RE: Knight and Public Domain

[Todd Marshall <toddsmarshall@earthlink.net>]

Hello all,

I've been following this thread with a lot of interest, being a paleo-artist
and illustrator. I also am a senior concept artist at a digital game
company, Volition, Inc. owned by THQ in LA.

Anyway, I wanted to pass this along to you all. It's a very interesting
article (and a little horrifying) that a buddy of mine showed me the other
day:

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605&page=1


"Mind Your Business: You Will Lose All The Rights to Your Own Art
Mark Simon is mad as hell and, in this month's "Mind Your Business," he
tells you why you should be too.

April 10, 2008
By Mark Simon"

(Sometimes the site takes a bit to get to the article, just be patient.)

This is all pretty scary stuff, and mind you, a lot of it is a little over
my head when it comes to all this legal BS. It just seems that us artists
are always battling this problem in one form or another. All BS if you ask
me.

Cheers,
Todd
www.marshalls-art.com






-----Original Message-----
From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu] On Behalf Of
Tommy Tyrberg
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 12:42 PM
To: mike@indexdata.com; 'jrc'
Cc: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: SV: Knight and Public Domain


I completely agree that that the current copyright laws are absurd. One
just has to compare with patent law to realise how grotesque they are.
Now if patent laws were the same as copyright law, in most of the World
the Wright Brothers' patent on aircraft would still have 10 years left
on it.

Now it is not immediately obvious to me that e. g. playing a tune is
intrinsically a more demanding or worthy pursuit than inventing the
aeroplane. 

As a matter of fact about the only field where it does seem that longer
monopol rights might be desirable is patents on drugs. It is generally
recognized that the dearth of new antibiotics is at least partly due to
the fact that the patent period is too short to recoup the massive
development and testing costs.

Tommy Tyrberg   




-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu] För Mike
Taylor
Skickat: den 15 maj 2008 15:05
Till: jrc
Kopia: dinosaur@usc.edu
Ämne: Re: Knight and Public Domain

jrc writes:
 > I sit on a Board that derives part of its income from some of the
 > copyrights of the author Robert A. Heinlein.  Pirating of his works
 > is a considerable problem.  Personally, I would prefer that
 > copyright laws be more stringent rather than less.

Unfortunately (for both of us), personal preferences aren't important
here.  What should be important is the intention of the framers of the
constitution and the Supreme Court.  What is actually important is the
preferences of the massive media conglomerates who fund legislation.

 _/|_
___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Fussing and flapping in priestly black like a murder of crows"
         -- Sting, "All This Time"