Interestingly (and I may be wrong about this), I believe there are two different motivations related to the public's interest when it comes to these two different types of legal protection. A patent is aimed at protecting someone who invents something and enables that person to profit from the invention over a specified period of time. The public interest lies in stimulating new inventions over time that help improve our lives in ways that are increasingly cost-efficient. That's why a patent only lasts for a limited period of time.
A copyright, on the other hand, is aimed at protecting published works over long periods of time. There is no "public interest" in allowing someone else to re-write a work of fiction or re-write a musical composition, whereas there is definitely a "public interest" in encouraging inventors to improve upon existing technology, products, etc. In the case of a published work, the protection of the original work is what gives it value.
That's just my take on it.
Thank you. Very well put.
Public domain expiration of copyright is long established and was meant to build the cultural fabric of this nation just as the expiration of patents extends our technology development.
Big Media pwns this nation’s exported legacy of the 20th century and will not give it up now. The corrupt thugs who run the media know that they would be bankrupt if not for the 70 years of pre-published works that keep them solvant.
Ask the artists on Atlantic records about when the label stole the publishing rights to their songs. Ask those who managed to maintain some of their rights about the checks they were never paid for decades.
Look up the drug and other payola the big labels used in the 70s and 80s long after the INDEPENDENT labels got run out of radio airplay.
Public domain expiration of copyright is long established and was meant to build the cultural fabric of this nation just as the expiration of patents extends our technology development.
Big Media pwns this nation’s exported legacy of the 20th century and will not give it up now. The corrupt thugs who run the media know that they would be bankrupt if not for the 70 years of pre-published works that keep them solvant.
Ask the artists on Atlantic records about when the label stole the publishing rights to their songs. Ask those who managed to maintain some of their rights about the checks they were never paid for decades.
Look up the drug and other payola the big labels used in the 70s and 80s long after the INDEPENDENT labels got run out of radio airplay.
Shakespere’s works weren’t legally published in his lifetime. We know of them at least in part through bootlegged transcriptions.
The works of Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain are public domain as well as those of Charles Dickens. Doesn’t seem like they’be been “cheapened” as a result. Unless you think it has stagnated theater and cinema.
Broadway seems locked into a fascination recasting old movies with ironic casts these days rather than developing any “compelling” content.