Jonathon Delacour the heart of things

Life of the author is unfair to those who die young or start writing late, and creaets perverse incentives (assassination by publisher?).
Jefferson proposed a 19-year term, based on actuarial tables to correspond to the average lifespan once literate enough to create.

But if X wants ro sell her table, she can't also keep it, or dictate to the buyers how they may use it. Likewise, I may make an exquisite image that I hang on my wall and admire, and ono one else can copy or even know about. But if I decide to sell my image, I can't tell buyers what room to put it in, how to frame it, what they may use it for ("Horrors! You mayn't use it to wrap your fish & chips!").

And the metaphor still presumes that the poem belongs to me in the same way a table would--but that's just the point, it doesn't and it can't.

Bully for you.

I used to be SO staunchly for long copyright terms, but I think things have gotten out of hand. The length of copyright is just SO long...
Plus from the other side of the argument we have groups like RIAA trying to limit what we can even do with licensed materials!
I'm beginning to think we should cut copyright terms, 14 years you say? Sounds good to me!

If I invent the Theory of Relativity, should I be able to say how that theory is used?

If I discover a source of oil, should I be able to decide who can use it or not?

If I write a poem, should I be able to decide who can make copies of it and who can't?

These abilities are not the necessities of property, they're the power to tell other people what they can and cannot do.

Jonathon, I apologize for an inappropriate comment. It wasn't negative in the sense of your posting, it was negative in the sense of the topic, but was poorly worded and ill-thought.

I should have added to this conversation, but I let my frustration with this topic overly influence me and all I did was pour cold water on it with a trite 'bully for you'.

My apologies.

Now that the apology is out of the way...

AKMA, you equate a poem with a table, but a table is an expression of craft rather one's innermost thoughts. Perhaps because I'm a writer, I find myself more sensitive to writing than I would other crafts, but it seems to me that I when I put my thoughts on paper, I am exposing my most intimate details.

So much of this discussion keeps coming around to the money, and at least for myself, since I was one of the people that Jonathon slightly alluded to in his writing, this issue has never been about money, as much as expression.

Aaron, you say if I write a poem can I control who publishes it? Should be able to control who profits from it, at the least. But more than that -- I should be able to have some in how people manipulate that poem. If they change the words, it is no longer my poem. If they take the world I create in my imagination, and they harm it, it is no longer my world.

Is this equitable to not being able to control how a person uses a table I create? I guess it is, at least according to the Creative Commons. But to me, if my dreams and aspirations and writing and thoughts are eroded over time, then even the memory of me dies, not just my body.

I've never been adverse to allowing republication of my material, especially after death. But altering it, that is different.

But then, the table, too, wears, and eventually becomes dust. I guess no man or woman was ever meant to be mortal, not even in writing.

Dear Shel,

I truly give thanks for your sensitivity and concern for literary expression. I too care about words and expressions, and I too am a writer.

I also have come to doubt that I have any propretary claims on the dsuff I write on public. Even my conventionally-published, all-rights reserved, copyrighted writing escapes my control in lots of ways: I don’t have the prerogative to choose the typeface or page design (and I care strongly about those), I don’t have the prerogative to make sure that people take good care of the books and essays I write, and above all I don’t have the prerogative, indeed not the capacity, to control what people make of what I write. So I no longer worry about whether they [mis]interpret what I write in print, in the privacy of interior monologue, in conversation, whatever. I wrote it; I did my part. If others want to do something else with it, it’s all out of my hands. And I think that’s just as well.

The first two plays that I wrote were heavily laced with parodies of film and literature...
I'm sure they stretched to the limit the laws of fair use, but were allowed under that rule.

But I have often thought about my ownership of those plays, after all they are 50% other peoples works...

The question then came up when someone else wanted to perform one... and asked me how much I wanted, $$

In the end I took a standard cut but put the money not in my private account but in my production compay account.
What am I saying? Actually I kinda lost track, but had a point going in...
Oh yes, everything out there is influenced by what has come before and owes a lot to it. This doesn't mean that a new work doesn't deserve to be rewarded, but if we don't have open access to all the ideas and writings of our forebears we are poorer for it. In my opinion anyway

Making a table is not what gives you posession of the table. It is your prior exclusive posession of the matter from which the table is made. If the law anywhere gives posession of a table to the woodcarver who makes it from stolen wood, it is still not self-evident to me that the law should do so.

The analogy to making a poem breaks down at several points. Poems are not made of matter. The things from which you make them--words--are not your exclusive possession. If your own thoughts are your exclusive posession, still by the time they become a poem they are made of language, which is not your exclusive posession. Wood that you own you own all the way down to the subatomic level.

Then there is the padre's point that works of the human mind are inherently shared. As I asked elsewhere in other words, what is the point of having civilization at all if we throw ridiculous obstacles in the way of learning from one another ? (Lord Camden asked the same question in the House of Lords in 1774, during the debate over the case of Donaldson v. Becket.)

Then there is the analogy to patents: why should writers get life-plus terms, and inventors get 20 years ? The answers to this take three forms, none of which is entirely satisfactory. The first answer is the snobbish claim that writers, unlike those who practice other crafts, are some sort of superior human beings, herrenshoepfer, who deserve special treatment far above what is accorded to the lowly mechanicals who work with their hands. The second answer is a subtle variant of this. It holds that writers are mere dilattantes whose work is less valuable to society than the work of inventors, so society can afford to give writings a longer term. The third answer is that copyright is a narrower monopoly than patent, so it needs a longer term to create a credible incentive.

The first and second answers are insulting to my sense of equality, as well as failing to match my observations. Some inventions are useless, some are useful. Some writings are useless, some are useful. The monopoly is intended to provide a greater or lesser return to the inventor or author in proportion to society's judgement. But the monopoly must end, sooner or later. Why always later in the case of writings than of inventions ?

The third answer is partly right. Copyright is very broad, but it still at least sometimes allows for independent invention. The doctrines of "substantial similarity" and "unconscious infringement" have eroded this margin of freedom, but not completely. But the third answer doesn't explain why the term of copyright, originally twice that of patent, is now about five times that of patent, or why the disparity needs to be this great.