re: #112 Dianna

“You clearly are not a writer, or anyone else who cares about copyright.”

Well, of course, Dianna, if I depended on my writing for my income I’d be thrilled with having a copyright that gave me monopoly profits for 18 or 36 or 60 years. All monopolists love making monopoly profits, of course. We have laws preventing monopoly in the other sectors of the economy, however, because such market structures are bad for the rest of us and destructive for the economy. I think it’s pretty lame to suggest that copyrights this long are in any way needed to reward creativity and innovation. Maybe 5 years is the wrong length, and I just pulled 5 years out of the air, but 18 years is clearly wrong, too. Writers should stop whining and just increase their productivity. I would argue that a copyright, in the cases that it has significant value, might discourage creativity because the writer gets an income without concomitant additional contribution to the creative process. What are Huxley’s heirs doing to deserve this ongoing income stream?