If the copyright in the song is 'taken away', you can still use the song. If the violin, painting or sculpture is taken away, you can't. As for other property that is 'taken away' - patents.
Mark Davison
Bradley J Brown <bjbrown[_at_]knowledgelaw.com> wrote:
> One difference between people in England and America is that people in
> England tend to think 100 miles is a long way and people in America tend
> to think 100 years is a long time.
>
> There is no empirical evidence that any term of copyright has value to
> the community, but there has been a well settled belief for hundreds, if
> not thousands, of years that it does. For most educational material,
> anything over 20 years old is pretty much obsolete. 75 years or 100
> years is not going to make much difference. An argument that the term
> of copyright should be limited to assist developing countries is
> specious. There is certainly no empirical evidence that it would ever
> have that effect. The primary impact/benefit of the lengthened term is
> for copyright holders of music and videos. Developing countries
> probably are exposed to too much of those as it is.
>
> Copyright is the only form of property that I can think of that is taken
> away from its creator after a certain period of time. If I were to
> create a violin on the order of Stradivarius, I could pass it down to
> many future generations of my family. I have a very limited ability to
> do that with copyright. Why should there be any limit to the length of
> the term of copyright? If I create a work of art in the form of a
> sculpture or a painting, it has the potential of being mine and my
> families forever. If I create a work of art in the form of a poem or a
> song, I only own it for a little while. Where is the logic in that?
>
Received on Tue Nov 18 2003 - 22:15:45 GMT
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