Buy that man a drink ?
That post is so contradictory he's obviously had one too many. The confusion that poster exhibits between copyright and derivative works, for example, is very telling.
And this: "Extended copyright terms make it easier for people to sue other people for perceived copyright infringement"
No it does not. Copyright is either infringed or it is not. It's a binary thing, perception doesn't come into it. The method and ease/difficulty by which someone can be sued for infringement also remains unchanged.
There is *no* grey area except in the mind of the freetard who thinks because someone placed something on the internet it somehow becomes 'free' and they can use it for free and in some extreme cases profit from it.
What about this nonsense:
"works are being "orphaned" - i.e. the ownership is unclear"
No, works are not being orphaned and the acid test of ownership is simple. Is it mine ? No it's not therefore it belongs to someone else and I must do due diligence in finding out who that person is. If I can't find that person I must not use their work.
It can't be any more simple than that.
Creating another layer of bureaucracy to handle so called orphan works - in many cases works which can be identified if some effort is applied - will serve only to distance creators from their works and the end user which will, in turn act as a disincentive to the creator.
Commissioning a creative is perceived as expensive but it usually turns out that that it's not as expensive as defending blatant copyright infringement and ignorance is no defence under the law.
In my experience, and I have a fair bit, I haven't met one creative who's in favour of less protection for their work.
Every person I'm aware of who is in favour of relaxation in copyright falls into three camps:
1) they have a vested interest in making money from the work of others.
2) They are a proponent of freetardism because they have grown up with the internet in their bedroom and, like, everything is free on the web, isn't it ?
3) They are an academic who draws a fat salary every month and they want to be a bit edgy and perhaps secure funding for some more lame irrelevant 'research' so they come up with a contrarian opinion.
Everyone does something for a living. When did it become offensive to be a musician, a photographer or a film maker ? Tarring the vast majority of people working in the creative industries with the U2/Sting/Madonna brush is a classic straw man approach as the vast majority of people working in the creative industries don't earn anything like the amounts made by those people and as a result would like to hold on to every penny they can.
Much in the same way as most people don't just give away chunks of their salary every month to random passers by.