Re: Copyrights as Property (Was: Copyright Extension Bill Passes Congress)

Andrew C. Greenberg <werdna[_at_]gate.net> wrote:
>
> Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> writes:
> >
> > As I see it, there are three diferent entities that need to be
> > considered:
> >
> > 1) the work, a metaphysical thing that is not property, or, to the
> > extent it can be characterized as property, is public property;
> >
> > 2) the copyright in the work, a legislatively created bundle of
> > specific rights concerning reproduction, etc., of the work, and that
> > is the property of the author and/or his assigns;
> >
> > 3) the copy, the only physical thing in the analysis, which is the
> > material object from which the work is perceived, and which is the
> > property of the individual who acquires title to the physical object
> > lawfully produced under the ordinary rules for transfer of a chattel.
> >
> > Any analysis that confuses the copy with the copyright; the copyright
> > with the work; or the copy with the work, is doomed to add more
> > confusion than clarity.
>
>
> I cannot agree that a work itself is necessarily "public property."
> Several things need to happen before that is true.
[snip]

Andrew,

  I think I see where Terry was going with his description. If you consider a time in the future, and you select that time so that it is beyond the time when copyright protection applies, then to the extent that the work is "property", it is in the public domain (at least in the US, protection is for a "limited" time under the US Constitution). The copyright interest arises when the statutory conditions are met, and those rights last for a period of time defined by statute. Some works become public domain immediately, if they do not meet the statutory subject matter requirements, or the case law interpretation (eg a phone book is not copyrightable under Feist). And least contentious, I propose, is that the copyright is separable from the physical copies (of which the "original" is also a "copy" in copyright parlance).

  Terry's operable words were "to the extent it can be characterized as property", as I read his description.

[snip]

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Thomas E. Workman Jr.
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