Re: Author's Rights

Martha Luehrmann writes:
>
> We need some way to control and charge for minor uses of
> materials or portions of materials, like picking up a quote off the
> internet, playing a soundbite, running a piece of software, or showing
> some or all of a picture.
>

You make a persuasive argument [not reprinted here] that the cost of copying has come down dramatically since Gutenberg's time, and so we need copyright protection to compensate. But I'm not sure why you think we now need additional rights to "control and charge for minor uses of" copyrighted works. Sure, we could give authors those rights, in addition to the rights they already have under copyright law. But we have already expanded copyright law dramatically in the last 50 years, both in scope and in duration. It seems to me that the right question is not "do we need copyright?" [I think we do] but "must the author control all possible uses of his or her creation?"

Mark Lemley
Assistant Professor, University of Texas School of Law Of Counsel, Fish & Richardson, P.C.
mlemley[_at_]mail.law.utexas.edu Received on Wed Apr 10 1996 - 20:15:18 GMT