Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:

>

If what you claim to "own" ought to belong to all of us, then I am deprived. In ordinary circumstances I have no trouble with being denied access to YOUR property. But if works of art and literature are "property" at all (which they aren't, but let us admit it for the sake of argument) then they are public property. Perpetual copyright denies me access to what is as much mine as anyone else's.

If the arts are to be compared to land at all, then all the arts, not just the public domain, are a vast national park. An author, on this analogy, is a contractor who builds an improvement in the park: lays a water pipe or builds a trinket shop or tourist lodge. In exchange for the improvement, the contractor gets a payment in the form of share in the profits deriving from the improvement. The pipe-layer, for a time, gets a cut of the gate receipts which varies with how much his water pipe is used. The builder of the trinket shop, it may be, not only gets some of the profits from the shop, but gets for a while the privilege of picking the subcontractor who will manage the shop. But eventually the contractor must be paid off, and the management of the shop thrown open to competitive bidding.

Note that the improvements to the park are the public's property ab initio. The only private property involved is the agreement between the public and the contractor. The privileges that are the contractor's pay can be assigned, and so forth, as if they were personal property. But these privileges come with an expiration date attached, as the contractor ought to know full well. The buildings or water mains the contractor has built are not the contractor's property, and never were. Likewise works of the arts, if they are to be anyone's "property" at all, are the public's from the moment of fixation. The monopoly privileges which are the author's pay are the author's property, but they come with a built-in expiration date. No one pays an infinite price for land, services, or anything else. No more should the public be required to pay an infinite price for improvements.

Tim Phillips
<hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> Received on Wed Sep 02 1998 - 18:58:21 GMT