Re: copyright under stress

On Mon, Jun 19, 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2000, Marty Hayes <9ball[_at_]hostsite.net> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> > While the scarcity premise in a previously offered post is perhaps
> > part of the equation in copyright, I don't agree that it's the core
> > factor in the "intent of copyright" discussion. I can borrow a
> > book from a friend without infringing copyright. In fact, if I
> > wished, I could purchase "Book A" or "Movie Video B" and loan it to
> > one person at a time until every member of my 45,000-person town had
> > seen it/read it. As long as none of them make a copy, no one has
> > infringed. In this scenario, they've all had access to it. There's
> > no difference between this example and posting something on the net,
> > save for increased scope of access.
>
> Would you say that this argument also applies in the case of
> copyrighted music, as for example Metallica's songs being shared
> between friends, from one hard disk to another's sound card and
> speakers, via Napster or Gnutella or another service which only
> locates the parties?
>
> In fact, the act you propose, sharing books for free over the
> Internet, was brought up as a successful defense in the LaMacchia
> case in Boston. Quickly, Congress plugged that hole with the No
> Electronic Theft Act of 1997, which outlaws the sharing you propose,
> even with no commercial gain, as long as the retail value of the
> work is over a certain amount.
>
> "Sharing a book," as Richard M. Stallman forecast, became a crime.
>
> What is the justification for such a law, except that a state of
> artificial scarcity is thereby maintained?

As I recall, the LaMacchia case was about the "sharing" of unauthorized copies of computer software, not books. Also, I don't think the No Electronic Theft Act makes sharing books electronically a crime -- at least not until the number of different books shared reaches such a high number that the Act's retail-value threshold is met. They would have to be either very expensive books or there would have to be a lot of them.

Robert C. Cumbow
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