Nevertheless, we're concerned about it. Aside from general matters of contract law (e.g. voiding unconscionable contracts), there are copyright provisions to this effect, such as the period late in term when rights automatically revert to authors.
Of authorship and publishing, copyright favors the former. Without copyright there'd be even more publishers active. We don't need it to help them. (not that it's intended to help authors either, particularly)
I hear that. I have Evidence tomorrow. OTOH IP was yesterday, and it was a breeze. I'm only worried about how flat the curve will be in there at this point. Even the notorious screwups didn't really screw it up.
I bet you haven't done much with the UCC yet, if it's a one semester class. (the whole US law school cirriculum needs a serious overhaul IMO) It has a lot of bearing on the mere existance of the EULA to begin with.
The issue almost never comes up. As it is, there's no consensus. Check out the ProCD case, the Softman case, and the Netscape SmartDownload case. Of course, Bobbs-Merril is a matter of constitutional law, not just copyright. Definately read that one. And consider the UCC's hostility towards post-sale contracts.
The law merely says that making fair use is noninfringing. It doesn't say anything about it being mandatory.
Actually, I think that it very nearly does.
The framers wrote the copyright clause in the 1780's. An era when there was no technological method of preventing first sale, fair use, or any exploitation of the work once it fell in the public domain. (which most did anyway)
These doctrines that we have developed over time are drawn from the Constitution. We believe that due to the promotion element of the copyright clause, Congress has no power to grant copyrights that prevent fair use. The situation of the author denying fair use for a work that has in fact been published has never arisen before. But I would expect that the outcome would be precisely the same -- if fair use cannot be made of the work, then the author has not earned his copyright, for his work can easily be said to not promote progress.
Thus, unless a promotes progress to at least the same extent as a book or chart did back then, or can be amended to do so, copyright is inappropriate.
Should an author prefer self-help measures over legal protections, then he should have every right to do so, per the first amendment. But Congress should certainly not discourage people from cracking such self-help schemes wide open, since doing so will result in a great treasure trove of free content making its way into the control of the public. Perhaps they should even subsidize it.
As I said before, this is VERY similar to the issue of wiretapping. The fourth amendment doesn't say anything about being secure over the wires, and originally there was a lot of support for taps because of this. But ultimately it was decided that rather than maintain the literal requirement of the amendment, and the reduced freedom from intrusion that would result, we would expand it so as to keep the freedom it guaranteed more closely constant. Had the framers envisioned taps, they would've surely mentioned it and included it, for their intent was clear. We should honor that, and not let our society be ruined by harmful literalism.
Your position is identical: the framers didn't envision something, though we can easily infer what they would've said, so we'll chuck everything right out the window.
What the law says is a matter of reading it, just as much as writing it.
Second, copyright is temporary, so all works will pass into the public domain eventually, at which time anybody can do anything they want.
No. Copyright also can't constitutionally prevent fair use either -- and look at how you already put your foot in your mouth about that.
If there is a technological measure preventing me from making use of a copyrighted work, how does it magically vanish when the work is in the public domain? Has someone shamed the Second Circuit, by using DeCSS to legally decrypt a public domain movie off of a DVD?
Technological measures taken to restrict a work last forever and are thus immensely harmful to not only us now, but literally everyone that will come after us. They destroy the longevity of our culture, and basically make us moot in history. It will be seen as though the Minoans suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and took over the world. That's very bad. I refuse to allow it to happen.
Did you know that copyright holders are not required to do anything at all in order to ensure that users of their works can exercise all-- or even any!-- of the possible fair uses of their works?
True. But then, they've never been able to prevent it in the past.
I would argue that copyright fundementally requires that fair uses and public domain uses must be made of works. If a work is made that doesn't inherently permit this, then it is undeserving of copyright unless amended in such a way so as to conform to the expectations of the public. After all, it is the public, and their desire and right to make fair uses and public domain uses that copyright is intended to protect. Not authors.
The relevant case is Feist. There, the organization of a phone book -- listings that had names, numbers, and towns, and were sorted alphabetically, were not original or creative. Everyone does that.
Well, for any TV listing I've ever seen, they're pretty standard. Channel, program name, time/duration. Sorted by time and channel. Who lists this stuff differently? I haven't seen anyone list tv shows by show name, regardless of time or channel. And the uselessness of it is a strike against TV Guide per the merger doctrine. (i.e. where there are realistically only a few ways of expressing an idea, they're not protected)
IANAL either, but I don't see Feist protecting the basic listings. Summaries, yes, but not the basic listings.
Fundementally, that they no longer had a committment to creating a superior UI.
Right, as I pointed out they chose to cater to the Mac faithful.
However, catering to the NeXT faithful is just as bad. Catering to any established group is bad. The Mac was good because the guiding light of development was superior UI. Eventually it degenerated into being a slightly better Mac. Apple was no longer willing to start over again if it would yield drastically better UI. This change occured early on, and was the death of, the Taligent project.
Buying NeXT simply to have a Mac-rebranded NeXT OS is just as bad. By attempting to buy an existing OS, Apple shut the door on the possibility of starting over again and creating a UI that was better than anything that could ever result from NeXT's work.
Apple is unwilling to strive for anything other than small incremental improvements. This is a fatal mistake.
Imagine if, instead of taking a risk and developing the Mac, Apple had chosen to purchase some other company back in the early 80's. Would we have been better off if they had bought Digital Research and put CP/M on six-color hardware? The NeXT purchase was a mistake. BeOS would've been a mistake to purchase as well. Some problems you just cannot buy your way out of.
[If Unix is] covered over with an elegant, consistent graphical interface and the typical user never sees it?
First, building a potempkin village is not a solution. Second, seeing something won't stop you from being effected by it. UI is not a mere skin, or GUI. It is the behavior of the computer in response to the users' actions. No mere shell is capable of guarding against this.
I don't see that you've demonstrated that Mac OS X is bad at multiple-user things
I'm saying it's not any better than any other multiple user OS. It should be so much better that it's in a class of its own. Good enough is the ideology of that other company.
That doesn't jibe with my experience
Check out the MacNN forums. A thread on the subject pops up pretty routinely. I cannot imagine how many people have this difficulty that don't know how to get help about it.
Moreover, Mac OS X has a very nice shell
But it basically has tcsh. It doesn't have a new shell that is so good that no one would ever consider the alternatives.
Apple isn't trying to kick ass anymore. Without the right attitude they won't achieve anything of note, and they _really_ need to.
I know. That statement is EXACTLY like saying that just because a musician publishes a CD of their music doesn't mean that they surrender the copyright.
What I'm saying is that they might not have a copyright AT ALL, because any individual listing is a fact that is not an original work of authorship by TV Guide, any more than the phone company can claim that they have a copyright on your phone number.
Compilations of facts can be copyrighted, but only if there was creativity in selecting the facts to be compiled, and their organization/layout. Given that TV Guide tries to include all facts, and organizes them by channel and time, this doesn't strike me as being original either -- everyone does that.
The summaries of what happens in each program are the only things that seem protectable. It's a shame to lose them, but at least there is a good chance that we can legally rip the channel, time, and program name w/o copyright infringement.
That would be nice, but I don't expect to see it anytime soon.
No, I'd be happy with even small steps to begin with. Just anything to get CLI development rolling again.
What about tooltips on filenames, commands, arguments, etc. to provide more information and help?
Contextual menus on them as well, just as one might see in the file manager.
Using the CLI and GUI in tandem as an integrated whole -- for example, allowing you to create pipelines and select files at times when it's harder to do so with a GUI.
Largely I want to be able to use a CLI as yet another input method for commands, just as I do with the mouse, keyboard, or menubars. The whole terminal thing might sometimes be useful (e.g. low-bandwidth remote access to a system) but is seriously in need of replacement for most day to day uses, I feel.
I would argue that using NeXT ruined Apple's UI work...
and your arguments for this are?
Fundementally, that they no longer had a committment to creating a superior UI. Unix was never designed to have a particularly good UI -- by using it, it compromised everything else. After all, how do you have an OS which is in every way intended to promote usability if a huge portion of it was never intended to do so?
security and multiuser systems, outdated CLIs
You misunderstand. I'm not saying that MacOS was good at this. Rather, I am saying that OS X is _also_ bad at it. I demand improvement BEYOND what anyone has already done. Not mere retreading of the same ground again and again.
Even the best existing tools aren't good enough.
This is why I would be just as upset if MacOS had continued, and why I don't think it should have been around nearly as long as it was. Even if it was the best, it's unacceptable to stand pat.
Name something in Mac OS X which a typical user would want to do which _requires_ one to make use of the CLI
Delete files? The permissions are so royally fucked up on OS X that it's routine to see people be unable to delete their files and be told to resort to its craptastic shell in order to accomplish this trivial task.
Just because material is published on an accessible medium, does not mean that it is not copyrighted.
Well, duh. In fact, there's a good argument that only works that are published (which rather necessarily implies that the medium is accessible) should be eligible for copyrights.
But given as how so many copyrighted works are in accessible media, e.g. the internet, books, paintings, movies, etc., I don't see why you latched upon that as being relevant.
Tell me about it. I keep saying that we need to throw out the various CLI shells and replace them with a better CLI, one that takes advantage of the improvements in usability that have come about since the 70's for God's sake, and yet no one ever seems to believe that there's any need for usability if pictures aren't traditionally associated with something.
I would argue that using NeXT ruined Apple's UI work, BUT that a better route would've been to drop the Mac altogether and pursue a new alternative based upon first principles... just as the Mac did.
Personally the key for me is Unix. It's just so unbearably awful, that I find it impossible to believe that there could ever be anything good placed atop it without requiring so much work that it would've been easier to start from scratch. NextStep had all sorts of terrible Unixisms in it that have infected the Mac, e.g. the file structure, security and multiuser systems, outdated CLIs, etc.
MacOS should have been replaced by the mid-90's at the latest, but it's sad to see the crap coming out of Cupertino these days.
The American legal system is actually many different legal systems all working together.
Different states may have different ways of filling judicial positions, ranging from elections to appointments. Federal judges and justices are appointed for life, however, and it is they who exclusively handle copyright and patent cases.
They may have political or ideological leanings, but given as how it's extremely difficult for them to be harmed by anyone effected by their decisions, actual bias is unusual.
I apologize. This wasn't really aimed at you specifically, but your language was the easiest to hang the point I wanted to make on.
I could've done that better... I'm just kind of punchy due to a) exams rapidly coming up, and b) my own involvement with a pvr project. (which will kick Freevo & Myth's asses in terms of usability, I hope;)
I know that it clarifies it. But it does not serve to promote free speech. If people know that something is an ad, they won't look at it. If spam or banners, etc. are uniformly labeled as ads, they are likely to be filtered extremely heavily and this prevents people from speaking effectively or having an audience... due to government regulation mandating the labeling.
A hard sell is not fraud. Sales puffery is not fraud.
Believe me -- I like free speech, and I hate ads, but I really don't see a way to force useful labeling of ads in such a way that, say, I might not have to see them.
But as a horrendously lazy bastard, myself, I keep looking at the prepackaged ones
Great. Then don't insult people who are not just making new PVR software, but who want to make it slick and easy to use, and who want to share it with you.
Ultimately, the idea is to make the free PVRs more attractive to you on all fronts than the Tivos of the world, even on ease of setup and use.
We're not going to get such a laudable goal if you discourage people from working on it. So at least be receptive and encouraging to such efforts. This can be as little as telling developers 'I still like the Tivo better... but here is what you can do to change my mind.'
Why would it be a copyright violation? I mean, I know that factual compilations _can_ sometimes be copyrightable, but I don't see that there's enough creativity in the basic TV Guide to count.
What, specifically, is this legal requirement. Can you provide a citation. We discussed this issue pretty thoroughly in class, and concluded that such labeling could easily be an infringement of free speech. (damn that 1st A;)
I'm saying, if I sold something to you, but said that it wasn't a sale (despite the transaction posessing all the attributes of a sale), would that make it not a sale?
Therefore, if I license something to you, but the only difference between the license and a sale is the name attached to the transaction, does that really make it any less of a sale?
The answer is no, and the courts do make such rulings.
Selling software for a term of years clearly is not a license in perpetuity. I'm talking about Windows, or Photoshop. I have no problem with licensure that is distinguishable from a true sale -- provided that complete and disclosed copies are deposited so that when the copyright term expires the work can properly enter the public domain.
However, there are strong antitrust concerns in such a market as you describe, which should not be taken lightly.
Slashdot Mirror
That's still damn long. How about 20 years, tops regardless of life. And maybe less for works that age more rapidly, e.g. software.
Nevertheless, we're concerned about it. Aside from general matters of contract law (e.g. voiding unconscionable contracts), there are copyright provisions to this effect, such as the period late in term when rights automatically revert to authors.
Of authorship and publishing, copyright favors the former. Without copyright there'd be even more publishers active. We don't need it to help them. (not that it's intended to help authors either, particularly)
I hear that. I have Evidence tomorrow. OTOH IP was yesterday, and it was a breeze. I'm only worried about how flat the curve will be in there at this point. Even the notorious screwups didn't really screw it up.
I bet you haven't done much with the UCC yet, if it's a one semester class. (the whole US law school cirriculum needs a serious overhaul IMO) It has a lot of bearing on the mere existance of the EULA to begin with.
The issue almost never comes up. As it is, there's no consensus. Check out the ProCD case, the Softman case, and the Netscape SmartDownload case. Of course, Bobbs-Merril is a matter of constitutional law, not just copyright. Definately read that one. And consider the UCC's hostility towards post-sale contracts.
The law merely says that making fair use is noninfringing. It doesn't say anything about it being mandatory.
Actually, I think that it very nearly does.
The framers wrote the copyright clause in the 1780's. An era when there was no technological method of preventing first sale, fair use, or any exploitation of the work once it fell in the public domain. (which most did anyway)
These doctrines that we have developed over time are drawn from the Constitution. We believe that due to the promotion element of the copyright clause, Congress has no power to grant copyrights that prevent fair use. The situation of the author denying fair use for a work that has in fact been published has never arisen before. But I would expect that the outcome would be precisely the same -- if fair use cannot be made of the work, then the author has not earned his copyright, for his work can easily be said to not promote progress.
Thus, unless a promotes progress to at least the same extent as a book or chart did back then, or can be amended to do so, copyright is inappropriate.
Should an author prefer self-help measures over legal protections, then he should have every right to do so, per the first amendment. But Congress should certainly not discourage people from cracking such self-help schemes wide open, since doing so will result in a great treasure trove of free content making its way into the control of the public. Perhaps they should even subsidize it.
As I said before, this is VERY similar to the issue of wiretapping. The fourth amendment doesn't say anything about being secure over the wires, and originally there was a lot of support for taps because of this. But ultimately it was decided that rather than maintain the literal requirement of the amendment, and the reduced freedom from intrusion that would result, we would expand it so as to keep the freedom it guaranteed more closely constant. Had the framers envisioned taps, they would've surely mentioned it and included it, for their intent was clear. We should honor that, and not let our society be ruined by harmful literalism.
Your position is identical: the framers didn't envision something, though we can easily infer what they would've said, so we'll chuck everything right out the window.
What the law says is a matter of reading it, just as much as writing it.
Second, copyright is temporary, so all works will pass into the public domain eventually, at which time anybody can do anything they want.
No. Copyright also can't constitutionally prevent fair use either -- and look at how you already put your foot in your mouth about that.
If there is a technological measure preventing me from making use of a copyrighted work, how does it magically vanish when the work is in the public domain? Has someone shamed the Second Circuit, by using DeCSS to legally decrypt a public domain movie off of a DVD?
Technological measures taken to restrict a work last forever and are thus immensely harmful to not only us now, but literally everyone that will come after us. They destroy the longevity of our culture, and basically make us moot in history. It will be seen as though the Minoans suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and took over the world. That's very bad. I refuse to allow it to happen.
Did you know that copyright holders are not required to do anything at all in order to ensure that users of their works can exercise all-- or even any!-- of the possible fair uses of their works?
True. But then, they've never been able to prevent it in the past.
I would argue that copyright fundementally requires that fair uses and public domain uses must be made of works. If a work is made that doesn't inherently permit this, then it is undeserving of copyright unless amended in such a way so as to conform to the expectations of the public. After all, it is the public, and their desire and right to make fair uses and public domain uses that copyright is intended to protect. Not authors.
Look at the parallels with wiretapping.
Never used it, I'm afraid.
The relevant case is Feist. There, the organization of a phone book -- listings that had names, numbers, and towns, and were sorted alphabetically, were not original or creative. Everyone does that.
Well, for any TV listing I've ever seen, they're pretty standard. Channel, program name, time/duration. Sorted by time and channel. Who lists this stuff differently? I haven't seen anyone list tv shows by show name, regardless of time or channel. And the uselessness of it is a strike against TV Guide per the merger doctrine. (i.e. where there are realistically only a few ways of expressing an idea, they're not protected)
IANAL either, but I don't see Feist protecting the basic listings. Summaries, yes, but not the basic listings.
Fundementally, that they no longer had a committment to creating a superior UI.
Right, as I pointed out they chose to cater to the Mac faithful.
However, catering to the NeXT faithful is just as bad. Catering to any established group is bad. The Mac was good because the guiding light of development was superior UI. Eventually it degenerated into being a slightly better Mac. Apple was no longer willing to start over again if it would yield drastically better UI. This change occured early on, and was the death of, the Taligent project.
Buying NeXT simply to have a Mac-rebranded NeXT OS is just as bad. By attempting to buy an existing OS, Apple shut the door on the possibility of starting over again and creating a UI that was better than anything that could ever result from NeXT's work.
Apple is unwilling to strive for anything other than small incremental improvements. This is a fatal mistake.
Imagine if, instead of taking a risk and developing the Mac, Apple had chosen to purchase some other company back in the early 80's. Would we have been better off if they had bought Digital Research and put CP/M on six-color hardware? The NeXT purchase was a mistake. BeOS would've been a mistake to purchase as well. Some problems you just cannot buy your way out of.
[If Unix is] covered over with an elegant, consistent graphical interface and the typical user never sees it?
First, building a potempkin village is not a solution. Second, seeing something won't stop you from being effected by it. UI is not a mere skin, or GUI. It is the behavior of the computer in response to the users' actions. No mere shell is capable of guarding against this.
I don't see that you've demonstrated that Mac OS X is bad at multiple-user things
I'm saying it's not any better than any other multiple user OS. It should be so much better that it's in a class of its own. Good enough is the ideology of that other company.
That doesn't jibe with my experience
Check out the MacNN forums. A thread on the subject pops up pretty routinely. I cannot imagine how many people have this difficulty that don't know how to get help about it.
Moreover, Mac OS X has a very nice shell
But it basically has tcsh. It doesn't have a new shell that is so good that no one would ever consider the alternatives.
Apple isn't trying to kick ass anymore. Without the right attitude they won't achieve anything of note, and they _really_ need to.
I know. That statement is EXACTLY like saying that just because a musician publishes a CD of their music doesn't mean that they surrender the copyright.
What I'm saying is that they might not have a copyright AT ALL, because any individual listing is a fact that is not an original work of authorship by TV Guide, any more than the phone company can claim that they have a copyright on your phone number.
Compilations of facts can be copyrighted, but only if there was creativity in selecting the facts to be compiled, and their organization/layout. Given that TV Guide tries to include all facts, and organizes them by channel and time, this doesn't strike me as being original either -- everyone does that.
The summaries of what happens in each program are the only things that seem protectable. It's a shame to lose them, but at least there is a good chance that we can legally rip the channel, time, and program name w/o copyright infringement.
natural language parsing
That would be nice, but I don't expect to see it anytime soon.
No, I'd be happy with even small steps to begin with. Just anything to get CLI development rolling again.
What about tooltips on filenames, commands, arguments, etc. to provide more information and help?
Contextual menus on them as well, just as one might see in the file manager.
Using the CLI and GUI in tandem as an integrated whole -- for example, allowing you to create pipelines and select files at times when it's harder to do so with a GUI.
Largely I want to be able to use a CLI as yet another input method for commands, just as I do with the mouse, keyboard, or menubars. The whole terminal thing might sometimes be useful (e.g. low-bandwidth remote access to a system) but is seriously in need of replacement for most day to day uses, I feel.
I would argue that using NeXT ruined Apple's UI work...
and your arguments for this are?
Fundementally, that they no longer had a committment to creating a superior UI. Unix was never designed to have a particularly good UI -- by using it, it compromised everything else. After all, how do you have an OS which is in every way intended to promote usability if a huge portion of it was never intended to do so?
security and multiuser systems, outdated CLIs
You misunderstand. I'm not saying that MacOS was good at this. Rather, I am saying that OS X is _also_ bad at it. I demand improvement BEYOND what anyone has already done. Not mere retreading of the same ground again and again.
Even the best existing tools aren't good enough.
This is why I would be just as upset if MacOS had continued, and why I don't think it should have been around nearly as long as it was. Even if it was the best, it's unacceptable to stand pat.
Name something in Mac OS X which a typical user would want to do which _requires_ one to make use of the CLI
Delete files? The permissions are so royally fucked up on OS X that it's routine to see people be unable to delete their files and be told to resort to its craptastic shell in order to accomplish this trivial task.
Well, duh. In fact, there's a good argument that only works that are published (which rather necessarily implies that the medium is accessible) should be eligible for copyrights.
But given as how so many copyrighted works are in accessible media, e.g. the internet, books, paintings, movies, etc., I don't see why you latched upon that as being relevant.
Tell me about it. I keep saying that we need to throw out the various CLI shells and replace them with a better CLI, one that takes advantage of the improvements in usability that have come about since the 70's for God's sake, and yet no one ever seems to believe that there's any need for usability if pictures aren't traditionally associated with something.
Irony.
I would argue that using NeXT ruined Apple's UI work, BUT that a better route would've been to drop the Mac altogether and pursue a new alternative based upon first principles... just as the Mac did.
Personally the key for me is Unix. It's just so unbearably awful, that I find it impossible to believe that there could ever be anything good placed atop it without requiring so much work that it would've been easier to start from scratch. NextStep had all sorts of terrible Unixisms in it that have infected the Mac, e.g. the file structure, security and multiuser systems, outdated CLIs, etc.
MacOS should have been replaced by the mid-90's at the latest, but it's sad to see the crap coming out of Cupertino these days.
The American legal system is actually many different legal systems all working together.
Different states may have different ways of filling judicial positions, ranging from elections to appointments. Federal judges and justices are appointed for life, however, and it is they who exclusively handle copyright and patent cases.
They may have political or ideological leanings, but given as how it's extremely difficult for them to be harmed by anyone effected by their decisions, actual bias is unusual.
I apologize. This wasn't really aimed at you specifically, but your language was the easiest to hang the point I wanted to make on.
;)
I could've done that better... I'm just kind of punchy due to a) exams rapidly coming up, and b) my own involvement with a pvr project. (which will kick Freevo & Myth's asses in terms of usability, I hope
Anyway, again, I'm sorry for stating it that way.
I know that it clarifies it. But it does not serve to promote free speech. If people know that something is an ad, they won't look at it. If spam or banners, etc. are uniformly labeled as ads, they are likely to be filtered extremely heavily and this prevents people from speaking effectively or having an audience... due to government regulation mandating the labeling.
A hard sell is not fraud. Sales puffery is not fraud.
Believe me -- I like free speech, and I hate ads, but I really don't see a way to force useful labeling of ads in such a way that, say, I might not have to see them.
Great. Then don't insult people who are not just making new PVR software, but who want to make it slick and easy to use, and who want to share it with you.
Ultimately, the idea is to make the free PVRs more attractive to you on all fronts than the Tivos of the world, even on ease of setup and use.
We're not going to get such a laudable goal if you discourage people from working on it. So at least be receptive and encouraging to such efforts. This can be as little as telling developers 'I still like the Tivo better... but here is what you can do to change my mind.'
Why would it be a copyright violation? I mean, I know that factual compilations _can_ sometimes be copyrightable, but I don't see that there's enough creativity in the basic TV Guide to count.
What, specifically, is this legal requirement. Can you provide a citation. We discussed this issue pretty thoroughly in class, and concluded that such labeling could easily be an infringement of free speech. (damn that 1st A ;)
Well of course, there is the issue of whether or not there is a contract at all.
However, courts do, for various policy reasons, decline to enforce, or rewrite, or void contracts all the time.
In fact, not all rights are even alienable. There is a limit to how much you can legally have me punch you in the head.
No, that's circular reasoning.
I'm saying, if I sold something to you, but said that it wasn't a sale (despite the transaction posessing all the attributes of a sale), would that make it not a sale?
Therefore, if I license something to you, but the only difference between the license and a sale is the name attached to the transaction, does that really make it any less of a sale?
The answer is no, and the courts do make such rulings.
Selling software for a term of years clearly is not a license in perpetuity. I'm talking about Windows, or Photoshop. I have no problem with licensure that is distinguishable from a true sale -- provided that complete and disclosed copies are deposited so that when the copyright term expires the work can properly enter the public domain.
However, there are strong antitrust concerns in such a market as you describe, which should not be taken lightly.
Uh huh. Tell me how a license to use something in perpetuity, for a one-time, up-front payment differs in ANY way from a sale?
Courts are quite capable, and often do, look at the true nature of the transaction. Regardless of what the parties involved are calling it.