A craftsman who creates an object in his craft owns the object until he sells it. Then it is no longer the craftsman's; it becomes his to whom the craftsman sold it. The sale is ordinarily for a fixed price. Seldom is anyone permitted to charge an infinite price for any good or service. A surgeon who saves your life with his scalpel has given you something beyond price to you. But the surgeon charges you a finite price (though it may be a high price) for the service.
An author who makes a work of the mind publicly available sells the work to the public. Temporary copyright is society's way of holding the monopolist to a finite price. Those who argue for perpetual copyright seem to suppose that authors, unlike workers in any other craft, are a superior class of craftsmen entitled to charge infinite prices for their wares. This attitude is especially odious if the advocates of perpetual copyright are not also advocates of perpetual patent rights. In that case, their view that authors are allowed to extract infinite prices from the public, while inventors are not, is a relic of the old snobbish view that those who work with their hands are "mere mechanicals", inferior human beings to those who work with their minds.
Tim Phillips
<hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com>
Received on Thu May 18 2000 - 04:02:20 GMT
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