It’s a trade. The default state of affairs is no copyright protection.
Society has decided to trade a limited duration monopoly on the copyright of the work, in order to promote more works being created so that we have more works in the public domain.
The entire purpose of copyright is to generate works for the public domain.
So, when the current copyright system fails to do that, we should change that.
You can’t seriously tell me that if we had a law that said: if you don’t make a video game available commercially for 30 years, it enters the public domain, that would have a meaningful impact on the number of video games created.
> The entire purpose of copyright is to generate works for the public domain.
Is it? Or do we just think on average, producing more copyrighted works adds to the greatness and happiness of our society?
The writing of Harry Potter has brought joy to hundreds of millions of people. The production of a renowned textbook like SICP helps educate an entire generation of professionals and raise the nation's productivity.
In general, copyright is intended to help more good texts become available, either under a limited monopoly, or later in public domain.
(Same thing with patents, that were intended to help more inventions be published, and not be lost as trade secrets, while also helping to build businesses around them..)
Because they published it; they were free not to do so if they didn't want anybody to reproduce or distribute it (in fact that seems like the easiest way to do so).
In order to encourage more people to make these works, however, our government grants them a temporary, limited monopoly on the work's reproduction and distribution, but this is a means to an end that we agree to for utilitarian reasons, not some kind of actual inherent right on their part or responsibility on mine.
> Because they published it; they were free not to do so if they didn't want anybody to reproduce or distribute it
Copyright protects works at the moment they are created, not when they are reproduced or distributed. Most of the works under copyright protection have never been distributed.
Not really, copyright and trade secrets have different subject matter. There are many things could qualify as trade secrets but not creative works (e.g. a recipe), and many things that qualify as creative works but not trade secrets (e.g. a song).
Once it becomes a cultural artifact it becomes more than just "someone's work". The goal of legislation is / should be to figure out how to balance the different and competing needs into a system that works reasonably well.
The same thing that makes people entitled to society expending resources on the very real, physical legal protection of intangible ideas that they 'own'.
Creative works aren't made in a vacuum, all creators take from the public domain. They have an obligation to give back to it.
Copyright and patent terms were designed to facilitate that. The endless extensions of the former were a cynical, self-serving attack on a public good.
> The Congress shall have Power…To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I do think there's something like a "right to ideas". Like you can't tell someone to just forget about something, things people experience become a part of them and I think it's reasonable to expect they should be able to share that with others.
I mean, after life + 70 years you already are entitled to other people's work. And a purpose of patents was to get people to release ideas so culture as a whole can grow from them, rather than just keeping them as trade secrets or whatever.
I absolutely think people should be able to receive some money for it, maybe even for life + 70 years, and people can always not release things, but I think once it's released it's not just yours any more, as it lives in the public conscious.
Remember that guy who had made a giant website with the word counts of a whole ton of books and authors lost their collective minds over it? I think a lot of writers sincerely believe he needed their "permission" to count the words in their books.
