Slashdot Mirror
The Copyright Fuss Revisited
mpawlo writes "I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw introducing a framework for the debate on how we should obtain a balance between users and authors where the author has good incentives to innovate, but where society at large is not too restricted due to the author's previous
innovations. I am afraid that I personally have few practical solutions to introduce, but you might find my text useful as a quick introduction to what the copyright fuss is all about and why you should care."
"I was gonna clean my apartment, but then I got.. wrote a piece for Greplaw..."
No... I don't think that was it...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The evil corporates want you by the balls. Even if you're a girl.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
"I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw"
wow... when I skip cleaning my apartment, I usually end up playing a game of BF1942 or perhaps watch a bit on the tube. This guy goes out and writes a rather long essay on intellectual property that actually reads fairly well.
Is no retroactive copyright protection. The terms of copyright at the time you create something should be the same terms that apply to it forever. You only need and know what the incentive is before you create it. Changing it after the fact does nothing to increase your incentive.
It's all about giving credit where credit is due. Plagiarism is the result of violating this. Credit is sorta like /.-karma in a way....
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
While the article has lots of good information, I did not come away with an understanding of the author's "framework."
Perhaps a diagram, or an outline summary would help.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Copyright does NOT protect innovation. Look at Tolkien & how just about every "innovation" he made has been swiped by the fantasy genre. Same thing for the GUI, same thing for music, etc, etc.
PATENTS protect ideas, innovations, and inventions. Copyright should be pared back by whatever means necessary so it can stop doing the job of Patents (or trademarks!).
Anyway - I believe this model makes open source the good solution for cases in which it has previously been thought not to be suitable. Such as cases where companies need to invest huge amounts of money just to get the "seed done" - I believe that the ransom model really for example enables co-operation between research companies to produce something that requires huge resources and capital - and get paid for doing it - and still eventually have the solution released under open source - developing it even further.
Copyright laws will always be messy if only beacuse there is no cut and dry options. A law that says all works are free to anyone undermines the purpose of creating those works (open source software being somewhat of a exception to this) and one that never releases information into the public domain is also a less then perfect solution. and while this is a gross simplification it's applicable to almost every aspect of copyright laws (fair use and the like). for all the ranting about these laws on slashdot very rarely do i see a realistic purposed solution to the problem, which suggests that it probably won't be solved in the near future, or maybe ever.
I don't think you can reform copyright law while treating copyright for different types of things differently. I don't, genuinely, believe that authorship of a computer program should be essentially different from authorship of a book. With all the protections that entails.
Which is not to say that copyright law in itself isn't screwed up. But the whole MS problem isn't a copyright issue, it's a monopoly issue. And the music industry will eventually either die or adjst with the times.
The real problems with copyright lie with things like the insanely long copyright period and the narrowness of 'fair use' rights for *everything*, not just music. There are middle schoolers out there getting lawsuit threats over fan art galleries. Disney's never going to have to come up with anything new, because they'll just keep getting extensions for Mickey Mouse. These are big problems, and things that seem to not be well addressed by the article.
You know what, I am so sick of people writing boring-ass essays just re-iterating the same things that everyone always says in essays on copyright. I know I'll get slapped for trolling, but I'm not, I just can't get excited over one more wannabe grad student whose big mission in life is to fight for better copyright laws by submitting long boring essays to websites that noone will read except people who agree with them anyway.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw ...
I hope you also skipped cleaning the bathroom, and took the time to spell check your article.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Some troll, apparently looking for something to do after calling people to check if their refrigerator is running, threw a page widening post onto the greplaw article. Thanks for the maturity. I'm sure your family is so proud ("John is lawyer, Chris is a doctor, and Billy Bob wastes the time of hundreds of people a day.")
To read the article without the comments (thus avoiding the troll and allowing you to see the article correctly formatted), try this link.
In Finland, taxi drivers are now ordered to pay royalties if they play music, even if it is on the radio, if they have passengers in the car.
two churchs were also sued on copyright infringement for singing Chistmas hymns....
the story is here.
I would have posted this as a story, but seeing as how my approval rate is 1:50 its not worth the time or effort anymore
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I was going to clean up my apartement, but instead I wrote a piece for Greplaw
If I was this guy, I would be the most prolific contributor to Greplaw. Legal scholars would be citing my works as I am always looking for ways to put off cleaning my apartment.
Thank heavens for slovenliness, or we would have one fewer article to throw on the copyright flame-heap here.
If any GrepLaw admins are reading, please consider a higher default threshold for comments. At zero the "page widening troll" has made the story unreadable. I could register and set my own default, but it's easier to just forget about it. Other potential members probably feel the same.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
There are compulsory license rules for the songwriter's copyright. Any artist can cover another artist's work, provided he or she pays the compulsory license fee. I agree with the original article that there should be compulsory licensing for the physical and digital recording. It would also clear up issues with "sampling" as done by rap and other artists.
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Disney's never going to have to come up with anything new, because they'll just keep getting extensions for Mickey Mouse.
And therein lies the dilemma. Disney has made several fortunes by taking something that was already in the public domain and building on it. I don't know if the Brothers Grimm even get mentioned in the credits of the Disney films that are based on their stories. Now we see Disney purchasing politicians and legislation to extend their copyrights in perpetuity.
I wonder if anyone at Disney recognizes the irony of it all...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
if you're an 'artist' and are adamant about being paid for each and every copy, don't create anything that can be easily copied by your admiring public. That includes audio, video, writing, software, or ip in general. Face it, your just trying to cash in on the 85% profit margin of being able to produce once, make easy copies and distribute them. But now your customers have the ability to make easy copies and share them. Face it. Instead, go into sculpture, crafts, paintings, custom autos, landscaping, live performances, etc etc etc.
NO, this is not a troll, just a clear headed statement of fact. If you want to press an audio cd and sell copies, fine. Just realize there's going to be 'shrinkage' from maximum profit and you can cuss and stomp, beg for govt assistance, try to get consumer devices banned, mandate DRM in every electronic device, but the genie is already out of the bottle and everybody has one now. Artists and publishers are just going to have to adapt to the new environment or go extinct.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
No you weren't.
Berto
I just turned in a long, yet crappy, essay on copyright and what should be done about it. I'm so sick of this shit now, I know what needs to be done, I know all the facts (well, most the facts), but nothing is going to get done with these criminals in elected positions.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Girls Scouts must pay to sing songs...
"Starting this summer, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has informed camps nationwide that they must pay license fees to use any of the four million copyrighted songs written or published by Ascap's 68,000 members. Those who sing or play but don't pay, Ascap warns, may be violating the law."
the story
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The harder the entertainment industry make it, the faster they will expire.
Yeah, that's the ticket. (© Jon Lovitz, SNL Entertainment and NBC Broadway Video).
Sigs are bad for your health.
These people claim to own/control any representation of Albert Einstein. This would fall under Trademark protection, right?
The Roger Richman Agency, Inc., specializes in representing entertainment and historical personalities for a variety of licensing applications, including advertising, merchandising, premiums, promotions, film & television programming, theatrical productions and look-alike/sound-alike services. Exclusive licenses are available in most product and service categories. Licenses include full persona usage, consisting of name, voice, signature and image (photo, illustration, animation and/or look-alike).
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Please excuse my ignorance on this because I haven't read the essay yet, but from my perspective, the problems aren't with the authors, but with the corporations that own the authors work. I don't think the author gives a rats ass who does what with something he/she created once their dead, only the cooperation that owns the rights of that authors work cares. I personally say that when someone dies, so does the copyright, END OF STORY!!!
>> For those of you that want to bring up Walt Disney - do you really think society would benefit greatly if the copyright on Mickey Mouse ended?
Who's to decide what 'greatly' means in your context? Will it end world hunger? No. Will it cure cancer? No. Will I be able to show my (grand)children the entertainment I grew up with, in an uneditted non-PC form, without owing anyone anything? Yes.
>> Who cares if it's going to be 120 years (or whatever the number is) before John Irving's novels fall in to the public domain? You want to read one - check one out of the library, it's free.
Well, not only are you then limited by what happens to be in the library, it won't be free for much longer. More and more books are appearing on shelves shrinkwrapped with a pretty EULA borrowed from the new 'digital' legislation. The contract of first sale is no more. As it happens more and more, without 'whining', it becomes more acceptable. Libraries will soon be museums, nothing more.
You ever seen a digital library? Where I can check out a video game, word processing app, etc for free, borrow and return it?
>> You pissed because music is more expensive than you'd like? Listen to the radio - it's free!
Not for long! Digital radio! XM Band! W00t! They can embed a digital copyrighting bit right into the stream, that'll tell you if you can record it or not, or even hear it or not. HDTV - same thing!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It is interesting to me that drug companies are allowed patents that run out relatively soon (15 or 20 years, I think) compared to copyrights, and they have to put in tons of money and research to create their products, but we'll give anyone who can throw together a few words and make a poem, song, or book, or who can draw or animate a mouse (Mickey), a 75 year copyright, and Congress the option to extend that indefinitely, when they certainly didn't have to spend billions to develop a lifesaving or life-extending product.
Things are definitely screwed up around here. But make no mistake, I am not defending the big druggies either, just pointing out the oddity.
Copyright, patent, and trademark are all just forms of IP law.
The use of the term "intellectual property" as a blanket term for copyrights, patents, and trademarks is misleading because copyrights, patents, and trademarks are more different than similar. They are covered in separate Titles of the United States Code. They have nothing to do with one another other than that they grant monopolies to a person or corporation to produce a specific sort of good or service and can be sold or licensed to other parties.
Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, has something to say about this phrase.
Perhaps Tolkien did not discover "trade dress" and the C&D letter in time.
Or perhaps, " In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work" (17 USC 102). This doesn't apply to trademark law (the foundation for trade dress), but trademark law kicks in only when there's a likelihood of confusion as to the origin of a good or service.
microsoft stole from apple stole from xerox.
Apple licensed from Xerox. Microsoft initially licensed from Apple, but then after Lotus v. Borland weakened look-and-feel copyright, Microsoft borrowed "ideas" (17 USC 102) from Apple.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Property, as we know it, is a legal definition set down in our tradition by John Locke. It is confined in Locke's conception as things which can be found in the common, improved by individuals, and which also become scarce when they are used. Locke's example is apples growing on trees become a man's property when he "mixes his labour" with them in the process of collection. A collection of shiny apples is surely improved over scattered apples amongst bruised and wormeaten ones. When another person happens on the collected nice apples, it would be wrong to deny the first man the benefit of his "labour" by taking apples from his pile. (maybe I remember this totally wrong.. correct me if so)
If I set some music down on digital media, I have surely improved the media, and it would be wrong to deprive me of the fruits of my labour by taking my improved media from me, but if you improve your own blank media, indistinguishable from mine, by setting music down from memory as you remember hearing it on mine, you have not deprived me of the fruits of my labour.
Intellectual property is a fabrication and an illusion. It does not perform the same as the concept of material property. There is no ethical base for an Intellectual Property Right. Maybe, in a teleological sense we can justify an Intellectual Property Privilege, but we should all just stop using "IP" and Intellectual Property terms until we are sure we all agree exactly what they mean. We should understand them at least as well as the basis for "life, Liberty, and property" which became the model philosophy for American politics.
Information does not have the property of scarcity like Locke's apples. The more you share information, the more there is! (Let's not split hairs, I can demonstrate this aside..) Good or bad, news or propaganda, sharing magnifies it. This is opposite of real property. The more you share a bowl of rice, the less there is to go around. Our laws should not gloss this fundamental difference over.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Copyrights already extend beyond the author's death, so no incentive can come from that side. On the other hand, one could argue that a media corporation, like Disney for instance, would have an incentive to pay more to authors if they speculated on the possibility that copyright terms would be extended in the future, but it's not so. Disney only uses works that have already gone into the public domain.
You managed to get "Winshit" and "M$" in teh same post! You must be an uber-leet hax0r master! Dost thou strike at Bills dark heart from your parent's basement?
Dipshit.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
We agree that an invention benefits the society most when it is in the public domain -- anyone can use and benefit from it. However, we agree that in order for individuals in a capitalist society to have incentive to invent, they must be able to capitalize on their invention. Hence the "limited times" in the constitution for an inventor to profit from his mind.
For the greatest benefit of the society at large, we want the "limited times" to grant just enough incentive to the inventors to invent at high rates (my idea would be to have the copyright term be a function of the average amount of time taken to invent something). One can assume rather assuredly that the length of a copyright should most certainly not be as long as a generation, otherwise entire generations would never know the free access to the idea.
As is, the terms are something like life+50 years. Life plus 50 years?? look at it like this: people who were born after Mickey Mouse was copyrighted and have died since then (there's a lot of them, 1920's-) never benefitted from any of Disney's creations in the public domain. Does this benefit society as a whole, or the corporate monopolies who own the copyright?
You're right, If I don't like the terms, I pirate it.
It's THEIR product.
Well, if you put it in those terms, it's MY copier, and I copy whatever I want with it.
The licensing won't affect libraries
Oh, yeah? What if the licensing forbids library lending? If I need to open a spreadsheet now and then, can I go to the library and get a copy of MS-Excel for a few days? Do you think digital books are any different?
Use your own money to commission a book and give it away for free.
I have done better than that. I have written a software and published it under the GPL.
Get over it, when I copy something I'm not taking anything away from the author. The reason for copyrights is not the same reason as for anti-burglary laws. Copyrights exist to make sure the creative works will eventually go to the public domain.
I think this a big problem. We're preaching to the quire, submitting opinions to sites that are filled with people who agree with us.
I think Slashdot should create a political action committee, with the goal of furthering the politcal viewpoints reflected by the 5-Insightful posts around here. It can collect donations simply by holding out its hand around here, and maybe with tie-in items at ThinkGeek. If we want to beat the corperations, we have to play their game first.
When this group needs guidance, it can simply pose questions in an Ask Slashdot format. Remember, any troll can post here, but you have to read Slashdot posts for quite a while to become a moderator, and disagreed with moderators get ejected via M2. Quite simply, it takes far too many people to corrupt Slashdot's moderation system.
It is possible that two or more completely opposing positions can get modded up to +5 in the same thread, but I would suggest that reflects that the Slashdot community is devided on the issue, so the Slashdot PAC should take no position on that issue (although, it could direct Congresspeople to the +5 comments so they can make up their own informed opinions for once...) and move onto the issues where there appear to be a near-unanimous verdict on Slashdot.
We don't need to convince ourselves anymore, we need to start reaching the people who haven't even heard of Slashdot.
Mickey Mouse will NEVER be in the public domain because his likeness is protected by Trademark law.
There has to be a likelihood of confusion of origin of the product. For instance, one company sells inexpensive VHS video tapes of "Bugs Bunny" short cartoons whose copyright Warner never renewed under the two-28-year-terms system of 1909 law. They get away with it by conspicuously disclaiming any connection to Warner on the package: "This video cassette contains audiovisual works in the public domain. XYZ Video is in no way affiliated with the author of these works."
But actually, Disney lost copyright on Mickey Mouse when it failed to provide a copyright notice on works first published when notice was required. Of course, Disney could file a frivolous lawsuit, but then the company and its retained lawyers risk a countersuit for barratry.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nice job on this article. The one point that really troubles me is near the bottom:
"To ensure that the record companies still obtain revenues, it is important that the developers in the post-Napster era create commercial alternatives to the user-driven free beer networks."
The reason this troubles me is that it's based on a misconception that there is any inherent relationship between record companies and copyrights. There is absolutely no reason for record companies and copyrights to be connected. People in the record business could have chosen to conduct their business as most people do, by performing services and moving on. They didn't have to extort copyright ownership from musicians in exchange for these services. Doctors who save your life with surgery don't demand a share of your income for the rest of your life. Truckers and railroads don't demand a share of the cargo they haul, or attempt to regulate what you do with it after they deliver it.
Record companies are pretty much the only ones who make money from record sales. Standard recording contracts take all production and promotional expenses out of the musician's share of the profit, usually leaving nothing. What record sales do for musicians is provide exposure, which translates to performance gigs, which is how musicians actually do make money. Musicians have tolerated this arrangement for a century because they had no reasonable alternative. Now they can get that exposure by distributing their music freely. I believe musicians will gradually move away from physical CDs, and electronic distribution will become the norm.
There will still be a need for promotional services, but they need not be connected to copyrights. The multi-billion dollar advertising industry has managed to thrive without demanding ownership of the rights to the products they sell. There is certainly no reason to artificially maintain any business advantage record companies got from technology that is becoming obsolete.
I agree that copyright should be limited to encourage the ongoing supply of public domain "raw materials". But here's another thought: what if the work becomes SO well known that it is a de facto trademark for the corporation that paid for its creation?
Everyone says Disney is the heavy here, so let's use them as an example. If Mickey Mouse falls into the public domain, he is so synonymous with Disney the corporation that any derivitive use of him would affect Disney's reputation. Porno Mickey or Mickey as anti-hero would tarnish their reputation as a family-friendly company. Is this fair?
In other words, at what point does copyright stop and trademark begin?
A few years ago, they hassled the city of Winnipeg for putting up some plaque for Winnipeg the Bear. Which was named for the city. Which was donated to a zoo in England. Which inspired the Winnie the Pooh stories in the first place. Disney said that it couldn't mention Winnie the Pooh. (Canada Post is now doing commercials about the story -- hopefully they told Disney to pound sand, but probably some deal was worked out.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I ahve a practical solution. It's detailed over at mediAgora
Principles:
* Creators should be credited and rewarded for their work.
* Works can be incorporated into new creative works.
* When they are, all source works should be credited and rewarded.
* Customers should pay a known price.
* Successful promotion of work should be rewarded too.
* Individuals can play multiple roles - Creator, Promoter, Customer
* Prices and sales figures should be open
* Relationships are based on trust and reputation
* Copy protection destroys value
Goals:
* Creators have 3 main goals - getting heard, getting credited and getting paid
* Customers want to find works and pay a fair price
* Creators set the price, customers decide to pay it (or not)
* Promoters have an incentive to promote Works, but not to compete with other promoters for the same work
* Working within the system is more attractive than subverting it
When you sell that flower, are you allowed to restrict what the buyer does with that flower? Are you allowed to tell them they cannot give that flower to somebody else, or plant it, or take it apart and sequence it's DNA? Are you allowed to do this without the buyer signing any kind of contract? Are you allowed to do this even if the buyer finds the flower on the street and does not even know who you are? Are you allowed to do this even if you give the buyer the flower as a "gift" and don't tell him about the restrictions?
There are only a finite number of words in the English language and a finite ways to combine them into a poem with three phrases of five, seven, and five syllables
That "finite" is a rather large number. Especially when factoring in linquistic evolution.
But more to the point, the same principles that apply to software (which is a MUCH smaller set than even the shortest poetic theme) can save you. If you can prove that you didn't sample the extant copywritten work, you've done a "clean room" bit and can get off, if not scott-free, at least without losing your shirt in the matter.
It's possible to get sued for a coincidence and lose
It's possible be get sued for a burglar breaking into somone else's house and being wounded and lose.
There may be only 50,000 possible melodies--but there are at least 500 years of public domain prior art. And Disney et all seem unlikely to win another extension even if the 1997 extension survives.
In short, the odds of filling the "entire space of art" within a theoretical 150 year copyright maximum are about as good as the odds that O.J. Simpson's freak unrelated genetic & physical twin randomly decided to commit two murders and blame O.J., all the while escaping any attention from anyone at all, even in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
The really powerful bit in here is about code becoming or supplanting law. This is strong stuff. The beauty of good law is that it is transparent. Everyone has the same power to use/abuse it. I'm concerned with the Bush admins imprisonment of hundreds of people with no trial in sight because it uses the tools of law (police, fbi, courts, etc) without any of the corresponding transparency. This is just one small example of how law can be made bad (even with the best of intentions) simply by cloaking it and keeping it from view.
/government evolution is too slow. So, the technology will be the law. Closed technology presents grave danger to such simple freedoms as freedom of speech since the medium for much of that speech is controlled, through closed code, by corporations. Even something as simple as Corel's or Microsoft's proprietary formats for word processing are examples of speech being limited when thought of in this way.
Now, consider that the law is tracking about twenty to thirty years behind the pace of computing and communication. I don't expect law to catch up. Technology evolution is too fast and law
I'm working to use open software, to support open software law, and to promote the use of open software by others. Why? It's not because I hate Microsoft. It's because I see us going through something similar to 1776. There are great minds at work here, trying to carve out space for freedom. I can't do much (I don't have the brains for it) but I support those who are looking out for me.
Code is law. Code is becoming law. Either way, this is powerful and important stuff.
One last thing: how come the majority of computer/internet users don't give a damn?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
At least they have the honesty to use the word "may". Unlike the RIAA and MPAA which have issued letters and press statements which give the impression that they write the laws, the ASCAP at least uses the word "may" indicating they are aware that they are not the ultimate authority on this issue.
I guess it depends on what constitutes a "public performance". Given that the Boy Scouts were determined to be a private organization by the courts, and hence are allowed to exclude gays, then I don't see how singing songs at their camps constitutes a public performance subject to royalty payments.
I'm curious to see how this plays out in the courts.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The article says, "In copyright law, computer programs are regarded as literary works."
This brings up a Serious Question: how many programmers actually get the form from the copyright office, pay the fee, and file for copyright *on their source code*, as one would normally do with a literary work such as a novel??
I don't recall the details offhand, but you must file to be eligible for certain protections.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You don't have to "file" for a copyright or get forms from anywhere, at least in the USA. Every thought put into writing (or typing) since April 1, 1989 is automatically copyrighted whether it bears a copyright notice or not. If you choose to include a copyright notice it affects the type and amount of infringement damages you can sue for.
That's not what I'm talking about. One of my clients is a tech-rag writer, and he's always going on about how he had to register each article with the copyright office (pay the fee, file the form, submit hardcopy of the copyrighted item), and that this must be done within 5 years of publication, because otherwise he can't sue the various folk who've infringed his copyrights.
Difference apparently being not whether the material is copyrighted (that being the default state for any publication), but rather whether said copyright is *registered* so you can protect it (by prosecuting or suing infringers).
Occurs to me that if copyright for GPL'd source has not been *registered*, this could severely weaken its case in the event that a GPL-breaking lawsuit ever arises. I realise that not everyone can cough up $30 to file every time they release updated source. But it might behoove major projects to register final versions.
I'm not clear on the legal details, because my client rattles on about copyright issues while I'm head and shoulders inside his computer and not really paying attention. (We have a wee difference of opinion about the DMCA.. he thinks it's wonderful and is sure I would too if only I knew it better; I think it should be hauled into the street and summarily shot.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No...Copyright was introduced to give incentive to businesses and authors/artists to invest in and create works. The incentive being they would be better able to make $$$$$ from their works instead of having them pirated away.
You must belong to the Revisionist History Club.
No, you are a member of the Ignorant of History Club. I suggest you try reading the writings of the autors of the constitution and the bill of rights. They seriously considered making Patents and Copyrights unconstitutional. Failing that, a 19 year maximum on copyrights nearly made it into the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights for god sakes! They took this issue quite seriously!
I doubt you're going to make an effort to educate yourself, but in case you do here's a piece to get you started. Their motivation was ABSOLUTLY POSITIVELY NOT so someone can make $$$. The mostivation was to get ideas out into the public domain. They considered copyrights and patents an evil to be tolerated as a means of promoting the public domain.
As for the "great benefit to society" of the expiration of copyrights I need go no further than to Disney movies. Snow White, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and many more, all adapted from stories on which the copyright had EXPIRED. Almost every Disney movie ever made owes its very existance to the expiration of copyrighted works.
I'm not advocating that copyright be abolished, it serves a usefull function. The problem is that congress has lost sight of that purpose, and weathly corporations have been taking advantage of that and buying influence for private gain at public expense. The purpose of copyright is for PUBLIC BENEFIT. The fact that some people can make money in the process is a side effect, not a goal.
People are generally oblivious to the value of the public domain because essentially NOTHING has entered the public domain in DECADES. Here's a hypothetical: Imagine the original copyright duration was still in effect - 14 years. Everything from 1988 and earlier would be free for everyone to publish, view, and BUILD UPON. Can you imagine n public benefit to having Star Wars available in stores for $5? Or people making entirely NEW Star Wars movies based on the original? There's a tremendous amount of creative work lying unpublished and unavailable forever because the copyright on the inspiration never expires during the authors lifetime. Just look at the quantity of technicly illegal "fan fiction" floating around the internet.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
But nothing compared to the lots and lots of books created after the existence of copyright laws.
... indeed, they would likely benefit greatly from it. The only people who would suffer would be publishers, but with the internet, publishers should rightfully be relegated to the role of providing a paid service to artists (and competing with one another to do so), rather than the robber barrons of culture they have been allowed to become for the several centuries.
When copyright was created, the number of published books plummeted to merely a third of their former diversity. That is a clear situation where one can compare apples to apples: the current state of the artistic environment immediately before, and after, copyrights were imposed.
Anything else is extraordinarilly disingenuous, ignoring the effects of a geometric climb in population, deployment of new and more effecient publishing technologies, and so forth, which are orthogonal to the effects of copyright.
Indeed, later increases in published material have more to do with increases in human population and deployment of technology than it does with copyright, and even those increases are dwarfed by the amount of derivative 'fan fiction' and unpublished works that have been created with no desire for profit whatsoever (many of which are technically illegal under current copyright law, as is, by the way, having a few friends over to watch a movie).
There are all kinds of alternatives to the absurd situation we have now, in which cartels dominate entire artforms by leveraging a system of government entitlement monopolies designed to favor publishers over artists, and both over the rest of society. These alternatives include tax incentives, small punitive taxes on anauthorized works with some or all of the proceeds going back to the orignial creater, etc. and require neither monopoly entitlements nor wealthy patronage.
Copyrights in the digital age must be reformed. To enforce the kinds of entitlement monopolies publishers have enjoyed since the British Crown created the first publishing cartel in the 15th century will require legislation so draconian as to make the former communist eastern block appear liberal in comparison, governance equipment in every home, office, car, and every portable electronic device that both monitors and reports a user's data usage habits, and a crippling of new emergent technologies that would have made any luddite of the 19th century, and every buggy whip manufacturer of the early 20th, proud.
Indeed, that is precisely what Disney and others are advocating, to which the only sane response of anyone who values any of the freedoms our forfathers died to create and protect must answer: if the choice given is one between the artists and publisher's profitability, and everyone elses privacy and individual liberties, then the artists will have to go out and get day jobs.
Of course, that false dichotomy is one Disney et. al. presents because they do not wish to see copyright reform, and would rather trample upon our privacy and liberty rather than adjust their business models to a new technology. In truth artists could make a perfectly fine living in an environment where they were not granted exclusive monopoly entitlements
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy