You’re still arguing with some absent or hypothetical advocate of abolishing copyright. Does anything you wrote in any way argue for the current regime against the alternative I propose of returning to the terms of copyright which prevailed during the colonial and Federal eras?
Van Gogh? He was a starving artist not for lack of copyright laws, but because not enough people were willing to buy his paintings. Both the Netherlands and France (where he lived from 1886 until his death) were party to the 1886 Berne Convention that inflicted life-of-the-artist-plus-50-years copyright on the world.
John Dowland, in copyright-free Elizabethan England made a living as a singer-songwriter. Albrecht Durer made a living selling prints in the copyright-free and legally chaotic Germany of the “Holy Roman Empire”, and as I noted successfully defended his brand against copyists fraudulently selling “Durer prints”.
A lot of what you write about publishers appropriating royalties from actual authors and artists, actually supports my position that copyright extension should be a right of the original artist or author, not a second-party “rightsholder”. Most of the distortions of copyright law have been created because we have allowed the exclusive rights to works which the Constitution specifies Congress may grant to authors and inventors to themselves become “property”, a commodity which the author or inventor can sell. Outside this thread, in the real world, the most forceful advocates of lengthened copyright terms, suppression of derivative works and everything I’m actually arguing against are not artists, but the very sort of conglomerates you are suggesting copyright protects artist from — the RIAA puts a lot of effort into making sure music publishers get paid, but not very much making sure actual musicians and composers get paid, so that actual musicians and composers often have to sue their RIAA-corporate-member publishers to get their money.
Again, stop arguing against a position no one is taking, or if I’ve been inattentive and there is someone on the thread, unknown to me, advocating the abolition of copyright, post your replies to him, not to me.
Van Gogh s paintings were shown by his sister in law after his death, and then sold.
Your intellectualism about this issue is self absorbed. Intelligence knows that without some protection legally, there is always some greedy sap wanting what others have FOR FREE.
This is no longer a debate, it is fact for most of us. Argue with yourself or others, my decision was made and stands firm on the copyright/patent protection.
Enough said.
Copyright law protection is 70 years with the creator or estate/company, etc. And if you are arguing something other than Copyright law then name it...such as DRM, which is digital rights management. DRM is a totally different issue, and should be named if that is what you are specifically talking about? The two are not the same.