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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. |