Re: Constitutional Challenge to (C) Code

Amy Stoller <redherring[_at_]tuna.net> wrote:
>
> 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.

Dear Ms. Stoller:

Yes, I believe that parents should be able to leave to their children some of the fruits of their labors. Of course, Authors and other creators have profited from their works in their lifetime, at least to some extent. These royalties could be saved and inherited in the usual fashion.

The problem is that most copyrighted work is simply not all that profitable. Most works are never republished. Even the fifty year stipulation can often mean tracking down the grand and great-grandchildren of an author. Take a piece from my own church body, a translation of our founder's works. There were two translators, both now dead. The work may or may not be PD; it was published in the 40s. The Library of Congress will not guarantee that a search of the copyright registrations of the period, which finds a negative result, means that it was never registered. So we must find out who the children of these authors were, and their children and their children's children, all to determine whether they will all grant permission to republication... This is the reality faced by those of us trying to assemble freely access able text libraries online.

So, for the sake of a handful of heirs, so that they might make additional millions of dollars off of the estate of their talented ancestor, the works of the majority of the twentieth century's creators must remain either obscure or very difficult to present to new generations.

My viewpoint, this is the very opposite of the intent of the "limited time" clause, which desired to make available the treasure of society to it after the creator had a chance to make a profit from it.

Bob Smith
Project Wittenberg Coordinator
<cosmithb[_at_]ash.palni.edu> Received on Tue Mar 31 1998 - 15:37:37 GMT