On copyright and its extension

The terms for which copyrights last are extended time and again, currently to long after the original creator has died. According to those benefiting from this regime it is to protect the copyrighted work and ensure that more works are created, not to protect an income stream or law-dependent business plan.

In answer to that I say that the moment something is created, the copyright in effect at that moment was clearly sufficient for its creation. I don't need to explain that reasoning more as it is self evident. Copyright extension, especially after the fact, is the real crime of theft of copyright work.

If the work is still so popular after a reasonable copyright term has expired then that work will have entered the public conciousness and imagination and belongs as much to the commons as it did to the original authors. Although the original author will always reserve the right to identify themselves as first author they lose the right to control how that work is used and built upon. This is part of the deal you make when you publish that work to the public. In exchange for some money for a limited period of time, you eventually lose control of the work. If you as an author of a work do not wish to ever lose control of that work then the solution is simple, do not release it.

Any extension to the copyright term to keep that work out of the public domain is an act of theft from the public and the commons.This theft from the commons and the public imagination is what actually damages the drive to create new works as it requires that everything be created all over again. This position is based on the fact that most creative works are not truly original but benefit from the creations of all the works that have gone before.