[Foundation-l] ASCAP comes out against "copyleft"

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>   
> 
> Copyright by default means that anything, however bad or 
> trivial, has copyrights; this includes the weekly flyer from your local 
> supermarket.


All of those are designed there is some creative input that goes into 
them. In some cases, given time, they have a decorative and nostalgic 
quality they makes them economically valuable. I don't see why someone 
should commercially exploit those fliers in some 20 years time.

> For all of the faults of US copyright law there was much 
> positive to be said about the former registration and renewal system.
>

In the past the corporations, those that owned the copyrights on the 
economically important works, registered and renewed the copyrights. 
What didn't get renewed or registered was the works of the those that 
weren't up with the legal system. Those works got expropriated, just ask 
the old blues guys who spent years trying to get what they were owed, 
and many of them never saw a penny.


> In theory at least, the laws were there primarily to protect the 
> creators, not the publishers.  Enforcement of copyright law should 
> primarily be the responsibility of the owner of the right, not of the 
> state except in the case of egregious and wilful violation where a 
> higher burden of proof would also prevail.  The other point is that 
> damages should need to be proven with evidence, and should in no way 
> depend on speculative analysis about what the public might want to see 
> or hear.  It serves no-one (except lawyers) when the costs of legal 
> actions far exceed actual damages.
> 

There needs to be a deterrent to infringement. If all that happens if 
you get caught riding the bus without paying fare, is that you have to 
pay the fare, who would pay the fare upfront?