[LINK] Downer on FTA copyright changes

[James Devenish]

In message <20040617012740.GA1143 at cia.com.au>
on Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 11:27:40AM +1000, Deus Ex Machina wrote:
> are you suggesting copyright owners should not have the rights to
> their own creative output?
[...]
> I dont see what the problem is with copyright holders having 50, 70 or
> for that matter 100 year rights on their own works.

I think that a lot of people may feel that long terms of copyright run
contrary to the cultural and societal value of the materials.

> when you buy property there is no temporal limitation on that ownership
> why should there be any with intelectual property?

If you're going to draw analogies like that, wouldn't the existence of
the patent system suggest that society disagrees with your reasoning
anyway?

Aside: do you realise that Australian copyright law hardly gives owners
any wilful way to put their work into the public domain? The passive
expiration of copyright is one of the few (only?) ways this can be
achieved. Surely this represents a staggering volume of work that is
copyrighted against the intent of its own copyright owners.