Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

on Sat, 5 Aug 2000 <Patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:

> On 8/5/2000, Roland J. Cole <cole[_at_]spi.org> wrote:
> >
> > It is getting the balance right that is important -- arguing that
> > life plus 70 is too long is not the same as saying all copyright
> > is bad.
>
> Roland,
>
> Software patents are interesting in this regard. Symantec dropped
> Norton Commander for Windows, claiming it didn't sell enough
> copies. This left many people who used it heavily quite distraught,
> including, say, a scientific institute in Jerusalem. Although
> Symantec has no intention of reissuing or upgrading this product
> under any circumstances, neither will they release it to the public
> domain so that those who want to work with it can have a shot at
> adapting or upgrading it. I must say this somewhat surprise me.
> Were Symantec to turn over the patent to the scientific institute,
> I assume they'd be entitled to a substantial tax deduction for a
> charitable contribution.
>
> A similar situation occurs in book publishing, where a particular
> book can be of great importance to a small specialist audience. Yet
> the publisher drops it because it isn't of interest to a very wide
> audience, and therefore isn't a top money-maker for the publisher.
> So all those books on weight loss -- a topic that interests vast
> numbers of people -- crowd out, say, the best book of the century
> of Milton's Lycidas, which interests far fewer people. I'm not
> sure that the anti-intellectualism this fosters is really good in
> the long run.

	The publishers' decisions to stop production is not
	necessarily a dead end. Most publishers will license
	someone else to reprint or publish a revised edition.
	An author may demand the release of rights and seek
	another publisher.

Albert Henderson
Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Tue Aug 08 2000 - 11:27:19 GMT