Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

Michael Bradley <michael[_at_]vision-soft.com> wrote:

>

Musical copyright exists for precisely the opposite reason. Since a noted score, using our modern system of notation, allows one very closely to reproduce what is in the composer's head without access to the composer's own self, it is feared that the composer might not receive a fair price for the work. Copyright imposes an artificial no-copy regime "for limited times" to allow the composer a chance to get a fair price for the creative labor of producing the original music. After abiding for a time in this temporary, anomalous state, the music then assumes its natural place in the scheme of things: it enters the public domain.

(FYI the history of performance rights, as I understand it, is as follows: The 1790 law contained no performance rights. The 1831 law contained a performance right for dramatic works. The 1909 law contained a performance right for dramatic works, and a public, for-profit performance right for musical works. The 1976 law contains a public performance right for all works except sound recordings, and the for-profit qualification has been dropped. Now ALL public performance infringe, whether for profit or not. A recent amendment defines a digital performance right for sound recordings in certain circumstances. I leave it to our legal friends to correct any inaccuracies in this summary. Obviously, this is not legal advice, doesn't create a lawyer-client relationship, etc.)

> It's just copyright.

The purpose of copyright is to enlarge the public domain by providing a reasonable incentive to authors without excessively burdening the public. Any copyright which deviates from this is not "just" copyright, it is corrupt copyright. I think the term of copyright we now must endure is already so long that it makes a mockery of the constitutional words, "for limited times." But my strongest language was reserved for perpetual copyright, which many these days seem to be urging. Mary Rodgers, for instance, has been quoted as saying "I wish, in a way, the public domain didn't exist at all". (Robert Kolker, "Theatres on Alert as Congress Looks at Copyright Law", Back Stabe, 36(9), March 3, 1995, p. 3) If Mary Rogers had her way an all literature ever created since the beginning of human language were under copyright (this is the plain meaning of "didn't exist at all") then Jew-haters could capture the copyright to the Hebrew scriptures. So I don't think "abomination" is too strong a word to apply to perpetual copyright.

Tim Phillips
<hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> Received on Fri Aug 14 1998 - 16:06:43 GMT