Well, I think I've answered everyone's questions! Thanks all, it's been an exciting hour! Got to go work on my novel now!

The short answer is, "Because a body of laws going back to the Statute of Anne distinguish between arrangements of shared alphabets and a species of works called 'original creative works' whose contours are set by law and custom."

I think that Terras's posts set out the failings in the OW procedure — it is incredibly cumbersome. I think it's still just about the best orphan works regime in the world, but that's a very low bar to hurdle; the world's orphan works policies generally suck.

I'm a visiting professor at the Open University's Computer Science Dept, and they asked me!

I think that it's always under threat. The best book on this is James Boyle's:

No, this is just an urban legend. The reality of fair use is a LOT more complicated.

It's always been all but impossible for individuals to earn a living from the arts!

The idea that there is such a thing as "intellectual property" — this recent neologism has no real meaning in law or practice, and it really distorts our dialog about creative works.

> How can newcomers build an audience from scratch?

Spotify: the reality is that the streaming services are paying millions and millions for the music they play, but it's all being pocketed by the labels. That's why the emphasis in my book INFORMATION DOESN'T WANT TO BE FREE isn't on which business models work (since most models don't work for most people!), but on how…

I think that there's good evidence that this is a robust model for promoting creativity and allowing great art to be made that enriches new artists. Etsy and Deviantart are both full of artists who are earning their income by "covering" media classics, but every one of them is in danger of losing everything — house,…

You've been fooled by a common urban legend.

Hey, there! Thank you!

> What are the chances the length of copyright will be reduced back into a reasonable time frame, instead of extending into what could be perpetuity?

There are a bunch of great places to go:

> Does this work? Why or why not?

Call 'em up and tell them you want to buy the extended "on-site" warranty. You've got the standard extended warranty.

Oh, it's mostly about preparation. The night before, I lay out and measure everything I'll need (put the eggs for hard-boiling in a pot of water on the stove, measure out the yogurt and wash the berries, count out the vitamins, measure the porridge oats), so the next day it just becomes a timing thing. Some stuff can…

Lenovo bought the Thinkpad manufacturing and sales business from IBM. IBM continues to supply the ThinkPad extended warranty, and to a first approximation, you can get on-site, next-day support from any place where IBM ever sold one or more 360s, as that was the baseline for a Global Services branch.

I do indeed use Unity — took some getting used to (and it wasn't polished enough when it came out of the gate), but I'm fine with it now.