> copyright terms should have decreased over the years. That's not exactly what happened, now is it? I agree they should decrease and even said so in my post.

> copyright terms should have decreased over the years. That's not exactly what happened, now is it? I agree they should decrease and even said so in my post. > It's completely laughable to assume human culture would cease to develop in the absence of copyright. I didn't say it would and I don't believe it would either, but personally I believe if we got rid of all copyright laws tomorrow it would do more harm to smaller creatives than it would to the large corporate media outlets. > anybody or any organisation who made even rudimentary changes to almost any kind information can limit the rights of every other human on the planet If that is the case then you can take the source material they made changes to and base your work off that. Lets take Snow White as an example. I believe Disney currently still have copyright on their adaptation of the 19th century fairly tale (as the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" film came out in 1937). But as the original source material is in the public domain so you can take that original source material and adapt it for your own creation. > it was expanded to corporations; penalties became more severe; exclusions were reduced; scope crept in the form of anti-circumvention measures; reach expanded by population growth and international cooperation. These can be lowered (or expanded in the cause of exclusions) without having to remove the protection completely. I do believe the current system has flaws (I'm against the rules that prohibit users breaking DRM esp when it is for their own use, for being able to transcode media from one format to another for example). But as I said I am against removing all the protections outright.