Re: droit de suite

On Tue, 04 Apr 2000, Tyler Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
>
> On 04/03/2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > So what drives the raging against copyright, if it isn't any kind
> > of desire for the public good? Seems to me it's the larcenous lust.
> > Eliminate copyright and you deprive the writer of the opportunity to
> > profit from his work. But you've correspondingly opened the door for
> > anyone other than the writer to profit from the writer's work. The
> > T. S. Eliot estate makes a million dollars a year from the literary
> > properties he left. Knock out copyright, and that million dollars
> > is up for grabs. Anyone, even you, could print and sell his books
> > without paying royalties and get a piece of the action. What I'm not
> > understanding is why you regard it as obnoxious if the money goes to
> > the writer or his heirs, and preferable that it go to anyone other
> > than the writer or his heirs.
>
> Nobody is seriously arguing for the elimination of copyright; only
> against its expansion. The public domain has value for several
> reasons. First, it allows ALL authors a pool of works upon which
> to draw in fashioning their own original creations. Second, even
> as to reproductions of existing works, one of two things happens:
> either the price is reduced, to the benefit of the public; or else
> the publisher adds original commentary (a scholarly forward, for
> example) to justify keeping the price the same. Thus, the public
> domain fulfills copyright's purpose of serving the public welfare,
> either by encouraging new works or by reducing the cost of
> disseminating existing expression.
>
> More fundamentally, the debate on this topic is a familiar one: is
> copyright a "natural" right of the author, which entitles the author
> to the greatest possible economic reward; or is free speech a
> "natural" right of the public, and copyright a limited exception
> that is necessary only to encourage the creation of new works. The
> U.S. has chosen the latter as its starting point; but no country has
> a system that is exclusively based on one or the other view. All
> countries recognize that copyright needs to balance the interests
> of the author or artists against the public interest.

I've pretty much decided for myself that copyright cannot and should not be a "natural" right for the author/creator.

One reason is that no work is totally created in a vacuum, but is influenced by the work of predecessors. "Standing on the shoulders of giants", if you will. For example, a writer will create a work, but certain aspects of its style, the words and phrases used, the structure, etc., are likely influenced by some prior writer.

So, although any work is a new creation, it is not wholly "owned" by the creator. If a writer was heavily influenced by Hemingway, should not the estate of Hemingway get a small percentage of revenue from the writer's sale of works influenced in some fashion by Hemingway? And what about the writer's who influenced Hemingway? And so forth.

There is another issue. I view copyright as an extraordinary protection which goes beyond real property. In essence, it is a contract between the Public and the creator. The Public will, with its resources (i.e., taxes) enforce the exclusive use by the creator of their works in return for the work not only benefitting the public immediately, but that the ownership of the work will revert to the public after a certain amount of time. This sounds like a reasonable system, and is the traditional U.S. system before it was mucked with the last few decades.

The trend towards the European view of copyright (it being a natural right) is very troubling, and carried to its only logical conclusion (copyright must be in perpetuity) will profoundly harm society, with negative impact on our civil liberties and even human rights, which requires a robust and freely available Public Domain.

I personally would like to see copyright terms rolled back to what they were in the U.S. at the end of the 18th century -- 14 years, with yearly extensions (but not exceeding 40-50 years) given to the creator when a yearly fee is paid, the monies of which will be shared between the Federal Courts and the Copyright Office to maintain their services to enforce and administer our copyright system. If the work is economically viable, let the creator pay for copyright extensions -- NOT the taxpayer.

Yes, this is radical, but I present it as a counterweight to the scary "copyright is a natural right" crowd on this mailing list, whose motives are pure, but who are, in my opinion, very short-sighted and don't see the long-term negative ramifications of their position.

Jon Noring
Yomu
<noring[_at_]netcom.com> Received on Wed Apr 05 2000 - 17:11:21 GMT