Re: Constitutional Challenge to (C) Code

Albert Henderson <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> The simple answer is that copyright invites and protects investments
> in dissemination. Public domain works carry a greater risk.

Dear Albert and Friends:

Indeed. Copyright is very useful to society in that it encourages creators to bring new works into our world and enriches society. It encourages others to produce and distribute these works, enabling science to advance, scholarship to develop and many to be enriched. I believe in the basic premises of copyright quite sincerely, and, as an author and translator, would harldly wish it to dissappear.

Yet, as is the case with many worthwhile things, balance is needed between the fundemental right of creators to receive the fruits of their labor and the fundemental right of society to employ that work to further science, art and culture. There are very few truly original works, after all. Scientists build on the findings of their peers. Writers of fiction borrow the style of their genre, facets of our culture and other cultures, features of the personality of others and the way they interact and many other elements. Historians mine and interpret facts, often quoting documents created by others, engaging the theories of others, verifying or challenging the interpretation of others. Without the public domain and fair use, the building blocks of future works are available only to those who can afford them or have the time to track down the holders of rights.

I believe the framers of the constitution understood this when they wrote the "limited time" clause (which they themselves borrowed from the Statute of Queen Anne). The underlying philosophy is that creative works belong to all of us and that society rewards those in its midst with a grant of monopoly for a time to encourage new works to emerge. Fifty years beyond the life of an author, much less the seventy proposed, is neither a limited period of time nor does it encourage an author nearly three-quarters of century in the grave, to produce additional creative works. Rather, the result of such long periods of protection is the dampening of creative activity.

Were the term of copyright seventy years beyond the life of an author in the nineteenth century, the Gettyburg Address would not have entered the public domain until 1935. Had Lincoln lived a long life, it might not have entered the Public Domain until the 1960s. How would have the intervening generations have coped with tracking each of the heirs of Lincoln, so that they might employ a work that helped to forge our current culture?

Yes, there are works that retain a market, sometimes a very profitable market, into the centuries following their production. Yet there are easily a hundred times the number of works which have never been republished, whose heirs are difficult to locate, whose copyright, though not renewed, has to be treated as still in effect, whose publishers do not choose to preserve, yet, whose value to society and later creators is substantial.

Yes, there is risk in producing new editions of Public Domain works. Yet it is done in great volume, at some profit, I'd presume, each day. The works of Twain and Carrol and Stevenson may well appear more widely today for their public domain status. For this reason, I advocate the rejection of the copyright term extension proposed and the amendment of the current law to reflect a term of the life of the author.

Sincerely,

Bob Smith

   | Rev. Robert E. Smith           |       bob_smith[_at_]ctsfw.edu           |
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