Re: actuaries and copyright extension

At 1:28 PM 4/17/96 -0700, Karjala, Dennis wrote:
>
> 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."

This argument goes both ways. One could also suggest that that the proponents of limiting property rights in the public interest have no logical stopping point. E.g. the Free Software Foundation, or whatever its called. In fact, I think the term, whether 5, 75 or 125 years is an essentially arbitrary legislative balancing of natural rights versus public interest. One could make it more, or one could make it less, but there's no particularly principled argument for any particular term. I think its also unfair to paint the dispute as one between the forces of good and evil, with all of the greed ascribed to the nazis of the "natural right." Among the big winners if the extension is defeated, I would guess, are cable and broadcast programmers who will have to pay for fewer of the movies they use to separate the dog food commercials from the automobile ads. Where exactly is the demonstrable public benefit from the earlier entry into public domain. Would it knock maybe a buck off the consumer cost of the unusual book for which there's still demand after the expiration of the copyright term, or put an extra buck in the pocket of the Random House subsidiary that prints and distributes it.

I'm afraid I'm being identified with a particular position on this issue, when in fact I'm only resisting the prevailing sentiment in the interest of controversy for its own sake. At bottom, I wonder how much real difference the enactment or failure of the proposed legislation would make and to who.

John Noble
<jnoble[_at_]dgs.dgsys.com> Received on Thu Apr 18 1996 - 16:13:41 GMT