> There is no good reason for copyright to ever expire.
The case for limited copyright was laid down as early as the U.S. Constitution, and the Congressional Copyright Act of 1790. Lawrence Lessig has devoted much of his life's work to this exact question. It's also analyzed in this surprising and recent paper from the U.S. House Republican Study Committee, knocking down the three myths of copyright protection:
The protracted terms of modern copyright "protection" -- life plus 90 years, etc. -- stifles invention without rewarding creative artists, who are long dead and have no need for incentives to create new work.
Another commenter is entirely right on this about Disney. Much of Disney's own creative work (and enormous wealth) comes from repurposing the work of others: Carlo Collodi, the Brothers Grimm, Mark Twain, Joel Chandler, and on and on. We see Disney innovating in exactly the way the U.S. Founders intended in limiting copyright to 14 years.
Disney and the rest of Big Content, however, have paid lobbyists to lock up their own derivative works so that nobody can extend them in the way Disney reused the originals. It's a corporate scam, pure and simple, with manifold ill consequences for consumers and artists alike.
The incentives still exist in the present, even given a future when the creative artists are long dead. The ability to pass the rights down to descendants and the increase in the value of rights for the purposes of selling them to obtain cash can be significant incentives in the present.
That Disney is hypocritical in their support of extended copyrights is irrelevant. What we are left with is a law, which independent of how it was passed exists now. As rayiner points out -- what is the motivation for repealing it. Once we consider copyrights a form of property, it seems tenuous to put arbitrary limitations on them that do not apply to other forms of property.
The case for limited copyright was laid down as early as the U.S. Constitution, and the Congressional Copyright Act of 1790. Lawrence Lessig has devoted much of his life's work to this exact question. It's also analyzed in this surprising and recent paper from the U.S. House Republican Study Committee, knocking down the three myths of copyright protection:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/113633834/Republican-Study-Committ...
The protracted terms of modern copyright "protection" -- life plus 90 years, etc. -- stifles invention without rewarding creative artists, who are long dead and have no need for incentives to create new work.
Another commenter is entirely right on this about Disney. Much of Disney's own creative work (and enormous wealth) comes from repurposing the work of others: Carlo Collodi, the Brothers Grimm, Mark Twain, Joel Chandler, and on and on. We see Disney innovating in exactly the way the U.S. Founders intended in limiting copyright to 14 years.
Disney and the rest of Big Content, however, have paid lobbyists to lock up their own derivative works so that nobody can extend them in the way Disney reused the originals. It's a corporate scam, pure and simple, with manifold ill consequences for consumers and artists alike.