RE: The good fight

Professor Malla Pollack wrote:

>Yes, I fully recognize that what I want is incompatible with Berne and
may hurts some business' profits. We have hit the basic philosophical disagreement. I simply do not
believe that some firms getting money abroad should be the central concern of USA copyright policy. (The money, furthermore, may never be returned to the USA; FYI the "copies" sold abroad are often manufactured outside the USA). Calvin College said that "the business of America is business". I
disagree emphatically, the business of America should be Americans.<

This is not about "some business' profits" or "some firms getting money abroad". Have you thought for a moment what would happen to our nation's economy, to your retirement plan, to your salary, your job, and your family, and those of your neighbors and fellow citizens, if American companies could not protect their IP abroad? Not just "some" companies--LOTS of companies, on whose continued success rest all of our hopes for the present and future well being of our country. Edward Barrow was right to wonder if you also believe we should not be citizens of Planet Earth. When you say "the business of America should be Americans," you sound like the Ghost of Jacob Marley telling Scrooge, "Mankind was my business!" It's true, and it's something I doubt any of us would disagree with. But our capitalist economy is no exception to that, and our corporate citizens are also Americans. We are all interconnected, and what hurts one of us--from the puniest struggling poet right on up to Microsoft and Disney--hurts us all. That doesn't mean that the IP holders of the world, big and small, should get everything they may want. But it does emphatically mean that in rightly reexamining the policies we want copyright law to serve we must be very careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

>I am running out of time for list discussion. Please do
not construe my period of silence as lack of arguments in response to later disagreements.<

That's a cheap way to get the last word. But despite the spirited disagreement, my best wishes.

Robert C. Cumbow
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-----Original Message-----
From: M. Pollack [mailto:mpollack[_at_]memphis.edu] Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 8:30 AM To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: The good fight

Yes, I fully recognize that what I want is incompatible with Bearne and may hurts some business' profits.

        We have hit the basic philosophical disagreement. I simply do not believe that some firms getting money abroad should be the central concern of USA copyright policy. (The money, furthermore, may never be returned to the USA; FYI the "copies" sold abroad are often manufactured outside the USA).

          Calvin College said that "the business of America is business". I disagree emphatically, the business of America should be Americans. The CTEA makes the persons living in the USA (i) pay royalties longer for "american" works, and (ii) pay royalties longer for "non-american" works. It ties up access to works which are no longer commercially exploited by any copyright holder-- the super majority of works in existence are not commercially exploited for the full term. A would-be-user must expend time and money trying (often without success) to find a copyright holder (or a maze of holders of many different rights under copyright) in order to get an ok to use a work which no longer has any "commercial" value.
  I do not really know whether the extra money obtained by "american" copyright holders abroad counter balances the extra royalties paid by american residents. I have never seen a convincing empirical analysis of the issue. But in my (on this point not at all humble) opinion, the Copyright Clause of the Constitution is about protecting the general public's access to works -- not about profits for copyright holders.

        At this point, I am running out of time for list discussion. Please do
not construe my period of silence as lack of arguments in response to later disagreements.

	Long live the public domain.
                :-)

RCumbow[_at_]GrahamDunn.com wrote:
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-- 
Malla Pollack
Visiting Associate Professor
University of Memphis, Law
mpollack[_at_]memphis.edu



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