Re: copyright under stress

On Sat, 27 May 2000, Dodi Schultz <schultz[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 26 May 2000, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
> >
> > My own view of copyright is not that it is per se antiquated or
> > wrong, but that the movement of it in the last 30 years has been
> > the opposite of what technological change should have led to. For
> > instance, terms should have become shorter, copyright should have
> > covered less material, and notice of what is copyrighted and whom
> > to contact for permission more obvious.
>
> Why, John? Why do you feel that technological change should have
> led to curtailing of copyright protection in both scope and time?
> Do you believe that should have been a logical consequence of
> technological development?
>
> Or do you think that would have been an appropriate response to
> such change and, if so, why?

I start with the assumption that the purpose of copyright is to give authors, as an incentive, a right to exploit their works for a limited time. The end goal is to enrich the public domain with a large body of work.

Thus if we made copyright terms last a millenium, copyright would be totally dysfunctional. The incentive would overcome the goal.

Similarly if we made copyright last for an hour, the incentive would be inadequate.

What we want is a copyright period that lasts through the inital peak of salability, and then quickly reverts to public domain.

I suggest that technology (and social changes engendered by technology) have increased the speed at which that initial peak occurs. Compare for instance... a play or book in the 1800's with the CBS evening news. The CBS evening news is so shackled by the length of copyright that we may not even have the ability to display it (what's a videotape? whats this brown dust in the can?) by the time it is returned to the public domain. Yet, clearly the duration of the peak of salability for an evening news program is, well, an evening.

The world moves faster. Copyright should be shorter.

Regards,
John

John Lederer
<johnl[_at_]ibm.net> Received on Wed May 31 2000 - 20:26:31 GMT