Re: Copyright Extension Bill Passes Congress

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Tyler Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
>

[snip]
>
> Shakespeare might not have prevailed against Bernstein, et al.,
> depending on how the court viewed the line between idea and expression;
> one could certainly envision a U.S. court holding that Bernstein had
> borrowed more than the "idea" of R&J, but nearly the entire plot as
> well. Certainly Shakespeare would have prevailed against the producers
> of the recent R&J movie starring Leonardo di Caprio. The point is
> the same: a rich public domain allows for the re-imagination and
> transformation of older works WITHOUT having to ask for permission
> or worry about lawsuits.

What's wrong with obtaining permission? Many movies today are derived, with permission, from books, plays, and other movies. It is really a path favored by industry professionals.

> Unless you are prepared to argue that copyright should be perpetual,
> we must draw the line somewhere. The question remains: what is the
> appropriate duration of copyright? As the list demonstrates, there
> is no consensus on that question. What bothers me is that Congress
> responds only to the interests of those with money, instead of taking
> the public interest into account.

Your view is probably subject to your perspective. I recently heard Hon. Pat Schroeder, now head of Association of American Publishers, observe that the copyright industry is badly outnumbered by user groups. Certainly the embrace of fair use and library photocopying, after the proliferation of the Xerox 914, took these users' interest into account.

Users' interest is not always the same as the public interest. Library resource sharing based on photocopying, promised as a boon to research and the public interest, clearly backfired. It excused great cuts in academic library spending and led to decimated collections, narrowing of database coverage, skyrocketing red-tape-and-wait interlibrary borrowing (not always available to undergraduates and off-campus patrons), and expensive document delivery from foreign sources. Shorter print runs forced prices up and publishers' promotion down. Dissemination (which is clearly in the public interest) has been savagely disabled for many intellectually challenging works.

Be careful what you ask for.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Thu Nov 19 1998 - 01:22:20 GMT