Old Viewpoints.muse

   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.