On 10/15/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Making copyright reasonably shorter would only make the preservation of old works even harder by removing the incentive to preserve old works
I strongly disagree. Projects like Gutenberg, DP, the various digital libraries at universities, etc. have proven that once you remove the barriers of traditional copyright, the amount of work that can be done to preserve content is multiplied. Furthermore, economic analysis has shown that the vast majority of content that is "trapped" by copyright actually has hardly any economic value anymore (check the Amicus Curiae briefs in the Eldred case). Market forces alone tend to be poor guardians of history.