Re: The Eric Eldred Act

Hello Susan,

The marketing of new creations should work just like other industries. However, because of government intervention there are forces acting against the usual supply and demand scenario. The time factor is an arbitrary invention of the government which limits the creator's earning period. ( The time limit is not for the creator's benefit, although extending it helps.) Copyright takes away from the creators and enriches the government and society with a public domain resource. Public domain is an incentive to progress only as long as a balance between republished work and new work is maintained.

Copyright is not working today as it did initially because more people are breaking the law. Twenty years ago, the average person didn't have the equipment, resources, or distribution channels to exploit illegally copied goods to any great extent. Now, for copyrights to actually mean "exclusive right," creators need a lawyer. And, since many of the infringers today have no means to pay a judgement, creators also need lots of money before they can assert their exclusive rights. If the laws were aggressively enforced by some body other than the creators themselves, there would be no need for Congress to try to amend market forces by extending term limits.

Yes, I do believe that I should have a natural right to own what I create. I am a capitalist. If there were no copyright law, fair use exemption, or public domain, I think that goods created as copies of an creator's original work would, by law, belong to the creator in the same way that a manufacturer's molded goods belong to that manufacturer? As I see it, if the government had really wanted to benefit creators, they would have allowed them to have property rights just like everyone else. Creators could then call the cops if they found someone stealing their work and/or take them to small claims court for civil damages.

In my opinion, when Copyright and Patent laws were instituted, the government got something for nothing, and society saw great benefit because new creations provided the fuel for progress, and the public domain provided inspiration for improvements upon progress. However, creators got diddly for works they were forced to give up and have to continue to fight to gain more time as it becomes increasingly difficult to market and earn from their work. Eric's idea is to tax creators for trying to hang on to whatever they can for as long as they can. Taxation adds insult to injury. A tax deduction, recognizes that the creator is giving something of value, and it would be voluntary.

I disagree with your characterization of most copyrights as valueless after a short time. Maybe something like a review of an outdated computer card would be valueless, but many works of art, literature, and music are timeless. In addition, new ways of publishing are being invented that can give works new life. The reason many people want a shorter term limit is so they can get their hands on works that are valuable and republish them in perpetuity in all sorts of emerging venues. It's one thing to completely revamp a work like Disney does. That's contributing to progress. To republish the same work in a new venue with only slight modifications is just getting something for nothing at the expense of the original creator, and it can potentially thwart progress by threatening the market for new works as well.

Linda Gruber

Novel Art
http://www.novelart.com

Susan Aker wrote:

Linda,  

I'm sorry you believe creating is such an arduous effort that it must be rewarded with copyrights that extend well beyond the lifetime of the creator and probably beyond the lifetime of any direct descendents (those who may have suffered during the period of creation). Perhaps you, and other creators, should take a different view of this process. The copyright industry is the only one in the world that reaps a reward based on time rather than on the principle of supply and demand. Right now, there are more creative works published and available than any other time in history. Books, TV, Movies, Radio, all are so filled with, not only the works that are published, but also those who are trying to get into the business. And above that, there is a proliferation of free content on the web. It isn't edited so you get a lot of poor quality works, but many of them are simply what publishers refer to as 'unmarketable'.

With all these possibilities, the value of any single work should - by rules of supply and demand - be very nearly valueless. Most of these copyrights you want to so ardently protect for the life of the creator +70 years have a realistic lifespan of a few months to a few years. Those timeless works that have longer commercial spans could just as easily be protected by Eric Eldred's idea of a tax to maintain the copyright - and this would free up the other works, those with only a limited commercial lifespan, to be re-used in a work that may very well surpass the original. Someone on the list suggested that Disney's Beauty and the Beast was the best version of the story - and it never would have been created it the story were still under copyright.  

You treat copyrights as if they were some sort of real property that the author has a natural right to maintain. If anything is that sort of property, it would be the work itself - which is something that numerous U.S. judges have insisted does NOT belong to the writer. They own only the copyright (see the decision on The Wind Done Gone.) And copyright is a government granted monopoly that is supposed to exist only for a limited time. Limitations for Presidential terms is 4 years, renewable once. Limitations on the prosecution of robbery is generally seven years (some variation from state to state.) There is even a true limitation on the prosecution of murder - which never has a legal limitation, and that is the realistic limitation of human lifespan. Descendents do not need to be worried that they will be prosecuted for a crime their ancestor committed. Copyrights, once they have extended beyond the lifespan of the creator, beyond the lifespan of the possible reader, have NO realistic limitation, but are, for all practical purposes of the currently living, perpetual. I am shocked and dismayed that the Supreme Court chose to support this extention that took copyrights another 20 years something that was already, for practical purposes of the living, unlimited.  

Susan Aker Received on Tue Feb 04 2003 - 17:23:07 GMT