Hacker News Reader

Comment by firecall | Hacker News Reader

> If you have a kid under 20, ask them what "copyright" means. They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.

Instead of the original intention which was to grant the right to copy.

View on HN

Not granting the right to copy, controlling it was the entire point. The ability to produce copies of existing works never needed protection because it's a natural right that follows from the human ability to create. And that ability never needed limiting because creating a copy involved a large part of the same painstaking work that the original required.

Copyright was only introduced after the invention of the printing press. The whole point of copyright was to limit the persons/entities allowed to produce copies of a work, because suddenly the ability to copy became a lot cheaper than the ability to create.

Indeed, I knew that LOL

I mangled my comment and never made my broader point!

Which was that originally Copyright would expire at some point in our lifetimes :-)

As I understand it, no one originally thought things should be uncopyable forever more!

> Instead of the original intention which was to grant the right to copy.

No, it was to restrict the right to copy which without any special law everyone had to make it into limited, private, exploitable property.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com