Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

On Tue, Aug 29, 2000 at 06:43:03PM -0700, Jon Noring wrote:
> "Laurie Urquiaga" <Urquiagal[_at_]lawgate.byu.edu> wrote:
> >Linda said:
>
> >>I am a strong supporter of copyrights since that is the law, but I
> >>believe that we should be able to change the law to react to the
> >>times and protect creators against infringement as the Constitution
> >>gave Congress the power to do. But then I was talking about the
> >>government action of limiting the term of copyrights.
>
> >This doesn't seem to recognize that it is the CONSTITUTION that specified
> >that copyrights should exist for limited terms. The Constitution thereby
> >specifically prohibits Congress from granting perpetual copyright terms,
> >although they seem to be trying their best to circumvent that part of the
> >clause. And, of course, careful reading of the clause makes it clear that
> >the only reason the founding fathers gave for allowing this temporary
> >monopoly was the resulting anticipated enrichment of the public domain. The
> >concept of copyright as personal property in perpetuity doesn't appear to
> >have had any appeal for the founding fathers at all.
>
> I recall it being said here and on misc.int-property (a Usenet newsgroup)
> that prior court rulings seem to suggest that what constitutes "limited" is
> within the power of Congress to decide. That is, Congress can specify a
> copyright term of 1,000,000 years, and since that is "limited", it would
> be valid, even if in any real sense it is forever. (Eric Eldred can
> certainly shed light on this since I think his lawsuit centers on this
> very issue.)

The appropriate context IMO is:

   "for limited times to authors and inventors".

Not:

    "to authors, inventors, and their heirs"
    "to authors, inventors, and their employers"
    "to authors, inventors, and their agents"
    "to authors, inventors, and their publishers"
    "to authors, inventors, and their recording labels"
    "to authors, inventors, and their bandleaders"
    "to authors, inventors, and their consulting houses"

...but that's just IMO. The Eldritch Press judgement was typically idiotic in this regard. But that's just IMVAO. Could we see the legal gloss on this?

> Did Congress ever do the requisite studies to determine what term of
> copyright best benefits the People as is the intent of the Copyright
> Clause? I doubt it.

Possibly. CONTU was the 1970's congressional committee which warmed over copyright for the 1976 and 1980 revisions. See Pamela Samuelson's _CONTU Revisited_, which addresses these and other concerns.

    Pamela Samuelson, CONTU Revisited: The Case Against Copyright     Protection for Computer Programs in Machine-Readable Form, 1984 Duke     L.J. 663

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