| 1 | #title The Weak Must Die |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Intermediate forms of thought which have been refined. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | * Misc |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ** Copyright Is Bad for Society |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Copyright is a tool used to placate publishers who feel that they will |
| 10 | make no money if things can be freely copied. Publishers, however, |
| 11 | contribute **nothing** of worth to our culture; they are mere middlemen |
| 12 | who print the creative work of others, and so their pleas should be |
| 13 | ignored. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | A short copyright term is acceptable, and worked in most of the world |
| 16 | for a few hundred years. As it stands now we have perpetual copyrights |
| 17 | (as in the Old World), and the cultural stagnation that affected |
| 18 | Europe then is now occurring today in most of the world. There are |
| 19 | many books published between 1917 and a few years ago that I would |
| 20 | love to read, but am unable to because they have not been printed (for |
| 21 | older books often in as long as 40 or 50 years). The albums of a few |
| 22 | bands I like are out of print now and I will be long dead before I get |
| 23 | a chance to purchase them (*if* copyright is not extended again, which |
| 24 | experience tells me will happen soon) because the record labels have |
| 25 | no interest in returning the masters to the band! |
| 26 | |
| 27 | What point is there to allowing copyright to exist on works which are |
| 28 | not being published? If their terms had expired there is a chance that |
| 29 | they would be being published by public domain publishing houses who |
| 30 | subsist on smaller margins. This would [[http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=482][create real economic value]], and |
| 31 | more importantly great **social** value. Allowing art to rot is a |
| 32 | disrespect to human creativity and an immeasurable loss for all future |
| 33 | humans. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | I predict that in two or three hundred years there will be nearly no |
| 36 | record of any literature or art produced in the twentieth century. As |
| 37 | it stands today we have lost most of it with the exception of a few |
| 38 | trashy works which have become popular to the masses. |