Re: A Radical Thesis

>> I think the core problem is that copyright is obsolete for
>> the new media.

This dismissive comment misses the core point. Copyright is being distorted by the new technologies. Copyright may not be the appropriate vehicle for software. Copyright may not be the best vehicle for cyberspace protection of IP works of authorship.

We may continue to call the resulting IP protection regime copyright, but to be effective and to adequately balance the competing interests and rights, it will be severely distorted. Just in software alone we are seeing this. And can anyone tell me why software warrants 50 years of protection? Which programs of 50 years ago do we use today? Problems of elegance, merger, efficiency, and standardization are just too great a burden, IMHO, for copyright. If we keep along this path, copyright for other types of property may become terribly distorted as people think of software as the paradigm, rather than books, movies, and paintings.

So I think a rethinking and a creation of a new IP more suited to the specific nature of and needs of software and cyberspace makes more sense than the continued twisting of copyright.

But law and lawyers being what they are, I suspect we will continue to muddle around in copyright, with no lingering harm - but with continued distortions and bad decisions and excessive legislative lobbying and tinkering. But this is not the end of the world.

Cheers,
Steven D. Jamar
Assoc. Prof. & Dir. LRW Program
Howard University School of Law
sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu or sjamar[_at_]aol.com

"Those who say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are busy doing it." Chinese Proverb Received on Tue Apr 16 1996 - 13:04:30 GMT