dpbsmith(a)verizon.net wrote:
His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable
about this--was that
_nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters, absent an
actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that intellectual properly laws
are deliberately vague and ambiguous, because that insures power remains in
the hands of companies big enough to retain lawyers.
I think the issue is quite evident without having to resort to
conspiracy theories. Laws are driven by people who want those laws, not
by the bulk of people, who are disinterested. The original copyright
period in Queen Anne's law of 1710 was 14 years. Since then changes
have been promoted by those who have a vested interest. The public
domain has not been supported because there is no profit in it for
them. We don't make any money through making a text freely available.
Until recently a potential infringer could not go ahead without
significant investment; if he were sued he would have something to
lose. The fact that the little guy now has the means to infringe is a
whole new ball game.
When the little guy engages in copyright paranoia or otherwise tries to
do things within the law, or is intimidated by the IANAL argument, he's
not using the same rule book as the big companies. The power that most
little people don't realize that they have lies in the fact that for a
company to fight 1,000 small $100 fires is a lot more expensive for them
then fighting a single $100,000 fire. Even if all they do is send a
take down letter, to which there is full and immediate compliance, it
hurts and costs them more than it does us.
Ec