reclaiming the public domain

you are probably on christian john's enemies list now. :)

Hypothetically speaking, or course, but I keep wondering why anything I create should, in any way, revert to the state, or to the public, without my written consent. To force a piece of paperwork in front of my face, or the face of my children, in order for them to maintain ownership, is an unnecessary burden. Anyone who knows anything about creative people knows that most forget their bleeping watch, nose, taxes, birthday, unless someone else with a more structured brain is there to help. Creation is the property of the creator, as are purchased paintings, antique furniture, refrigerators. Why don't we have to register antique furniture every fifty years? Or paintings? The loss of a valuable physical artifact can be as great or greater than the loss of a written work or produced film. To me, the legistration is a form of stealth stealing.

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. - Thomas Jefferson

Is not everything we do the fulfillment of an idea - the idea to wake up, to eat, to create software for a company, to plan an implementation, design a game, or a house? All are the result of ideas. Yet we exchange ideas for salary, and that exchange is normal.
What a person creates and how she chooses to dispose of it are up to her. She may choose to exchange her ideas for money, and then use the money to support her children or friends or family. She may even leave that money to her children. She may reinvest the money into the community. She may spend it, thus creating jobs for others.

Or she may choose to write a book, paint a picture, direct a movie, and leave the result to her children. She may wish to create something that is all her own, to dig inside of her, to touch the world in a way that she can't if she makes the agreement with a company. And then, if society deems the results worthwhile, and people buy her creation, she may reap financial rewards. And even if there are no financial rewards, it is a gift that she can give to those whom she loves or trusts or cares for, not those whom others choose for her. For it is the goal of almost every artist, every creator, to touch the world, to help them in some way, to make it better.

As for Jefferson, I believe it is easier for a rich man, a man with slaves, to talk of giving away inventions and ideas than it is for men of lesser means. Most of us, those who wish to create, are not he and never will have his means.