hutcheson - 11:17 pm on Dec 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

>Open slather - which is what your renaming seems to imply - is not the answer.

The renaming isn't meant to make any legal proposal. It's meant to focus on the reality.

Any reasonable copyrestriction law would contain these elements
(1) "for a limited time" (as the U.S. constitutional convention stated)
(2) that time should be SPECIFIED--so that anyone may know when the law runs out (i.e. copyright registration, and time limit based on something KNOWABLE, like publication date or author birth (NOT DEATH!).
(3) that time should be commensurate with time for reasonable commercial utilization, these facts:
-- the vast majority of profits for most media is made in the first year! consider books or magazines or music or TV or movies....
-- based on historical library of Congress data, 80% of ALL media is KNOWN to be 100%, FULLY exploited within 28 years (we don't know how much of the other 20% is fully exploited, all we know is that the original author imagined that it might not be.
(4) Limited to a timeframe over which original media are recoverable (the TV show Dr. Who is still on the air, and some early episodes have already been lost, EVEN THOUGH THEY RETAIN COMMERCIAL VALUE!
(5) Not assertable against a reasonable range of "fair use" including (but not limited to) media-shifting, education, resale, private sharing.

Such a law would give all possible opportunity for all but the most wealthy content creators to fully exploit their work (and the law's job isn't to make the rich richer ... but in this proposal, the most wealthy content creators might have to content themselves with wealth beyond my wildest dreams, without laying all of society under an unconscionable burden to the fourth and fifth generation...)

And such a law would allow each generation to build, creatively, on the work of its parents while that work was still remembered and still retained some relevance -- in other words, I believe that shorter copyright laws would result in more and better creative work.

On the other hand, slightly LONGER copyright laws could give ME veto power on anyone who wanted to take a photograph of Westminster Tower (my mother's maiden name was "Dennison--look it up") or anyone who wanted to teach Hutchesonian theories of ethics or aesthetics (Francis, Adam Smith's economics teacher--look it up).

Well, actually, that's not quite true. Longer copyright laws would fund a large organization of lawyers dedicated to working "on my behalf" to prevent anyone from doing those things without paying THEM money to be "paid to me", of course after deducting legal and collection costs approximating a thousand percent of actual money collected, always assuming they could find me (which they probably couldn't) if they looked (which they certainly wouldn't). And in exchange I'd be locked out of two centuries of human experience, innovation, knowledge, and craftsmanship.

I'll tell you what. Go, take a picture of Big Ben, with my blessing. Make little pewter models of it, or big foam puzzles, or posters of the tower in all kinds of interesting weather. Make movies of giant arachnids or simians or crocodilians climbing up it to imperil hapless actresses. Engage in all the range of ethical human behaviors described by the possibly-heretical Scottish professor (and his famous student Adam Smith). Study all the above in the light of Hutchesonian aesthetic or ethical or economic theory. And enjoy the fruit of your labor in your generation. But don't try to lock it up forever, for the sole benefit of some new privileged Eurofascist lawyerly class and wannabe-evil-overlord of all the world's minds.