actuaries and copyright extension

Paul Heald writes (after cogently showing the absence of any increased present value to a current author from an additional 20 years of copyright):
>
> So, what's the 20-year extension all about? Imposing 20 more
> years of monopoly costs on consumers without any countervailing
> public benefit. In some circles this is called "SUBSIDY."

     The 20-year extension is about works as to which incentives play no role whatsoever, namely, those about to go into the public domain because they have been paying royalties to their copyright owners for 75 years. If the proposed extensions were prospective only, I am certain that support for them would disappear overnight. If this is correct, it shows that the traditional incentives/public benefit tradeoff under which copyright legislation should be judged is no longer at work, because no further incentive is required for works already in existence.

     So, what is at work with these extension proposals? The most charitable view is that of "natural rights." The problem with that is that "natural rights" have no logical stopping point. Moreover, a true natural rights believer would protect under copyright not only expression but also creative ideas--and should also plump for perpetual patents as well. Few, if any, openly argue for such extensions of current intellectual property law. "Natural rights" is therefore simply a word that sounds good and is useful in ratcheting up intellectual property rights. In less charitable circles, this is called "GREED."

Dennis S. Karjala
Professor of Law
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona 85287
602-965-4010
602-965-2427 (fax)
dennis.karjala[_at_]asu.edu Received on Wed Apr 17 1996 - 20:25:21 GMT