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The entire point of copyrights and patents is to encourage invention and creativity. To give a temporary monopoly on their inventions and creations so that they may profit from such efforts. This is supposed to inspire others to become inventive and creative.
Not to enrich people long after the inventor and creator are dead.
Ed Sheeran is presently the defendant brought by the heirs of Ed Townsend over the song "Let's Get It On".
Mr Townsend is dead. He's been dead for 20 years. Copyright served him well and he was a successful performer.
But what have his heirs and assigns created?
What they are managing to do is to cause people to hesitate before creating.
The effect of the present state of copyright is doing the exact opposite of the reason to have such laws in the first place.
Judging by the court performance of Mr Sheeran, he's shown that the plaintiff doesn't have a case.
I says that, not only, do they NOT have a case; they shouldn't have any right to Mr Townsend's work. They created nothing.
So they are trying to profit from a second person's creative endeavor.
It's a grift.
Has been, and will be. Like ZZTop being sued by the heirs of some dead dude ZZTop thought they were honoring. And the boundaries of what was covered under copyright 40 years ago are different than today, thanks to the Disney Corporation and their attempt to keep control of Walt's intellectual property forevermore.
ReplyDeleteBeing here in Alachua County, you can see BB King's relatives acting on the grift over his legacy. And they are a feckless bunch of grifters that can give actual Romney Gypsies a run for their (or, most likely, someone else's) money.
I know you don't like her, but Teresa Nielsen Hayden had a pretty good article in one of her books (originally on her blog) about how copyright screws things up, particularly anything written after the Mouse got going. There's a lot of great SF and fantasy that can't be reprinted legally, because copyrights run up to 70 years after the death of the author. Either the heirs can't be located, or they're playing dog-in-the-manger, or it's difficult to decide WHO has the rights.
ReplyDeleteI'm no fan of the Mouse overall, but I'd be quite willing to carve out a special exception in the law for Wally's original IP, making it copyrighted to Disney forever and ever. In the UK, Peter Pan is permanently copyrighted, with the rights going to some children's hospital, and to cut this Gordian knot I'd do something similar for Disney,