If they have been convicted, punish them. Don't let the accused decide their fate. Would the justice department let a killer decide their sentence? I dont think so.
Once they have been convicted they are no longer "the accused". Problem is that the fiction of "corporations are legally people" breaks down when they are defendants against serious changes. A person might well be held in a prison or subject to bail conditions which impinge on his or her normal activities. Even if they are aquitted before a court the state isn't going to compensate them if they have been driven to bankruptcy whilst awaiting trial. When it comes to an entity like Microsoft they appear able to carry on as before throughout the trial, then expected to negotiate their "punishment".
actually what bothers me most is that they can but WONT do anything. which is what i think bothers alot of 'informed' americans. the US gov't is backing mega corps or conglamorates over "average joe". and thats not how this gov't was SUPPOSED TO BE. it was supposed to be "for the people by the people and of the people".
The US policy of "regime change" is a part of policy of backing megacorps. (The only real change is that the US government has recently made some of this policy overt, rather than covert.)
i mean think about it, how many people are employeed by the RIAA and MPAA combined ? how about in the US alone ? and Microsoft ? a good amount right ?
If you measure the number as a proportion of the population (even just considering real people and not all the "non mega" corporate entities) you'd be talking a tiny proportion. Best measured on a per million scale, since a percentage would defintly round down to zero.
Of course, that doesn't mean they won't try and charge more for them (like they do for CDs which are cheaper to produce than tapes) but they don't have to.
If they can get away with persuading people to pay more then they will charge more. In the same way that DVDs which are cheaper to produce, ship and less chance of a "dud" have a higher price tag than video tapes.
What is likely to cost more is the equipment to play it and there's lots of people out there who drop 100s of $ on their sound equipment and this will give them a reason to drop some more.
But these are the audiophile enthusiasts who are in the minority.
With most people being content with MP3, which is a step down in quality from CDs, there's no way they're going to get the masses to pay extra just for a step up in quality.
In practice they would probably need to upgrade their entire sound system and ensure that the acoustics of the room were perfect to notice much of a difference. Most people just arn't into this, if they can hear it and there isn't any blatently obvious distortion then they are not going to notice. Content, be it audio or video must simply be of sufficent quality for the average person.
In reply to this, I asked what someone should do when the parties and party members are expressing the exact same things, except on issues that do not matter to me (Like Abortion. I'm not a woman, so it's not an issue of great importance to me). When both candidates are pro- DMCA, pro-Iraqi-war, and anti-free-speech...what should we do, if we are to follow the directions of this guy? We vote for the candidate we believe in, not who is most likely to win. It's a matter of principle.
The only way of getting an improvment here is having both more candidates and a greater diversity of candidates. Which would probably require some changes such no longer recording party affiliation on voter registration, abolishing of primary elections, exactly the same rules for all candidates (regardless of if they belonged to a big party or were independents) radically different rules on campaign financing.
Oh, wait, I know of one other possible example -- in the mid-1980s, the US invaded Panama, and ultimately tried, convicted, and imprisoned Noriega. Ooh, if I were Dimitri, I'd be quaking in my boots -- you never know when a few Marine brigades are going to drop in . ..
Kidnapping a Russian citizen is hardly going to help in Bush's campaign to get the UN to back his invasion of Iraq. Panama does not have a veto in the UN security council, Russia does. The US is already being seen by most of the world as an outlaw nation, assuming the US government has any sense, no-one will even think of trying anything so stupid.
A lot of the IIS exploits are built around "integration features" turned on by default and not well (at all?) documented. How do you disable what you don't know exists?
Some of them appear to be so obscure that their major use may well be the propergation of malware. "Intergration" can translate into write very bad, even "sphagetti", code.
And that's just IIS -- there's more hidden surprises buried in the OS known by hard-core developers and MS only.
It's quite possible that there are "black hats" who know about these...
Sometimes, at least, people offer creative contributions without seeking any chance of monetary reward. It simply isn't true that the only value is economic value -- sometimes things happen for reasons other than money.
Contracts require the exchange of something called "consideration". Which can be anything of value or even anything all parties to the contract consider has value. Money is simply a convenient form of consideration. Contracts for barter or exchange of services are just as legally enforcable as those involving money.
I would think that you could argue that the "limited time" helps to speed the spreading of ideas. What if after creating something, you only had a year to sell it? You'd probably bust your ass trying to make as much as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for this example, 1 year is too short, I'm sure many people would just wait a year for it to be free. So somewhere between 1 year and 70+ years there's a balance where the author is encouraged to actively sell their works, and the public feeling it is worth the cost to have that work rather than when it becomes public domain.
It's probably closer to 1 year than to 70 though. Somewhere between 5 and 10 appears reasonable in many cases. Possibly also with the ability for something to enter the public domain sooner if it goes out of print.
I am arguing that the grant of power is the first part, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
This makes sense when read in context, this is the eight of 18 paragraphs which explicitally enumerate powers granted to the US Congress
Left at that, congress could, for example, build research facilities and give them away with the hope that the benefactors would use them for research. Or mandate that all citizens volunteer for medical research trials at least twice every year. But the clause goes on to specify and constrain how congress may "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Further limitations on how Congress may do this are made by latter ammendments. Most notably the first ammendment... That is the whole point of an ammendment.
A library contains physical objects (more or less) that can be checked out, but must be returned, and there is only one copy.
That's because of the limitations of technology around when public libraries came into existance. Having to deal with issues, returns, reservations, preventing book theft takes up a lot of library resources which could be better used. If it had been possible for public libraries to trivially issue copies a few hundred years ago then they probably would have embraced the technology. You'd have a system where every book is always available, no problems due to it being out on loan, stolen, mis-shelved or defaced.
It is a 200-year-old running battle. Ever hear of public libraries? They were originally denounced, by publishers, as a mechanism for theft. Ever hear of the statutory license? It came about almost 100 years ago in response to player-piano roll.
Acutally a little bit longer than 200 years. Copyright came into existance with the development of the publishing industry, which in turn needed the then new technology of the printing press. Originally copyright was a licence granted by the state to publishers. It was a later revision of the concept which assigned rights to authors. Something the publishers appears to have been fighting ever since. Effectivly we have come full circle with rights, on paper, for authors but often in practice actually held by publishers. This dosn't really work any better now than it did a few hundred years ago.
The point of the original author -- I'm not sure I agree, but I'm also not sure I disagree -- is that intellectual "property" has always been a flawed concept. But due to the clunkiness of the technology, its flaws could be papered over and patched. Now, under the bright light of mass digital technologies, those flaws are being thrown into sharp relief so that anyone -- even my 16-year-old students -- can recognize them.
For some time content was distributed on media which were difficult for individuals to copy but relativly cheap to manufacture on an industrial scale. What has changed is that for many types of content the former is no longer the case.
I think a reasonable solution would be to differentiate more finely between types of intellectual property. For example, some inventions (drugs) require vast expenditures of resources over many years, and thus may require patent protection for a long time or the research will be discouraged.
You'd need some kind of system which distinguished between a drug company doing their own basic research and simply taking publically funded research though.
However, some degree of protection is clearly necessary for movies and other entertainment, because there is a significant investment in most cases (at least for movies).
What you actually need here is a business model which ensures that the cost of making the movie is covered. It's quite possible that there are ways to do this without needing something like copyright. Even with file shareing there still appears to be a market for showing movies in a purpose built room as well as selling and renting copies.
Copyrights shouldn't expire during an authors lifetime.
Why, what's magical about an author's lifetime? (As well as being blatently ageist. Since 20 year old can expect to do better out of such a deal than an 80 year old.)
How would you like it if the govt. took your business away after 10 years, saying, you've had it long enough,
"Your business" in this context is writing novels, poems, songs, whatever. (Assuming it is your only business, plenty of "authors" also do unrelated paid work, have a pension, etc). The output just then happens to be somewhat perishable. There are plenty of highly sucessful busineses dealing in goods which perish in a lot less time than a decade.
Talk about lack of incentive to do anything.
IMHO saying "you have 10 years to make the best out of it" provides a lot more incentive to the typical person than "you have the rest of your life and then some to make something out of this".
This assumes that they are entitled to it. And by "entitled" I'm not talking about legally, I'm talking about morally (and yes it does matter).
There is a mentality, which has come into existance fairly recently, of some kind of "entitlement" to make money. The idea that if some individual or corporation has put lots of money into making a widget they are somehow entitled to make a profit from it; if some way of doing business used to be profitable then it should be profitable for ever. Even though a little though will show that such a mindset is utterly stupid.
All works are based on other works in one form or another. To say "I can build off your efforts but you can't build off mine" is ridiculous.
Even if you could find a single person who was actually the first to come up with such and such a plot element he or she would probably be a direct ancestor of most people now living anyway.
A CD or DVD is, as well, a physical thing. When it is copied and placed on a filesharing server accessible by anyone with Internet access,
The CD/DVD/35mm film/video tape/etc is simply a media what is being copied isn't the media it is the content.
a cogent case can be made that some of the people downloading that copy would otherwise have purchased it.
It's just as possible to make a case that the people downloading the content would never have bought an official copy or that more copies are sold when customers customers can see a preview. It can very much depend on the movie, there are more than a few examples of people going to see a movie many times and buying a copy after that...
For example the author cites the idea that most commercial value of IP is realized during the first three years. Maybe for a pop tune, or a movie, but certainly that is not the case for the vast majority of patents. New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification; the average time to market for an industrial invention in most industries is 7 years. A shorter term for patent coverage is not appropriate in most cases.
Maybe that's why copyrights and patents are different entities. The first intended to cover "content" the second intended to cover widgets and industrial processes.
Frankly, good ideas are not the product of one man working in solitude; they are the product of many many people sharing their ideas and developing them and improving on them.
Often many people will work on developments of existing technology at about the same time. Once the electric telegraph was invented which, unlike earlier telegraph systems, did not require line of sight between stations, being able to send regular speach rather than some special code is an obvious improvement.
If you don't wish to participate in sharing your ideas and building off the work of other people's ideas then go hide in a hermit hole. You are replaceable. A bit of humility would do you some good.
More often such people (including "corporate people") are happy to take other people's work, but refuse to contribute back their own work for others to use.
No one, Bell included, can come to an idea completely on their own. There has to be knowledge, inspiration, and feedback from others to make ideas viable. Like it or not, a collective (oops, I said the c-word) is from where ideas originate, and where ideas eventually will go in an infinite loop we call "building knowledge".
Typically where there is an appropriate level of technology and political demand similiar inventions will appear from many people. The telephone is such an invention, as are sound recording machines, electric lights and other telecommunication technologies.
I do not today expect to earn residuals because my grandfather was a civil engineer who did good work. Why should the grandchildren of authors expect otherwise?
Doubt your grandfather expected to earn money from work he had done years or decades before either...
Most of the money that you will ever make from a copyrighted work is earned in the first few years.
In some cases even less than that. Consider the typical pop record or movie.
If these people are so brilliant and independent, then they should crank out some new creative works if the copyrights on their old ones expire. It doesn't mean that they're forced to get a corporate job.
So everyone who creates creative content must do so as their fulltime job? There are never authors and poets who write in their spare time, maybe using their expeiences for inspiration? No-one who is retired or who can no longer work due to illness or injury ever turns to writing to keep their perfectly healthy mind occupied? There are no bands or singers who work a regular day job and perform weekends and evenings?
The reason for copyrights is to stimulate creative production, not to let a few lucky artists and their heirs or corporate sugar daddies sit on their collective asses for a century or more.
Indeed too long can actually discourage creative production. A period of 5-10 years would appear adequate, by that time if they havn't made money on a piece of work they probably really are flogging a truely dead horse and should try something else instead.
Greatly limiting the "brief [few years] economic advantage" for authors and inventors would destroy the ability for someone to live off their work, sending brilliant, independant minds back to the doldrums of corporate America.
The idea was ment to be to encourage people to continue to create and invent. Not to encourage them to retire because of a "one hit wonder". Let alone set up their children or grandchildren for life. If these people are so brilliant they should be easily capable to producing a good novel, piece of music, screenplay every few years. Indeed plenty of people appear a lot more prolific in their output.
If you look at musical history, you'll notice a lot of borrowing going on. I mean, even now. Danny Elfman's Batman theme resembles in no small way a piece of music for piano and orchestra by Rachmoninoff. I forget which one, but I think it's the 2nd...
Pop music coined the term "cover version" for wholesale copying of songs. A lot of "borrowing" goes on in the music industry. Recently one of the most well known pop music producers, Pete Waterman, admitted to more or less copying classical pieces. (Which were IIRC public domain anyway.)
An interesting point of the suppression of ideas created by this: Mozart was accused and had to stand in front of the king (mebbey) when he was a younger child. His crime? He had copied the mass music at church by keeping it in his head and writing it out when he got home. So, could we give Mozart the credit for being the first person to violate some form of artistic licensing?
Depends if that was the oldest example of something like copyright being applied to music. Musicians copying from other musicians probably dates back to the invention of music.
More specifically, trademarks last for as long as the owner of the trademark (which can be a corporation) continues to defend it.
It's a little more complex, if you have either a made up term or something used outside its usual comtext then you can probably quite happily use it as a trademark so long as you defend it. If you try to use a simple description of your product or business it will probably get laughed out of court.
This is why Aspirin became a generic term - Bayer wasn't paying enough attention to the use of the term until it was too late.
Completly different example, Bayer lost their trademarks to "Asprin" and "Heroin" because their country was defeated in a war.
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If they have been convicted, punish them. Don't let the accused decide their fate. Would the justice department let a killer decide their sentence? I dont think so.
Once they have been convicted they are no longer "the accused". Problem is that the fiction of "corporations are legally people" breaks down when they are defendants against serious changes. A person might well be held in a prison or subject to bail conditions which impinge on his or her normal activities. Even if they are aquitted before a court the state isn't going to compensate them if they have been driven to bankruptcy whilst awaiting trial.
When it comes to an entity like Microsoft they appear able to carry on as before throughout the trial, then expected to negotiate their "punishment".
actually what bothers me most is that they can but WONT do anything. which is what i think bothers alot of 'informed' americans. the US gov't is backing mega corps or conglamorates over "average joe". and thats not how this gov't was SUPPOSED TO BE. it was supposed to be "for the people by the people and of the people".
The US policy of "regime change" is a part of policy of backing megacorps. (The only real change is that the US government has recently made some of this policy overt, rather than covert.)
i mean think about it, how many people are employeed by the RIAA and MPAA combined ? how about in the US alone ? and Microsoft ? a good amount right ?
If you measure the number as a proportion of the population (even just considering real people and not all the "non mega" corporate entities) you'd be talking a tiny proportion. Best measured on a per million scale, since a percentage would defintly round down to zero.
Of course, that doesn't mean they won't try and charge more for them (like they do for CDs which are cheaper to produce than tapes) but they don't have to.
If they can get away with persuading people to pay more then they will charge more. In the same way that DVDs which are cheaper to produce, ship and less chance of a "dud" have a higher price tag than video tapes.
What is likely to cost more is the equipment to play it and there's lots of people out there who drop 100s of $ on their sound equipment and this will give them a reason to drop some more.
But these are the audiophile enthusiasts who are in the minority.
With most people being content with MP3, which is a step down in quality from CDs, there's no way they're going to get the masses to pay extra just for a step up in quality.
In practice they would probably need to upgrade their entire sound system and ensure that the acoustics of the room were perfect to notice much of a difference. Most people just arn't into this, if they can hear it and there isn't any blatently obvious distortion then they are not going to notice.
Content, be it audio or video must simply be of sufficent quality for the average person.
In reply to this, I asked what someone should do when the parties and party members are expressing the exact same things, except on issues that do not matter to me (Like Abortion. I'm not a woman, so it's not an issue of great importance to me). When both candidates are pro- DMCA, pro-Iraqi-war, and anti-free-speech...what should we do, if we are to follow the directions of this guy? We vote for the candidate we believe in, not who is most likely to win. It's a matter of principle.
The only way of getting an improvment here is having both more candidates and a greater diversity of candidates. Which would probably require some changes such no longer recording party affiliation on voter registration, abolishing of primary elections, exactly the same rules for all candidates (regardless of if they belonged to a big party or were independents) radically different rules on campaign financing.
Oh, wait, I know of one other possible example -- in the mid-1980s, the US invaded Panama, and ultimately tried, convicted, and imprisoned Noriega. Ooh, if I were Dimitri, I'd be quaking in my boots -- you never know when a few Marine brigades are going to drop in . . .
Kidnapping a Russian citizen is hardly going to help in Bush's campaign to get the UN to back his invasion of Iraq. Panama does not have a veto in the UN security council, Russia does. The US is already being seen by most of the world as an outlaw nation, assuming the US government has any sense, no-one will even think of trying anything so stupid.
A lot of the IIS exploits are built around "integration features" turned on by default and not well (at all?) documented. How do you disable what you don't know exists?
Some of them appear to be so obscure that their major use may well be the propergation of malware. "Intergration" can translate into write very bad, even "sphagetti", code.
And that's just IIS -- there's more hidden surprises buried in the OS known by hard-core developers and MS only.
It's quite possible that there are "black hats" who know about these...
Sometimes, at least, people offer creative contributions without seeking any chance of monetary reward. It simply isn't true that the only value is economic value -- sometimes things happen for reasons other than money.
Contracts require the exchange of something called "consideration". Which can be anything of value or even anything all parties to the contract consider has value. Money is simply a convenient form of consideration. Contracts for barter or exchange of services are just as legally enforcable as those involving money.
I would think that you could argue that the "limited time" helps to speed the spreading of ideas. What if after creating something, you only had a year to sell it? You'd probably bust your ass trying to make as much as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for this example, 1 year is too short, I'm sure many people would just wait a year for it to be free. So somewhere between 1 year and 70+ years there's a balance where the author is encouraged to actively sell their works, and the public feeling it is worth the cost to have that work rather than when it becomes public domain.
It's probably closer to 1 year than to 70 though. Somewhere between 5 and 10 appears reasonable in many cases. Possibly also with the ability for something to enter the public domain sooner if it goes out of print.
I am arguing that the grant of power is the first part, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
This makes sense when read in context, this is the eight of 18 paragraphs which explicitally enumerate powers granted to the US Congress
Left at that, congress could, for example, build research facilities and give them away with the hope that the benefactors would use them for research. Or mandate that all citizens volunteer for medical research trials at least twice every year. But the clause goes on to specify and constrain how congress may "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Further limitations on how Congress may do this are made by latter ammendments. Most notably the first ammendment... That is the whole point of an ammendment.
A library contains physical objects (more or less) that can be checked out, but must be returned, and there is only one copy.
That's because of the limitations of technology around when public libraries came into existance. Having to deal with issues, returns, reservations, preventing book theft takes up a lot of library resources which could be better used.
If it had been possible for public libraries to trivially issue copies a few hundred years ago then they probably would have embraced the technology. You'd have a system where every book is always available, no problems due to it being out on loan, stolen, mis-shelved or defaced.
It is a 200-year-old running battle. Ever hear of public libraries? They were originally denounced, by publishers, as a mechanism for theft. Ever hear of the statutory license? It came about almost 100 years ago in response to player-piano roll.
Acutally a little bit longer than 200 years. Copyright came into existance with the development of the publishing industry, which in turn needed the then new technology of the printing press.
Originally copyright was a licence granted by the state to publishers. It was a later revision of the concept which assigned rights to authors. Something the publishers appears to have been fighting ever since. Effectivly we have come full circle with rights, on paper, for authors but often in practice actually held by publishers. This dosn't really work any better now than it did a few hundred years ago.
The point of the original author -- I'm not sure I agree, but I'm also not sure I disagree -- is that intellectual "property" has always been a flawed concept. But due to the clunkiness of the technology, its flaws could be papered over and patched. Now, under the bright light of mass digital technologies, those flaws are being thrown into sharp relief so that anyone -- even my 16-year-old students -- can recognize them.
For some time content was distributed on media which were difficult for individuals to copy but relativly cheap to manufacture on an industrial scale. What has changed is that for many types of content the former is no longer the case.
If developing a lifesaving drug makes a rich person richer, that's fine with me.
Drug companies tend to prefer drugs which don't actually cure people, simply because they can sell more of such drugs.
I think a reasonable solution would be to differentiate more finely between types of intellectual property. For example, some inventions (drugs) require vast expenditures of resources over many years, and thus may require patent protection for a long time or the research will be discouraged.
You'd need some kind of system which distinguished between a drug company doing their own basic research and simply taking publically funded research though.
However, some degree of protection is clearly necessary for movies and other entertainment, because there is a significant investment in most cases (at least for movies).
What you actually need here is a business model which ensures that the cost of making the movie is covered. It's quite possible that there are ways to do this without needing something like copyright. Even with file shareing there still appears to be a market for showing movies in a purpose built room as well as selling and renting copies.
Copyrights shouldn't expire during an authors lifetime.
Why, what's magical about an author's lifetime? (As well as being blatently ageist. Since 20 year old can expect to do better out of such a deal than an 80 year old.)
How would you like it if the govt. took your business away after 10 years, saying, you've had it long enough,
"Your business" in this context is writing novels, poems, songs, whatever. (Assuming it is your only business, plenty of "authors" also do unrelated paid work, have a pension, etc). The output just then happens to be somewhat perishable. There are plenty of highly sucessful busineses dealing in goods which perish in a lot less time than a decade.
Talk about lack of incentive to do anything.
IMHO saying "you have 10 years to make the best out of it" provides a lot more incentive to the typical person than "you have the rest of your life and then some to make something out of this".
This assumes that they are entitled to it. And by "entitled" I'm not talking about legally, I'm talking about morally (and yes it does matter).
There is a mentality, which has come into existance fairly recently, of some kind of "entitlement" to make money. The idea that if some individual or corporation has put lots of money into making a widget they are somehow entitled to make a profit from it; if some way of doing business used to be profitable then it should be profitable for ever. Even though a little though will show that such a mindset is utterly stupid.
All works are based on other works in one form or another. To say "I can build off your efforts but you can't build off mine" is ridiculous.
Even if you could find a single person who was actually the first to come up with such and such a plot element he or she would probably be a direct ancestor of most people now living anyway.
A CD or DVD is, as well, a physical thing. When it is copied and placed on a filesharing server accessible by anyone with Internet access,
The CD/DVD/35mm film/video tape/etc is simply a media what is being copied isn't the media it is the content.
a cogent case can be made that some of the people downloading that copy would otherwise have purchased it.
It's just as possible to make a case that the people downloading the content would never have bought an official copy or that more copies are sold when customers customers can see a preview.
It can very much depend on the movie, there are more than a few examples of people going to see a movie many times and buying a copy after that...
For example the author cites the idea that most commercial value of IP is realized during the first three years. Maybe for a pop tune, or a movie, but certainly that is not the case for the vast majority of patents. New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification; the average time to market for an industrial invention in most industries is 7 years. A shorter term for patent coverage is not appropriate in most cases.
Maybe that's why copyrights and patents are different entities. The first intended to cover "content" the second intended to cover widgets and industrial processes.
Frankly, good ideas are not the product of one man working in solitude; they are the product of many many people sharing their ideas and developing them and improving on them.
Often many people will work on developments of existing technology at about the same time. Once the electric telegraph was invented which, unlike earlier telegraph systems, did not require line of sight between stations, being able to send regular speach rather than some special code is an obvious improvement.
If you don't wish to participate in sharing your ideas and building off the work of other people's ideas then go hide in a hermit hole. You are replaceable. A bit of humility would do you some good.
More often such people (including "corporate people") are happy to take other people's work, but refuse to contribute back their own work for others to use.
No one, Bell included, can come to an idea completely on their own. There has to be knowledge, inspiration, and feedback from others to make ideas viable. Like it or not, a collective (oops, I said the c-word) is from where ideas originate, and where ideas eventually will go in an infinite loop we call "building knowledge".
Typically where there is an appropriate level of technology and political demand similiar inventions will appear from many people. The telephone is such an invention, as are sound recording machines, electric lights and other telecommunication technologies.
I do not today expect to earn residuals because my grandfather was a civil engineer who did good work. Why should the grandchildren of authors expect otherwise?
Doubt your grandfather expected to earn money from work he had done years or decades before either...
Most of the money that you will ever make from a copyrighted work is earned in the first few years.
In some cases even less than that. Consider the typical pop record or movie.
If these people are so brilliant and independent, then they should crank out some new creative works if the copyrights on their old ones expire. It doesn't mean that they're forced to get a corporate job.
So everyone who creates creative content must do so as their fulltime job? There are never authors and poets who write in their spare time, maybe using their expeiences for inspiration? No-one who is retired or who can no longer work due to illness or injury ever turns to writing to keep their perfectly healthy mind occupied? There are no bands or singers who work a regular day job and perform weekends and evenings?
The reason for copyrights is to stimulate creative production, not to let a few lucky artists and their heirs or corporate sugar daddies sit on their collective asses for a century or more.
Indeed too long can actually discourage creative production. A period of 5-10 years would appear adequate, by that time if they havn't made money on a piece of work they probably really are flogging a truely dead horse and should try something else instead.
Greatly limiting the "brief [few years] economic advantage" for authors and inventors would destroy the ability for someone to live off their work, sending brilliant, independant minds back to the doldrums of corporate America.
The idea was ment to be to encourage people to continue to create and invent. Not to encourage them to retire because of a "one hit wonder". Let alone set up their children or grandchildren for life.
If these people are so brilliant they should be easily capable to producing a good novel, piece of music, screenplay every few years. Indeed plenty of people appear a lot more prolific in their output.
If you look at musical history, you'll notice a lot of borrowing going on. I mean, even now. Danny Elfman's Batman theme resembles in no small way a piece of music for piano and orchestra by Rachmoninoff. I forget which one, but I think it's the 2nd...
Pop music coined the term "cover version" for wholesale copying of songs. A lot of "borrowing" goes on in the music industry. Recently one of the most well known pop music producers, Pete Waterman, admitted to more or less copying classical pieces. (Which were IIRC public domain anyway.)
An interesting point of the suppression of ideas created by this: Mozart was accused and had to stand in front of the king (mebbey) when he was a younger child. His crime? He had copied the mass music at church by keeping it in his head and writing it out when he got home. So, could we give Mozart the credit for being the first person to violate some form of artistic licensing?
Depends if that was the oldest example of something like copyright being applied to music. Musicians copying from other musicians probably dates back to the invention of music.
More specifically, trademarks last for as long as the owner of the trademark (which can be a corporation) continues to defend it.
It's a little more complex, if you have either a made up term or something used outside its usual comtext then you can probably quite happily use it as a trademark so long as you defend it. If you try to use a simple description of your product or business it will probably get laughed out of court.
This is why Aspirin became a generic term - Bayer wasn't paying enough attention to the use of the term until it was too late.
Completly different example, Bayer lost their trademarks to "Asprin" and "Heroin" because their country was defeated in a war.