Anthony Thompson wrote:

Whether new copyright rules
will eventually provide a balance between personal use and copyright
protection is unclear. The "Mickey Mouse law" of 1998 (it's actually
known as the Copyright Term Extension Act or CTEA) on electronic
copyright errs, in my view, in totally subsuming fair use to
corporate protection. I hope the pendulum swings back.

Indeed.

IMO the current term of copyright is an obscenity. These words that I'm
writing are automatically protected under current copyright law for the term
of my life plus 75 YEARS. Whereas a patent for, say, "The Cure For Cancer",
when discovered, will get 17 years, less however long it takes the FDA to
get around to saying it's ok to sell. Somebody explain to my why this
posting gets lifespan+75 years and some drug gets fewer than 17.

I'll be honest here: I have no respect for any of the recent changes in
copyright law, specifically if it is held by the corporations who pressed
for these changes. So I download music and I download video and have no
guilt whatsoever for doing so (FWIW I also buy music and video).

As for other stuff... For me: 28 years, period. I don't give a plugged
nickle for the notion somebody can copyright today a creative work that's
more than 28 years old. 28-56 years old? Did it have meaningful value at
the half way point? If I figure it did, I figure it got renewed (only about
15% of what was copyrighted ever got extended). Otherwise I figure it
lapsed and is in the public domain.

Moving on to freight cars and such. I do respect the property value of
persons/libraries/museums who have found something interesting and want to
sell copies to the general public. Doesn't matter to me if it is under
copyright or not, I respect the seller for what they're doing and so in this
regard, I do follow a different set of rules and so I *do not* go into the
replication business using their product.

Yeah, hard to square the circle of these paragraphs in any principled way,
except perhaps by looking at who is doing the selling, respecting the little
guy, and sticking to the law as it was when it made sense.

I'm just being open and frank here...getting something off my chest so to
speak and not looking to debate anything.

Dave Nelson
P.S. Shawn, sorry to say it bud, but f*ck Disney for what they did.