| Kenny said: I've known that copyight in the United States started at 14 years, but what that meant didn't really hit home for me until I realized that a system like this would mean Goldeneye 64 would enter the public domain in a few months' time. Not only that, but every single game on the NES and SNES would also be in the public domain by now. Unfortunately, reality dictates that cartoons from the 20s are still copyrighted, and will be for all time as long as Walt Disney successfully lobbies the government into extending the length of copyright every time Mickey Mouse comes close to entering the public domain. |
But is 14 (or 25) years really unreasonable?
A company (like Disney or Nintendo) should be able to protect people from creating new works based on their IP with Trademarks, but after enough time has passed why is it wrong to let people have free access to this already created material? The company and its creators have turned massive profits already, and there is no legitimate argument that copying this material would cause any harm to the company (or the people who created the content).
