Re: thought for the week

On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Greg Ikonen <gikonen[_at_]venlaw.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

But what of the genetically enhanced tomato? You may eat it, but someone does have a patent on it, so you may not plant it and grow it for market without permission which usually means using the seeds of the patent holder.

See

   http://www.nk.com/infosilo/news/patent2.html

Greg Erkins
<gerkins[_at_]gci.net> Received on Fri Jul 23 1999 - 09:51:24 GMT