One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …
Copyright should be abolished
Let’s say you write a novel. It’s really really good. But no one reads it because no one ever hears about it.
Later, I stumble upon your novel and recognize how great it is. Then I republish it verbatim, except with my name as the author. I am much better at business and marketing than you, so it goes viral. I receive millions in sales, am tapped to produce a movie version, and win a Pulitzer for it.
Is that fair? Or should you have some rights in all of this since it was your copy?
And
Copyright only protects the Mouse’s bottom line, and strangleholds creativity.
It should be extremely limited. 3-5 years after copyright it should expire.
That’s plagiarism.
You can have plagiarism law distinct from copyright.
That way, the original author will always be mentioned as a source in the derivative works and it is highly unlikely they will receive no attention should your derivative work become popular.
In this example I would have committed both crimes.
It’s copyright infringement for me to republish and profit from your work without your consent (while that work is not in the public domain).
It’s plagiarism for me to pass that work off as my own.
So it was a bad example.
Copyright has nothing to do with plagiarism. It is literally about the mechanical work of producing copies, which used to be expensive.
That’s going to be very difficult to achieve. Anything below the Berne convention is a legal impossibility.
What I think should happen, is that digital preservation should become a recognized fair use.
For example, digital content should be offered without DRM and at minimum price to recognized libraries for archival purposes.
If this is not done, the libraries may break the DRM themselves.
As soon as the copyright holder stops offering the content at reasonable prices to the public, the libraries are free to lend out the DRM-free content to the public.
And when the copyright term expires and the works enter the public domain, the libraries may immediately offer the DRM-free copies to the public.
The advantage of such a scheme is that it only requires one country to legally mandate it. And that country will not be in violation of the Berne convention or other treaties.