[Coco] Republishing Magazines

[Theodore Evans (Alex)]

On Dec 27, 2003, at 2:47 PM, Neil Morrison wrote:

> I believe that all copyrights (and patents) are a right, granted by
> the State on behalf of the citizenry and intended to benefit both
> authors of works and the public at large. I'd like to see a system
> whereby the rights revert to the State at some point and may be
> licensed by the State as a revenue stream. That way the author would
> get almost all of the income at the beginning and would get a
> declining amount over time, varied by the value and popularity of the
> work. The whole way these systems work is a hodgepodge, so that we
> see the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper having to
> sue each auto company one at a time, and the inventors of major
> things like Chester Carlson (Xerox copiers) and Philo T. Farnsworth
> (Television Image Dissector) basically get very little of the income
> whereas Bill Gates gets unlimited co-operation from law enforcement
> to protect even his obsolete software in perpetuity.

Currently the law is written so that IP eventually reverts to the 
public domain.  Patents after a reasonably short time, and copyrights 
after too darned long (no less than 70 years).  Personally I think that 
the government directly administering IP licenses is a horrible idea.  
It would undoubtedly end up being less fair than the system in place.