re: #149 SanFranciscoZionist

Once again, why is it unreasonable for a company to retain control of material they own? No one’s going to starve over it, and it, er, belongs to them.

Because the Constitution explicitly forbids perpetual legal monopoly on creative works:

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries…” (Art. I, Sec. 8)

The key is that the government is enforcing that ownership. Coca-Cola does their own enforcement on the recipe, and they do a pretty good job of it. When the government does that enforcement, it is time-limited; when it expires, “ownership” passes to the public at large. That’s the “promotion of the arts and sciences” part in the Constitution.