Re: How can the Bettmann Arc

On Mon, 23 Oct 1995, Mark Lemley wrote:
>
> Several people have made this same point, and it seems right to me. But
> one question lingers . . . why exactly does Bill Gates want to own this
> archive? Maybe it is because he can't think of anything else he hasn't
> already bought. If so, fine.
>
> But it seems more likely to me that Gates intends to digitize these works
> and, having done so, try to exert some control not just over the originals,
> but over the digitized versions as well. That seems more problematic from
> a copyright standpoint. Right? Or is there some claim to copyright
> residing in the "creative" work of running the art through a scanner?

What seems most likely to me is that Bill Gates intends to create some more multimedia CD's. And it seems to me that he might have two copyright angles. First he might digitize and create a CD of the archives as a collection, maybe complete, but more likely selective. Then he'd have a compilation copyright. Or he might intend to integrate one or more images into a multimedia work like an encyclopedia. Again he would have either a compilation copyright or a copyright covering the new material in the multimedia work. Either one would give him enough of a copyright claim to have some rights. And Bill Gates is real good at leveraging some rights into a lot of money. In other words with any part of a valid copyright he can sound like he has enough rights to get a lot of people to act like he wants them to act and pay him money. In other words, its enough to give him the incentive to buy the archives to get access to digitize and to give him the incentive to create new derivative work. To put it another way, contrary to what Bruce Lehman thinks, Bill Gates probably doesn't need strong copyrights to make money and to have the incentive to make new works. Nevertheless, he would like to have strong copyright rights. Ironic isn't it.

Mary Jensen
cnicopy[_at_]sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu Received on Thu Oct 26 1995 - 01:58:19 GMT