Re: Copyright Extension Bill Passes Congress

Derric Oliver <doliver[_at_]jazz.fantasyjazz.com> wrote:
>
> If you feel that the passage of the extension is a 'great tragedy...
> for writers, artists and other creative people', I would submit to
> you that that you've got an odd sense of tragedy!

The problem is that there is both a cost and a benefit side. As for the benefits, the amount that any currently writer, artist, or other creative person will benefit under the new law is minimal. If you assume a constant cash flow over the period of the copyright (which as we all know is extremely generous), and apply say a 5% rate of return, the added twenty years bring somewhere around a 5% increase in value. Of course, this 5% is going to be quite a bit less for almost all works, as the cash flow can be expected to drop off quite a bit before the end of the old term (and before the start of the 20 year extension). So, 1% or maybe 2% is probably a more reasonable estimate. This type of addition is not the least bit likely to result in more than a de minimis increase in creative output, since economically only those transactions at the margin are affected. After all, how many people are that much more motivated to give something to their greatgrandchildren  than were motivated to give something to their grandchildren.

On the other side, it is rare to create works that don't in some way depend on other, preexisting works. If the works are not in the public domain, then presumably they should be licensed. The problem is that nothing is going to enter the public domain for the next twenty years. The result is that amount of stuff that should be licensed in order to create will increase during that 20 years, without any realistic benefit to the person creating originally expressive works today. (And with pretty much all of the benefit going to those who have been dead now for quite a while - we are talking about the stuff that was created in 1922).

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The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 1998 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
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Bruce E. Hayden                      bhayden[_at_]acm.org
Phoenix, Arizona                     bhayden[_at_]ieee.org
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