Re: benefits of the public domain and limited copyright terms?

On Wed, May 17, 2000, Tyler Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
>
> On 05/16/2000, Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
> >
> > I have a very strong feeling that Andrew Lloyd Weber and Disney had
> > the rights where they needed them to create "their most popular works."
>
> Often they did not; many of their works are based on public domain
> material, with no royalties to the originator of the story.

I believe Disney is going to have to pay the heirs to the Winnie-the-Pooh copyrights quite a lot more money now that the Copyright Term Extension Act has been passed. And it will make it harder for them to get cheap or free material from the public domain in the future.

So I can't believe corporations are united behind strong copyright protection. As Dean Hal Varian points out in an amicus brief in my case, hardly any company makes business plans more than 5 years of the future; 95 years of planning is just not done by any rational person. A few companies might benefit; most companies will lose money; the public will have to pay more in any case, instead of getting its rights for free as before.

Instead of arguing for some sort of "natural rights" of authors and inventors, publishing companies ought to look at the situation more rationally. If they suck the public domain dry and privatize everything as "pay-per-use" then they will be forced to pay more for the original material themselves. It's the same situation as what ecologists and environmentalists have taught corporations: wise governance can help to restore some balance and should not be fought blindly. The situation should not be portrayed as all companies against environmentalists, or publishers against authors or digital pirates. We are all in this together! For more on these thoughts, please read Jamie Boyle's works.

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