Worus

I attempted to explain why perpetual copyright is a bad thing to Joe and his girlfriend last night. They decided to take the position of being “deep” and say that if copyright wasn’t perpetual that one wouldn’t be able to protect works from awful misuse. My thing on awful misuse is this: someone else is doing it. The original creator isn’t going to be credited with choosing to use their own work this way.

When I hear a Beatles song on an Apple commercial, I think, “Wow. This is how Apple identifies.” I do not think, “Wow. The Beatles liked Macintosh!” I agree with the concept of being able to reap the benefits of ones own work, but not until the end of time. With copyright being automatic and at a term of 90 years, I don’t really feel that there is ever another reason to extend it; shortening it to something more sane might be a good idea, but not eliminating it. Eliminating copyright would not promote progress.

I am amazed at how many people are grossly offended at the idea of making copyright anything less than perpetual. As if, I’m suggesting that they don’t get the benefits of their work. Rather, I would like to see more work built upon without having the legal cost to try and improve the sciences or create something truly unique by mixing ideas or media in a new way being nothing short if completely prohibitive. Why does no one understand?

This falls with a lot of my opinions on these sorts of issues. I literally know no one who agrees with me on this sort of stuff. If I start to get agreement it’s, “That’ll never happen, because I’m too pessimistic to do anything but live in my world.”

I just made my first contribution to the developmental side of our IT department. It was just a change to an existing report, but I got to do something. Now, if there was only more to keep me occupied. I’ll have to wait through the coming weeks to get trained up and be taking my own assignments.