[tomc1985]

My issue is more that an individual work can't stand alone, in a legal sense. There is always the work, and then there is a an artificially-imposed, invisible framework around it that prohibits the free use of the work it supposedly protects.

I wouldn't describe it as public "seizure", more the omission of that previously-mentioned framework which in-turn allows the work itself to be free of encumbrance.

Does a U.S. government worker creating something public domain experience a "seizure" of his work? I don't think so. And in fact the government functions quite well with this rule in-place. Why can't we consider extending that to the private sector as well?

There is the old adage of, "information wants to be free". In a way, so does everything else.

But particularly in the digital domain -- which economically can be described as a land of plenty, where information can be freely copied, transformed, and executed with little-to-no-cost -- we should embrace this new economy rather than trying to force physical-world constraints where they don't belong.