Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Originally posted by: MadRat
Copyright is a farce in today's age. I can understand the protection of trademark, but honestly the original copyright rules in the U.S. Constitution was already too long. Extending them out every new generation is plain evil.
I assume you have a job and get paid to do that job.
Now imagine if I figured out a way to steal part of your job and therefore steal part of your paycheck.
At that point I don't think you would be complaining about copyright rules anymore.
Why does it always seem that people who complain about copyright and IP laws never work in an industry where their work can be stolen and used by other people?
I'm with you there..however, it also shouldn't be okay for you to be living off an idea that you still have locked down from 25, 50, or even 100 years ago....
Patent and copyrights are needed (especially patents) however they need to last a more reasonable time, and some of the patents that get accepted are just retardedly obvious.
And none of this endless copyright crap. 15-20 or so years is a reasonable amount of time.
IP should exist to encourage a good competitive market. Having no IP laws would really stifle innovation. Having your stuff just get ripped off really discourages innovation. But being able to live off of the same tired old IP also discourages innovation and creative thinking.
For a real world example, lets say there is a company out there who made wet lab photo printers in the 80's and 90's..they go under and all their stuff gets bought out by another company who doesn't continue the line of minilabs AT ALL...
But companies out there still use the system. The company that owns the IP doesn't release service manuals anymore or do anything with those old minilabs, but still owns the copyright to them obviously.
Is it wrong for me to commit copyright infringement by taking copied pages of that manual and e-mailing them to a tech who is working on one of the machines so he can get it up and running? I mean, we are definitely making money off of that dirty stolen IP here....
So yeah, any IP stuff needs to last a limited amount of time and have some sane exceptions built in for society's best interest imho.