Really not sure what you invoking the founders in regards to @Melizmatic comment has to do with what she actually said…
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Ditto what @anon61221983 said, but also…you’re wrong. The original length of copyright in the US was 14 years, renewable for a second 14 year term. And they didn’t envisage shit. They just copied the British Statute of Anne, which also had a 14 year copyright term.
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Really not sure what you invoking the founders in regards to @Melizmatic comment has to do with what she actually said…
Her reply was pretty succinct: “Whether someone steals my ideas or steals my car, it’s still stealing.” I meant to point out that “intellectual property” is a TEMPORARY gift to authors/creators. That gift is becoming a theft from the Commons, because if it can be extended indefinitely, it is not “temporary”.
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It absolutely cannot be extended indefinitely.
ETA: I absolutely believe that the current term of copyright is waaaay too long. But it cannot be extended indefinitely. It can’t be extended at all, actually. It’s the life of the author plus 70 years. That is a very long time, but once that term is up, it cannot be extended.
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One, you’re factually incorrect in your comment (as @danimagoo noted)… and second, there is a lot of debate about copyright, what it should be, and what it should do. That’s been going on for literally years, with BB being one of the places having this conversation… you might note that @Melizmatic is a long-standing member of this community and has actively participated in that (and in many other) conversation here for a very long time… I’ll also note that just pointing at ONE political/legal document that defines copyright in one particular way doesn’t do much, other than make it seem like it’s the only “correct” answer to these issues. There isn’t. That’s why we have an ongoing discussion about copyright happening…
On top of that, your unfounded assumption here that she must be in ignorance of the constitution is a bit condescending. There were LOTS of other ways to put that (incorrect) information into the conversation, and who you settled on to reply to is kind of telling…
There are certainly corporations which would love that to be the case, but yeah, it’s not infinite, as long as it may be right now. And we know that that extension happened, to benefit corporations, not artists.
But we also know that other corporations are stealing the works of artists (especially independent artists, who don’t have the backing of major studios), and those people have little recourse when these AI programs scrap their works. Their work is definitely being stolen to feed their AI programs to shit out inferior works.
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Saying “well, this should have been public domain anyway” only when big companies want to profit off someone else’s work doesn’t do anything to help restore the commons though, it just reinforces that ordinary people don’t get to keep anything for themselves. And a very small proportion of what they scraped off the internet would be decades old in the first place. It’s a separate issue.
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