Re: actuaries and copyright extension

Maurice Robinson writes:
>
> On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, Bruce Hayden wrote:

>> 
>> I would like to take this opportunity to point out the letter to the 
>> editor by Prof. Karjala in the latest Newsweek on essentially the 
>> same subject (20 year term extension).

     Actually, I think Bruce was referring to the Wall Street Journal of Thursday April 18. I would love to have something published against the extension in Newsweek, but to my knowledge I've never sent anything to that journal. Although I published the WSJ letter on this list after I had actually given up on WSJ's publishing it, I re-reproduce the WSJ letter below, which was only very slightly edited as published:

         Re: The Plight of Jane Austen's Distant Relatives

     The [WSJ] cover-page article by Amy Stevens on March 25 nicely illustrates the dangers of an ever-longer period of copyright protection. (Congress is now seriously considering legislation to extend this period by another 20 years,) Put aside that the fifthgeneration  descendants mentioned in the article are not those of Jane Austen herself but rather of her brothers. What moral claim do such distant descendants in any event have to avoid the "dead boring" jobs with which most of the rest of us are saddled by participating in the income generated from current creative uses of Ms. Austen's works? If they had Ms. Austen's or even studio screenwriters' creativity, they could write and profit from their own works.

     The article also indicates that some of these relatives are appalled by what they regard as distortions of Ms. Austen's artistic legacy. What gives this particular set of some 100 people uniquely apt qualifications to judge whether a use is "good" or "bad"? There are probably hundreds of true students of Ms. Austen's works who understand her artistic legacy much better, and some of whom may be equally appalled; yet no one seriously thinks even a group of knowledgeable scholars should play the role of thought police. The whole point of placing works in the public domain after AUTHORS have had a reasonable chance to profit from their works is to allow everyone the opportunity to use them as the basis for new works. This maximizes the number of new works that the public can enjoy, and the market decides what is good and bad.

     This constant extension of copyright protection is a bad thing, and the perpetual copyright desired by these descendants of Jane Austen is the ultimate black whole into which our cultural legacy will fall if we continue down this road. We must remember that for every Jane Austen novel that remains popular, there are thousands or even tens of thousands of other works whose economic value has long been nil--at least until another creative artist comes along and sees a potential new use. Most old works are of interest only to scholars, historians, biographers, archivists, and librarians. Work in these fields can grind to a halt if current authors have to negotiate with hundreds of descendants every time they wish to make use of an old work.

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 Tue Apr 23 1996 - 16:56:04 GMT