From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Tue May 04 1999 - 09:36:40 MDT
> I write poetry, and I wouldn't put it in any type of public eyesight without
> a copyright, this ensures the security of my work. No other party can claim
> it to be theirs, at least not for 70 years or so. This is a measure that
> does hold up in court, if someone else tags their name to a work of poetry I
> created, a copyright proves it. If this is "arguable because we don't
> protect markets in other things", then get on it, don't try to demean what's
> authors have, it's a needed tool. It is for my protection, not the
> government.
No one can claim your work as theirs, ever, even without copyright--
that's simple fraud. Why is it that those most in favor of copyright
seem to know so little about what it actually is? Copyright is not
what prevents me from claiming I wrote your poem; it prevents me from
posting it on my site with the note "Here's a poem I like by Gina
Miller...". It prevents me from publishing it a collection book, or
making an artistic variation of it. Copyright has nothing to do with
protecting the "integrity" of your work or your credit--it's about
protecting your market from competition. Whether or not that's a
good thing is still arguable, but let's call a spade a spade.
I am an author and programmer; I earn my living writing things, most
of which are copyrighted by my employer. I am thoroughly convinced
that in a world without copyrights I would earn twice as much money
as I do now and produce better work, because my storehouse of
information to draw upon would be freer, and the demand would increase
for creative work that was timely and original. Artists who cling
to copyrights like a security blanket deserve my "demeaning", and I
make no apology for it.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:40 MST