alt Hacker NewsMondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
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Copyright doing what it does best. Killing new works that resemble a bit too much anything under its protection and allowing rentseekers to live off others.
I read "The duration of the U.S. protection for all other works… was for 70 years from the artist’s date of death" and thought wow, did Mondrian really live into the 1960s or so?
Next paragraph: "Mondrian died in 1944. Any of his works subject to a life-plus-70 regime would have entered the public domain" 10 years ago. Who even thought of including that in a legal argument??
Germany didn't have patent laws in the 1800s. Their economy rapidly industrialized and boomed.
I don't believe on balance that patents would be a net improvement. Are companies really going to stop making things better if they couldn't patent it?
Note that Tesla open sources its patents.
If I were to sell an app on the App Store called Mondrianify which made Mondrian-style pictures, would the Mondrian Trust demand the app be removed?
Reminds me of when in my youth I thought it would be a good idea to re-tile my bathroom in the style of a Mondrian. This because I'd found that white, red, green and yellow tiles were available at low cost. Good to know that bathroom is not in breach of copyright now.
We GIVE creators copyright to serve us by encouraging CREATION.
Mondrian died decades ago. He is not creating any more. Copyright of his works is not serving us any more.
Copyright should have ended when the balance between encouraging his creation and encouraging others to create based on his works was reached. i.e. About 5 years after he made the piece.
Fuck the copyright parasites whining about this.
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The Mondrian estate... don't get me started on that one.
As always, copyright is a supressor of creativity, not an enabler. Copyright terms should be 10-20 years max, or up to death of an author. Even current regime is ridiculous.