--- "Monty J. Harder" [email protected] wrote:
I didn't need to register the copyright I hold on that logo, which is automatically mine as of the day I published it, and thanks to the MPAA will belong to my children when I'm safely dead.
On the one hand, very good for us that you've got long-term copyright protection on the KCLUG logo.
On the other hand, not very good for the U.S. taxpayer.
Didn't copyright start off as a transaction rather than as an entitlement? I was always given to understand that the copyright holder received government protection for a limited period in exchange for their copyrighted work entering the public domain at the end of that limited period. Or in other words, the copyright holder received life + 25 to control his or her work and receive royalties for its use, and in exchange the taxpayer received the high-quality work after life + 25 to use for free.
The new copyright laws seem to suggest that a person who is born the same day that the copyright holder dies, will die of old age before the copyrighted work enters the public domain. This to me seems more like an entitlement than a transaction: the copyright holder gets free government protection for a nearly unlimited period of time, and when the work finally enters the public domain its value to the taxpayer is nearly exhausted.
I do volunteer page proofreading for "Project Gutenberg" so I am a little upset about the seemly continuous successful attempts to extend copyright protection duration closer and closer to infinity every year. It is almost as bad as the excessive software patent protection duration. Everyone seems to want to create *one* successful work and then let their family/business live off the royalties unto the seventh generation.
____________________________________________________________________________________ Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting