Re: copyright under stress

On Fri, Jun 09, 2000, David Hale <dhale[_at_]aggt.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
> would society be able to conglomerate the necessary capital
> to spend even the couple of million dollars required for the
> simplest of commercial quality movies if that capital could
> not be reasonably expected to be returned.

This is a really good question and deserves more discussion.

It does seem to be the case today that venture capitalists for example are more likely to invest in a company that has a strong claim to intellectual property protection. Could art, movies for example, be made without such protection in copyright law?

But the question also raises the point that much of our popular culture is produced by big monopolies that more and more concentrate capital, perhaps for less and less return.

It has always been true that movie-making is a gamble, not a real business. Many movies are well-made with sufficient capital and production management, but fail to make money in the market. A few movies are blockbusters, and everyone else tries to copy their success. So the quality seems to be more and more "vulgarized." The successful few appear to be necessary to pay off the production costs of the many failures.

(One famous example was the sale of Babe Ruth to New York by the owner of the Boston baseball team -- to pay for his Broadway production of "No No Nanette" -- was this a wise gamble? It seems that baseball player salaries today are much like the economics of Broadway plays. Is intellectual property protection needed with baseball players as well as with Broadway plays and Hollywood movies?)

But economists as well as lawyers might have something to say about all this. Would more competition, made possible by limiting the monopoly control of the big corporations, actually increase the flow of new creative works? How "efficient" is it to retain strong intellectual property protection for the many failures, along with the few big successes? Lawyers might question the rationale for copyright on one work being claimed necessary, so that another work might be produced -- this seems not to protect works or authors, but the corporation's cash flow.

Any economists on the list are welcome to join in and explain the relevance of Robert Frank's writings on consumption competition and how it might be in the interests of all of us to limit it in general as well as with baseball player salaries or star actors.

No doubt this argument about the need for corporations to finance movies and music is behind the recent stronger laws protecting intellectual property. But it appears to me that they do rely on a notion of copyright as personal property and not the originalist view of the monopoly clause.

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