Re: public domain question

On Wed, Mar 29, 2000, Rod Dixon <rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org> wrote:
>
> ...
> I think conceptualizing copyright as property adds more to our
> understanding of what a copyright is than simply calling it a
> monopoly. There is a tendency to drain all of the useful meaning
> out of the term monopoly when you say all authors have at least one.

I see from reading Professor William Fisher's cyberlaw course papers that I was wrong in asserting so much weight to the interpretation that the Framers intended the public domain to be the basis for copyright.

At least one current Supreme Court justice has indicated some substantial agreement with the Lockean property or at least in popular terms "sweat of the brow" basis for copyright:

"The rights conferred by copyright are designed to assure contributors to the store of knowledge a fair return for their labors.
Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975). "
-- 471 U.S. 539; 105 S. Ct. 2218; 85 L. Ed.2d 588; 53 U.S.L.W. 4562, in Harper and Row v Nation Enterprises, 1985.

"JUDGES: O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and BLACKMUN, POWELL, REHNQUIST, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which WHITE and MARSHALL, JJ., joined, post, p. 579. "

at http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/harper.html

(All of which gives me less hope that the Court will rule in the way I wish, and less hope that it will be able to escape the paradoxes of the one-sided property theory of copyright, along with this Romantic idea of the lone author genius.)

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf