Re: thought for the week

On Wed, 21 Jul 1999, Timothy Phillips <hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> wrote:
>
> A world of copyright is like a world in which,
> when I buy a tomato, I may eat the tomato, but
> I may not plant its seeds and grow my own tomatoes
> for market."

This thought ignores a key distinction between copyrighted works and tomatoes: someone's creativity and effort went into the creation of the copyrighted work; tomatoes are a gift from the Creator.

With the exception of the copyleft folks, most people acknowledge that a copyright protection regime encourages creative efforts, and that the promotion of these efforts is a good thing for society.

There is -- and should be -- considerable debate over the scope and extent of copyright protection, including the troublesome increases in the length of copyright protection, and the fair use defense (which has been the subject of considerable debate of late). But the belief that we'd all be better off without copyright ignores the economic reality that copyright protection encourages investment in, and development of, creative works.

The incredible investment in Internet software applications, movies and music would, IMO, be decimated without a healthy copyright protection regime.

Greg Ikonen
<gikonen[_at_]venlaw.com> Received on Thu Jul 22 1999 - 14:55:23 GMT