You are wrong. The dragons are already there,even if they are not adult yet.

Winter is coming.

And so are the Others.

To clarify: This is not about people, it's about houses. He does not photograph people, he photographs houses from the street walk.

I'm german and following the debate about Google street view since i was overtaken by a car with a 2m mast and some cameras on its roof. I will be on Street View :-).
These pictures were taken approx. 1 - 1 1/2 years ago. Google's intentions were at least known since then. Only now a public outcry from "Bedenkenträger" forces Google to offer this german sonderweg. Only in Germany Google offers a web form were you as house owner can enter your address and your house will get pixelated, like faces and licences plates already are.

I call hypocrite on all people who opt to have their houses pixelated. They give straw man arguments like "Burglars may spy on houses on google" etc. but i bet they will be the first to take glimpses at their neighbors once this gets live our to take a view at the hotel they wish to book for their next vacation. In German there is a proverb for this behaviour: "Wasch mir den Rücken, aber mach mich nicht nass dabei. (Wash my back, but don't get me wet"
Some where else in this threat the Streisand effect was invoked. This is a perfect example how to invoke it. Only this time it's not Anonymous, but a person with a face who will invoke it.

The only reason I can fathom to have one's house pixelated is a typical fear that this is a privacy invasion. It's not. Nothing that can't be seen from the street walk while passing by will be shown. For a reasonable written article see http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2010-08/pro-street-view (in german)

Our current Federal Minister of Labor Ursula von der Leyen,called "Zensursula", then Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, presented examples of child pornography at a press conference in January 2009, promoting her Zugangserschwerungsgesetz. She was reported to the police, but the report has been struck down. See http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article1088198/Anzeige_gegen_Ursula_von_der_Leyen_eingestellt.html (sorry, can't find english text)

From the article:

And I have the moral obligation to call you an opportunist, a shill and accuse you of mudraking to further your goals, Mister Sanger.

IMHO, there are fair use cases, e.g. for educational purposes, for the depiction of under-age sexuality, and if wikipedia doesn't fall under the umbrella of educational websites, I want some suggestions which website does. Hey, here in Germany even our cabinet members can show hard child pornograghic pictures in press conferences.

Without copyright there is no incentive to go public with my works, because other people will steal it. I, as an author, can't produce the necessary physical representations of my work, a huge company can and will, if it sees a chance for profit just flood the market with cheap copys, if i don't have the protection of copyright law.

That's the reason, lifelong copyright exists only for natural persons, not for companys. Natural people will get life+7years+paid extensions, if they transfer their copyright to a company or a company copyrights the work of it's personell, it will be 7years+paid extensions.
To deny authors a lifelong right to copyright seems to me to be akin to communism.

So we concur on this.

Yes I have. You don't have a right to steal my brain's children. If you use them fairly, do as you please, but don't use them to make a profit without paying me a share.

Every "right" is artificial. Without a code of law or goverment to enforce this rights, the one with the bigger gun will have it's way.

I agree. So we have to modify copyright law, to shorten the terms, which i have done by splitting the length of copyright between natural persons, i.e. authors and companys, who will not die.

Why not? Last time I looke at the back of a game there was (c) Company. So they can allready secure a copyright. For the sake of argument let's assume that a company is a conglomerate of authors, who decided to merge their individual copyrights into one, to simplifiy the handling of their right. Since companys are not natural people, f.e. they may exist for longer than a humans life, I split the length of copyright for natural people, i.e. authors (life+7 years+paid extensions), and for companys (7 years+paid extensions).
We may argue about the length of the term, but I would argue, that 7 years is a reasonable length of time. This timespan is even mentioned in the bible for the freeing of slaves. If you don't want to pay for your copyright as an company after 7 years, the work will fall into the public domain, if you pay it doesn't, but you have to pay more every time you want to extend the time you can gain profit, to counter greed.

Copyright law has its origins in the license by the king to make copies and distribute prints. So it should be called permission to make copies and sell them. Somehow this got shortend into copyright.

Since when can ideas be illegal? Do you have thought crime in the US? There allready have been precendeces for amendments to the constitution, that rectified errors, or to be more precise no longer valid assumptions about the way the world works. In Germany we have the "Grundgesetz" which is akin to the Constitution. It can be changed by a 3/4 majority, except for the first 21 articles.
If a law is against the spirit of the Grundgesetz it will be struck down by the Bundesverfassunggericht (constitutional court) as has the Voratsdatenspeicherungsgesetz in February.

For my mentioning of 1709, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne, the base for the provision ratified 1790.

IANAL, and so I just voice my opinion on the matter of copyright.

for the foreseeable future it is. There may by quantum leaps in medical science in the next 50 or 1500 years, but I will not benefit from them.
My proposal is just a suggestion to mitigate some harms or problems currently visible. We might have to iterat the wording of our laws a bit more, maybe every 7 years?

Because they have a longer time to enjoy the fruits of their labor?

With the same reasoning as for normal inheritance of physical objects?

Ah, playing with words and their meaning. IANAL, but from my point of view, right of copyright and right to vote are two different shoes. I'm sure a flock of lawers may argue, that you have the right to sell/transfer your work, i.e. right of copyright, but not the right to sell/transfer your will, i.e. right to vote.

As you may have seen from my eamil-adress, I'm not a citizen of the US and so I'm not well versed with the wording of its Contitution and interpretation of it's wording. I can just state, that laws are not always in the best interest of the citizens the law relates to and times and laws and Constitution have to evolve. Revolutions happen, some people are put against walls, and hopefully we will learn from our errors in the past.

Because it's my work and I want to reap some benefit from it? The products of my brain are, at least for me, akin to my children. And nobody else but me should have a right of control over my children, at least until they are old enough to decide for themselve.

People are motivated by base instincts and one of these is hunger. I want to eat, I want to have a roof over my head etc. True artists create art just for the sake of it, see e.g. van Gogh. True scientists just want to know why, see e.g. Tesla.
We are currently living in a capitalistic society. Everything has it's price. Some people sell the power of their muscle, some people sell the power of their brain. If a work of art/ scientific breakthrough/ brilliant idea is perceived to have a worth, why should the originator of this product not gain some profit from his work?

So why life? It seems a natural boundary.

Wise people will see that, if an idea is shared and multiplied, it will blossom and become more, see e. g. the proliferation of the WWW. So I suppose, that great ideas will be put into the public domain before the originator dies. If this does not happen, one reason might be greed.

That I have a copyright over my work does not mean that others shall not benefit from my ideas, but at least I want something in return for it.

Sorry for the late reply, but Error 503 raised it's ugly head.