[mlyle]

> Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again.

Then you own that physical painting.

> Do I lose the copyright then

Yes

> and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away?

No, but if you gave your friend Bob a copy of the painting, he's allowed to copy that copy as much as he wants once you lose the copyright.

The original copyright system-- you could only get the full term by extending 14 years in. That's maybe a little early. But making you pay a fee to keep the exclusivity and/or show recent use in trade makes sense.

[gnicholas]

> No, but if you gave your friend Bob a copy of the painting, he's allowed to copy that copy as much as he wants once you lose the copyright.

Wouldn't this require Bob to outlive the artist by many, many years? My understanding was that copyright extends well past the death of the original creator.

EDIT: I'm curious why this is downvoted. Am I incorrect about the length of copyright being decades past the death of the creator? A quick google shows that it extends to 70 years past the life of the creator, [1] which means that it would be quite unlikely that an adult who receives artwork from the creator would live to see the time when it's not under copyright. That is, even if the artist died the next day, it would be 70 years before the copyright expires.

1: https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycl...

[mlyle]

I can't downvote you, but I presume that you're being downvoted because your comment seemed to not understand the context of the thread.

A. Someone proposed making copyright "use it or lose it"

B. Someone else said this could have unintended consequences, like people breaking into your house to take a copy of a work where copyright has lapsed.

C. I pointed out that's not how copyright works: it has nothing to do with control of physical artifacts.

D. You then presumed that the copyright runs for a long time, which contradicts the premise we're talking about in "A", and is completely out of left field. (In any case, it's irrelevant to the question in B-C; if I have the one of the only extant copies of something from a century ago, you still can't come take it to make a copy).

[gnicholas]

Gotcha, thanks. This appeared so deep down in the thread when I commented that I didn't realize it was attached to an alternate-universe hypo above.