Re: The Eric Eldred ActLinda,
Sorry, but you should not have brought up the property aspect of creative works and compared them with the real property created by manufacturing and other industry. That is a personal favorite argument of mine because it so clearly shows that copyrighted works are NOT property.
Say I go down to the Ford dealership and purchase a Mustang automobile. I now have an automobile that I can drive anywhere, modify to my heart's content, open up and study the internal workings of if I desire and Ford has NO rights to say anything about whatever I do to MY car. However, when I go down to Best Buy and purchase a DVD, the only thing I can legally do is watch it. I'm not able to take it apart, reuse parts to make another work (like I can use parts from a car to make a go-cart).
Since I've heard it argued that with a car, I have only purchased a copy of the car, I'll use another analogy. I purchase a house from the builder. Even though he did all the hard work of building it, getting all the different materials put together, making the whole thing work, once I have closed on the purchase, it is mine and he has no rights to it whatsoever. If I want to build an identical house on the other side of my property, I don't have to go to the original builder, I don't even need the original blueprints. I can have an expert come in, take notes on all the pertinent information and draw up a set of blue prints. It probably won't be an identical copy, but it will look like an identical copy. Even if the original blueprints have their own copyright, I have done nothing illegal here by creating my own copy for my own use. I can then have my property split and can legally sell the copy of my house. Try to apply that to copyright.
If you want a natural property right to your creations, don't publish. The act of publishing is a SALE to the public of your creation. Once you have agreed to the terms (current copyright limitations - whatever they are) you should be bound by those terms. If you don't like the terms, don't publish.
Also, your argument about people not respecting copyright law is flawed. The disrespect of copyright law has everything to do with the expansions to copyright law and little to do with the majority of people wanting to get something for nothing. When I was a teenager, I taped a lot of music off the radio (which, by the way, is perfectly legal according to the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992). But when I went to work and had more disposable income, I started my collection of purchased music. Now that I understand what the extensions to copyright have done, I do very little to support the industry that lobbied for it. I buy very few books, fewer CD's, and rarely see a movie. All because I don't respect a law that honors only one side of the contract. The public bought those works and should be able to take full ownership of them in a timely manner. When they can't, and they understand what the government has done, they no longer respect copyright law and a lot of those people who are copying and distributing over the internet are actually engaged in Civil Disobedience (most probably want something for free, but they're really no worse than teenagers who used to record off the radio).
Susan Aker
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 Wed Feb 05 2003 - 15:39:22 GMT
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