Re: Florida Pre-paid v. College Savings Bank

On Mon, 5 Jul 1999, Nick Zales <zales[_at_]execpc.com> wrote:
>
> It's hard to add to Jeroen Hellingman's excellent post on why
> copyright law today does not work and is in fact falling apart at the
> seams. As he said:

For some reason I thought you were suggesting that they be tightened.

> > Copyrights were conceived in a time when it still took a considerable
> > investment to copy a work, especially in large quantities, and only few
> > could afford to do so.
>
> Solutions?
>
> 1. Get copyright actions out of Federal court and into state small
> claims court were most begin.

Copyright is a federal matter by nature - only the Congress has the right to deal with copyright issues. Of course, for all I know (not being a lawyer), there could be a way to do this. Though I don't know why you'd want to.

> 2. Make damages certain, or simply require a violator to buy the
> licensed product. Thus no damages or attorney's fees beyond a
> token amount.

What kinds of copyright violations are you thinking of? And what do you mean by a "licensed product"? Most copyrighted works are sold, not licensed.

> 4. A Constitutional Amendment that allows copyright holders to
> sue States for infringement.

Most definitely NOT. Any constitutional amendment addressing intellectual property should only be aimed at weakening it -- this kind of ammendment would seem to put the copyright holder's financial interest above the public interest.

> As it now stands, copyright law does not work because, (1) it is
> too easy to copy things,

Yet still illegal.

> (2) it is too expensive to press claims in Federal court;

Why? court costs? attorney fees?

> (3) Federal judges, like the rest of us, lack a basic
> understanding of copyright law because it is too confusing and
> uncertain;

And you think small claims court judges would fare better?

> (4) make the U.S. Copyright Office grant copyrights with
> strict scrutiny in the way the Patent Office grants patents; and

Totally different things.

> (5) shorten the copyright term to ten years.

Now that I can agree with.

Lynn

Lynn Winebarger
<owinebar[_at_]free-expression.org> Received on Tue Jul 06 1999 - 22:09:27 GMT