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"we grant them monopoly rights to do so"

Who is we? the combined world's governing bodies? the US corporate legal protections systems? japanese corruption?

Regardless, that is not how IP works and I do not think you think this is a proper resolution.

"just because we want it" or "it's been x years" does not pass legal scrutiny and would be dismissed in any legal venue on improper cause. You are free to not purchase the product whe navailable, where made no promises at time of orignal purchase, and are in no way harmed from the decision making of the firms.

is 30 years too long for copyrighting/trademarks? Maybe...but can't really argue that if for those 30 years they have actively defended the IP and proliferation of it from other vendors/firms. And even then.....the world is not the US.

The solution is to never purchase from the IP holder as a matte or protest. But with global scales, good luck affecting any corporations decision making.



We is, in the US, the federal government as directed by congress and the president. (In Canada where I actually live, s/congress/parliament/g and s/president/governor general (but only theoretically)/g).

> Regardless, that is not how IP works

This is exactly how IP laws work. More than that, in the US it's how they're constitutionally required to work - IP is defined as a time limited monopoly in the constitution and the federal government has no right to grant more than that. The current, "so long that it might as well be forever" copyright is spitting in the face of the US constitution.

> but can't really argue that if for those 30 years they have actively defended the IP and proliferation of it from other vendors/firms

I absolutely can. The purpose of IP is to encourage more things to eventually fall into the public domain by being published publicly. At some point, and I think 30 years is well past that point, it does more harm by preventing things from falling into the public domain than it does good by encouraging publishing.

Just because a company found a way to extract money from society, and are still doing so, doesn't mean we should allow them to do so forever.

When originally passed copyright (Statute of Anne in 1710) the term was 14 to 28 years, notably less than 30. As the world has only begun to change more rapidly since then, it's clear that it should have gotten shorter, not longer.




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