From: Gene McAloon 

On Wed, 14 May 2003 20:43:53 +1300, dmhills{at}attglobal.net (Don Hills) wrote:

>The copyright period should last long
>enough to provide an income while you produce more works of value. In
>other words, copyright should allow you to "work for a
living" as one does
>in more conventional situations. If you stop working, you stop earning.

This is the only part of what you say that I disagree with. Copyright was
never intended to provide a "living" to the holder. In most cases
anyone trying to live on the revenue from copyrighted works would soon
starve to death. Nor is the length of copyright tied to the author
continuing to produce works.

For that matter, it doesn't matter if the author produces only one  work
during his whole life span. He deserves copyright protection for that work
alone. How long he deserves such protection is necessarily an arbitrary
thing. Maybe 28 years seemed a long time two hundred years ago, but would
not now. Each generation must judge what is appropriate.

Its length has gotten out of hand lately in the US, but that is politics
and politics is forever changing. No policy, no law is ever written in
stone.

Gene

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