The Case For Perpetual Copyright 547
Several readers sent in a link to an op-ed in the NYTimes by novelist Mark Halprin, who lays out the argument for what amounts to perpetual copyright. He says that anything less is essentially an unfair public taking of property: "No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind." This community can surely supply a plethora of arguments for the public domain, words which don't appear in the op-ed. In a similar vein, reader benesch sends us to the BBC for a tale of aging pop performers (virtually) serenading Parliament in favor of extending copyright for recording artists in the UK. Some performers are likely to outlive the current protections, now fixed at a mere 50 years.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:5, Informative)
This guy is known to write biting satire... Either that article is a fine example, or its one of the worst reasoned essays I've ever read.
Re:Strange (Score:3, Informative)
Ad hominem, in my understanding, would have been to claim the author has smelly feet or gave his fiancee a blood diamond, or some equally irrelevant argument.
Re:So sorry for the terrible things society has do (Score:3, Informative)
I'm so sorry that he feels he doesn't owe society anything for his "great" works. That without a stable society with culture and intelligence, people wouldn't be buying books or listening to music. Does he gather inspiration for his works of the "spirit and mind" from nothingness? What role does society play in the creative arts? If you can't stand the thought of society getting something after you are dead, after you so clearly benefited from society. then you are simply an arrogant spoiled human being. Being selfish and having an obsession with ownership are not exactly redeeming qualities. Profit from your toil while you are alive, then pass that profit on to your children if you wish. But a baker cannot make a loaf of bread and sell it many times over on into many generations. But she can certainly create wealth around baking and establish a business that can sustain her children into old age as long as her children can be smart enough and work hard enough to maintain this means of production.
I'm reminded of the statement from Fogerty v. Fantasy [cornell.edu], recently quoted at page 4 of the April 23, 2007, decision of Judge West in Capitol v. Foster [blogspot.com]:
copyright law ultimately serves the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative works
In Fogerty it was held:
The primary objective of the Copyright Act is to encourage the production of original literary, artistic, and musical expression for the good of the public.... In the copyright context, it has been noted that "[e]ntities which sue for copyright infringement as plaintiffs can run the gamut from corporate behemoths to starving artists; the same is true of prospective copyright infringement defendants." Cohen, supra, at 622-623.
The Fogerty court went on to say:
While it is true that one of the goals of the Copyright Act is to discourage infringement, it is by no means the only goal of that Act. In the first place, it is by no means always the case that the plaintiff in an infringement action is the only holder of a copyright; often times, defendants hold copyrights too.....
More importantly, the policies served by the Copyright Act are more complex, more measured, than simply maximizing the number of meritorious suits for copyright infringement. The Constitution grants to Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." U. S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 8. We have often recognized the monopoly privileges that Congress has authorized, while "intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward," are limited in nature and must ultimately serve the public good. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 429 (1984). For example, in Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975), we discussed the policies underlying the 1909 Copyright Act as follows:
"The limited scope of the copyright holder's statutory monopoly . . . reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an `author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good." .....
We reiterated this theme in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 349-350 (1991), where we said:
"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but `[t]o promote the Progress of Scienc
Re:Missing the point... (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea how you were modded insightful. Explain to me how the granting of monopolies acts to prevent monopolies...
Copyright in Britain was originally established so that printing houses who'd just bought an author's book wouldn't be undercut by other printing houses who could just run off copies without paying the author's fee (1). Copyright in the US was constitutionally established to promote the progress of science and useful arts (2). Copyright was intended to enforce artificial monopolies, not prevent them.
If you want people to look it up, maybe you should provide some credible references for your claims.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright
2: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/a
Look it up.
Re:what are you wacked? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cease and Desist! (Score:3, Informative)
It's got nothing to do with a US copyright standard - it's the Berne Convention. Signatories are not permitted to place barriers to 'implicit' copyright on works by authors/artists from other countries - this even extends to prohibiting the old copyright notice requirement (© such-and-such 2007). Theoretically, the US could require local artists/authors to register copyright, but this proposal has not met with much support.
Re:Confusion about intellectual and tangible prope (Score:1, Informative)
"Intellectual property" is a lie (Score:2, Informative)
Jefferson is right. As right now as he was then. Ideas cannot be treated as property. If I take your car, you lose something. That's property. If I "take" your idea, you still have it. Jefferson's thinking applies quite well to today though he could never have imagined the computer nor the Internet. Ideas obviously not the same thing as property. If you copy a program, the owner doesn't "lose" anything. She or he still has their copy.
Ideas are plainly not property. They are something wholly other. The Founders did not acknowledge a "property right" in ideas. They allowed for limited monopolies to be granted to encourage "the useful arts and sciences." Their entire point was an exchange that would be in the public good. Create short term monopolies to people who create and allow them to exclusively market their ideas for a limited time. But only a limited time.
Copyright and patent are monopoly grants and Jefferson was actually quite ambivalent about having them at all. His later commentary on the new Constitution was that he believed the term of the monopoly grant given by the Federal government be specified explicitly. And that the grants be narrowed by language in the section in question. He conceded that the public good would likely benefit from the limited monopoly grants but wanted to ensure that the grants were, indeed, strictly limited in term and scope.
It's unfortunate his suggestion wasn't included in the Constitution.
But with limited grants and with a constant flow of ideas into the public domain (the first copyright law, for example, granted a total of 14 years and that was all), we went from horse drawn buggies to me sitting here, bouncing packets off a geosync satellite to communicate over a global network.
If the Founders were so off base as Helprin seems to believe, why are we living in the most technically advanced society in all of human history? How did we go from an agrarian society to lunar landings in two centuries?
More, why does he want to return to the glory days of feudalism? That was the last period "perpetual copyright" existed (along with other perpetual grants by the monarch of things we'd now call "patents"). Which system advanced more quickly? Feudalism with perpetual grants or the democracy created by the Founders who insisted on limited grants aimed at a balance that would benefit the public good?
Hm...