T. in OK (welcome to Mudcat, by the way!) says: "Works of human hands are sold once, for a fixed price, passing forever from their makers' control."

This is disanalagous. Say I make a pottery bowl. If I then sell it, it doesn't become public domain, it becomes the property of its new owner, and he is able to do with it as he wishes: keep it, sell it, pass it on to his heirs. There is never a point at which the bowl ceases to be public property and becomes the property of mankind as a whole.

The analogue in the world of music is not publishing, but selling your copyright rights entirely.

Look. Let's say I buy a piece of land and some timber and wires and pipes, and make a house. 75 years after I die, it will still belong to my heirs, or the person I (or they) sold it to. It does not become Public Domain or public property just because I've been dead 75 years, or it's been a certain number of years since I built it.

So there is a HUGE difference between the works of human hands and the works of human minds, on your view.

Why? On what grounds? Give us some arguments, man. Your constant "you're just harping on the maximalist theme" crap is getting thin. Time to pay the piper. Why should the works of the mind be any different from the works of the hands?

Alex
O..O
=o=