prevent things dropping out of print without doing too much other damage, I think it’s plainly clear that such options should be seriously considered. And after dabbling in this thread I think compulsory liscencing after a period of seller inactivity is likely the best answer to this specific problem - it leaves the legal rights of non-sellers completely untouched, and either possible reaction by a company serves the intended goal: if they want to fully retain their government-granted monopoly they must keep selling, which keeps the product on the market and available; and if they choose to abandon the use of their government-granted monopoly then they lose it, which makes the product available to the market again. Win-win. And even if they do abandon their government-granted monopoly they’d still retain the right to receive payments due to their status as owner of the property rights, preserving a little of the creators’ incentive that copyright is intented to provide - so, win-win-win. Seriously, the winnage here is overwhelming.
Against which you are presenting the argument of imaginary moral rights, and of inertia. Oh so compelling.
- It’s mine, dammit, you can’t have it! You think you’re responsible too? That responsibility is my intellectual property! I sue you! I sue you!