RE: The Era of Perpetual Copyright

At 09:56 AM 1/21/2003 -0500, Ralph Clifford wrote:
> As the Court accepts copyrights as a
>property right, it is not so clear that Congress can undo what it has done.
>If the extension were repealed, I'm sure that it would be challenged by
>current copyright holders on the grounds that the property rights of the
>copyright owner were taken by the repeal. Consequently, the argument would
>go, the copyright owners are owed compensation under the 5th Amendment's
>Taking Clause. My prediction of the challenge is that it would be sustained
>by the Supreme Court as this Court has been quite receptive to taking
>challenges.

Well by the same token can't one argue that the Congress took property from actual people and not just from an amorphous public when it enacted CTEA?

This weekend while shopping for some old books, I was thinking about comments on this list about the unlikelihood that copyright terms would ever be reduced by Congress since such would involve "taking property" from those real people who own it.

As I walked and mused, I found a really nice old book with lots of pictures of ships -- it was copyrighted in 1924 and priced at $200. If it had been dated a year earlier, or if CTEA hadn't happened I might have spent the $200. But one can't use a book that is filled with trade secrets (or other IP) -- it is only useful (from my perspective) if you can share it. So in passing CTEA, Congress did in fact take property value from the nice old bookstore by rendering some of its old books useless and valueless.

They also took property from me. Some ten years or so ago I purchased a nice old book of Courier and Ives prints. It was scheduled to enter the public domain in 2005, so I figured it was worth the money. After the clock ticked a while, I could help the book's contents re-enter the real world (the one populated by people rather than by cartoons and trademarks). It was an investment. I planned to scan it, put it on a web site, make derivative artwork and generally add to progress in the useful arts and sciences consistent with my admittedly flawed understanding of the laws of the land. Can't do that now! Might as well burn the darn thing or put it in a time capsule not to be opened until sunlight again reaches the post-1923 Dark Age.

There really are those of us who have spent money on things because they were (or were going to be) public domain.

If it would be unconstitutional for Congress to take from the owner of intellectual property by reducing its term of protection, why would it not be just as unconstitutional to take from those who paid for the physical property under certain assumptions about that term? Congress devalued my real property by rendering it useless. Is IP really so much more important that real property? Can I get my money back?

David Dailey Received on Mon Jan 27 2003 - 17:30:48 GMT