Re: Constitutional Challenge to (C) Code

Robert E. Smith <cosmith[_at_]ash.palni.edu> wrote:
>
> What would be the likelyhood of success for a Constitutional Challenge
> of the Duration of Copyright under both current and pending US Code?
> It seems to me that life plus fifty-seventy years does not "promote the
> progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited time."
> I do not understand how a lifetime beyond my lifetime is limited and how
> it guarentees my right to my work when I am dead. Class action, anyone?

If you have produced any intellectual property, your heirs will have control over its disposition and will be able to benefit from it for seventy years after you die. Lifetime plus seventy years is by definition a limited time. The extension from fifty to seventy years brings the US in line with the rest of the signatories to Berne and gives artists a chance to leave something to their children with a reasonable hope that those children may benefit thereby. It is a sensible provision, given increased life expectancy. I hope it is not your position that creators and owners of intellectual property should be unable to leave anything of value to their spouses and children, or that their heirs should have to endure without remedy uses of their spouses or parents' life work which are repugnant to them.

ghoti

Amy Stoller
<redherring[_at_]tuna.net>
<:)))>><( Received on Mon Mar 30 1998 - 21:36:22 GMT