An idea cannot be stolen. The moment an idea is expressed, it becomes a "free", inexhaustible good. By copying my poem, for example, you are not preventing or hindering me from reciting it, so it is not stealing.
You don't need to steal an idea. That doesn't even need to be possible. The difficulty is that you reduce incentive to make new ideas in the first place. If you sink $500k to make a better mousetrap, and everyone else can copy the design, who in their right mind would make a better mousetrap?
Removing copyright and at the same time prohibiting commercial use of material would allow people to make creations using old material without allowing people to make money off of it; paying subsidies to writers and musicians would then cover the cost of new creations.
This would simply be reducing the scope of copyright, not removing it. This is especially true if the prohibition on commercial use expires at some point.
I agree that it should be reduced. But to the end of the creator's life. The creator of something should have copyright ownership until they can no longer have a say which would be at the time of their death.
this would place a higher legal value on works created when a creator is young than ones created when they are older. Assuming death at age 90, a work created at age 20 would have 70 years legal copyright protection, a work created at age 80 would have only 10.
Ideas and stories aren't property by themselves, what can be chargeable is the production of books. The books should have no copyright after ones death since the producer of the work isn't capable of producing any work, so there is no reason to what isn't property bringing any outcome.
I do agree that it should be reduced to a maximum of the life of the copyright holder. The creator should be able to choose the length of copyright and should have a lot more freedom with how the copyright works. Example: so if John writes a book he can make the copyright 50 years or until death.
People already have options to lessen copyright restrictions on their own works, like Creative Commons licenses. They could also simply state publicly, "This work will go into the public domain 50 years after my death."
One doesn't deserve such a huge reward from being fortunate enough to have a good idea and doing the nominal work to implement it. By granting them that, they unfairly benefit in contrast to the rest of society.
Creative output is often difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. In most cases, copyrights don't confer particularly great benefit to the creator. Copyright generally just helps offset some of the cost of creation (e.g., helping applicants prove their portfolio is their own work when job hunting).
moinois
