Re: copyright under stress

On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Kevin Grierson <kgrierson[_at_]wilsav.com> wrote:
>
> The length of copyright protection afforded today is certainly
> troubling. Given that returns on copyright, by and large,
> diminish steadily after publication until they level off at a
> fairly low revenue stream (if any), it's difficult to see how a
> life+70 years copyright provides any more incentive to an author
> than, say, a 25-year copyright. In fact, if you equated copyright
> to real property, the current rule would violate the Rule against
> Perpetuities (assuming the author was the only "life in being"
> who counted).

However that may be, the present U.S. term violates the spirit (and I would argue, the letter) of the phrase "limited times", as well as violating the spirit, even if not formally the letter, of the prohibition against titles of nobility, since long-term hereditary monopoly privileges can come to have the same damaging effects as these prohibited noble titles.

Very long terms also tend in the direction of violating the spirit of the 13th amendment, by threatening to reduce the people to a state of intellectual serfdom to a few wealthy holders of enormous catalogs of copyrights.

Tim Phillips
<hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> Received on Mon Jun 19 2000 - 03:31:24 GMT