The purpose of copyright and patents is to encourage the dissemination of ideas and inventions. Making the period too long is as destructive to those aims as making them too short. Too short and people have no reason to use copyright or patent law; too long and dissemination is actually impeded. Copyrights are way too long these days and they should never be extended once granted as it makes a mockery of the concept of "limited times". Copyright should last 50 years at most.
This seems like a reasonable position.
One thing that annoys me particularly is when old computer games are not being sold anymore, either in brick-and-mortar stores or online at all, but yet can't be legally downloaded. If something like a book, movie, piece of music, computer game, etc. is not sold and hasn't been available for sale for a certain period of time, I would support it being legal to distribute it freely (not for a profit, but to make it available for free).
Of course, that creates a whole 'nother issue in and of itself, since intellectual property can be easily copied and distributed, whereas physical property can't be. It's possible to copy a book, movie, piece of music, computer software, etc. without destroying or harming the original, though the copying of it does cause the original to lose some value as it is no longer as unique.
I definitely support the right of people to profit from their intellectual creations, but it's disputable to what degree ideas are entirely original; every new idea is in some way built upon older ones.
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