Slashdot Mirror
Eternal Copyright: a Modest Proposal
New submitter SpockLogic writes "The Telegraphs has a tongue in cheek essay in praise of eternal copyright by the founder of an online games company. Quoting: 'Imagine you're a new parent at 30 years old and you've just published a bestselling new novel. Under the current system, if you lived to 70 years old and your descendants all had children at the age of 30, the copyright in your book – and thus the proceeds – would provide for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the "public good," simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they'd just make it worse.'"
You call it sarcasm, they call it talking points. Stop giving them ideas, asshole!!
Copyright technically won't be eternal, but its duration increases linearly over time in a way that it never ends.
I kept waiting for the baby eating, but it never happened.
. .
If it's called "A Modest Proposal", that means it is satire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_modest_proposal
Admittedly, it seems like every new class of student that reads it has some in it that thing Swift actually wanted to eat babies...
Clearly you didn't read it, or you can't read.
Since it had such a jab...
Socialist! Is a man not entitled to the sweat from his great-great-great-grandfather's brow?!
What we really need is a special copyright for Mickey and the rest of the Disney characters
so that The Walt Disney Company can stop lobbying to extend all copyrights.
more cowbell
I'm all for eternal copyright. However, after a certain amount of time (say 20-30 years or so), you would have to start paying a fee to the government to maintain your copyright. This fee would increase at an exponential rate for every year after that. This way companies that have a valuable copyrights could hold on to it for at least some time, but the vast majority of creative works would be converted to public domain within a reasonable time frame.
(I also think patents could work similarly, except that the exponential fees would start at say 3-5 years and with a fixed timelimit of 20 years after which the patent will expire.)
Sheldon, mathematical liberties are allowed when used in hyperbole.
I have a new disciplinary policy I'd like to institute called "No Child's Left Behind". You spank them, but you can only hit their right butt cheek.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
As a parent of a gifted child, I've got to echo this sentiment. If your child is falling behind, there are lots of resources to help them catch up. Now there's nothing wrong with that, per sec, but if your child is craving more intellectual stimulation, you have virtually no recourse. (And, if your bored child starts acting up, your child could get labeled as a problem child when all they really need is more academic challenges.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.