Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

Timothy Phillips <hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> wrote:
>
> Second, I make a distinction. All the other costs you mention are
> for the exclusive use of something: the concert hall, a portion of
> the public water supply, the bookkeeper's time. When the orchestra
> uses the hall, no other orchestra can use it at the same time. A
> cup of water that the first cellist drinks can't be drunk by anyone
> else. But the rental on the music pays for very little, since the
> music is infinitely replicable at almost no cost.

     Yes and no. You're forgetting the unique nature of intellectual property. The music exists in only one place, the composer's head. It does not exist in the printed scores. Those are only copies of what's in the composer's head. That is why copyright exists, because every copy is a copy of a unique original.

     Copyright and other rights restrictions only apply, so to speak, to copies made directly from the composer's head. Once you buy one of these copies, you can do anything you want with it. Even resell it, for example.

     I don't know the history of the concept of performance rights, but presumably they are rights to exclusive use of what's in the composer's head, not to use of the printed score.

     What is the rationale for performance rights? Are there performance rights for poetry?

> At first glance, it looks merely like paying extortion money to punks
> with baseball bats who collect 'tolls' for the use of the public
> sidewalk.
>
> Copyright payments CAN be rationalized as society's payment, in
> installments, of a fair price to the creator of the work in exchange
> for the work. But this only makes sense if the term of copyright is
> not too long. The longer the term of copyright becomes, the less
> conscionable the payment demands become.
>
> The underlying presuppositions of all my posts are (1) that limited
> copyright is no better than a necessary evil, and (2) perpetual
> copyright, apparently the dear desire of many in the publishing,
> film, and music industries, is not only unconstitutional -- it is an
> abomination.

     Your moralizing language is way over the top. You're not fighting Satan here. It's just copyright.

• Mike Bradley National Writers Union <michael[_at_]vision-soft.com>