Re: actuaries and copyright extension

Jon Binks writes:
>
> Doesn't an extended term better respect those creators who might
> have works that time could protect. I'm thinking of works that are
> created not with the intent of immediate recognition but where
> unauthorized reproduction would be premature or could harm the
> creator or the creator's family.

Surely 50 years after the death of the author is sufficient protection for family skeletons! Copyright only prevents someone who comes across such works from reproducing them. It does not prevent them discussing them, describing their contents, or expressing their content in a different form meaning copyright is a poor mechanism for protecting privacy.

A family would be far more effective concealing or destroying the works.

> And wouldn't an extended term allow the family, friends, heirs, to
> more fully participate in the management of works that might require
> special attention.

Yes it would but that should be balanced against the public interest of allowing those works to be used for historical research.

> An extended term recognizes that one can create with
> greater (if not complete) control over the "life" of those work--i.e.
> down the road really matters. I can think of other legal methods to
> address these concerns but I'm grappling with the idea of copyright
> as protecting the individual and their personality and not as
> motivated exclusively by economic considerations.

The European moral rights doctrine nicely separates the economic and extra-economic concerns. The moral rights are "personal, perpetual, inalienable, and unassignable" allowing authors to restrict the use of works which they author despite assigning copyright to another. I believe that as a consequence of them being personal, they expire with the person (although I'm sure someone on this list will correct me if I'm wrong).

Tim Arnold-Moore, LL.B. (Melb)      | Multimedia Database Systems, CITRI  |
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