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."

The latest wrinkle in agribusiness -- sterile seeds! The farmer can plant those seeds and grow the crop, but to be able to grow a crop the year after, the farmer must again __BUY__ seeds from the supplier.

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

I believe various growers and companies have gone to great lengths to "create" tomatoes that will survive handling for transportation, that will reach "ripe" under controlled conditions rather than randomly, etc., etc. (IMO, in the process the "taste" was lost.)

> 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.

Is this a put-down? I believe that the essence of copyleft is that if AA's original work is used by BB in a derivative product, then BB should not "enrich himself" from the work that AA has done. Copyleft depends on the copyright protection regime to achieve this aim (BB must agree in order to receive a license to copy AA's work). In my opinion, copyleft *encourages* AA to share his creative efforts.

> 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.

Correct -- the absence of copyright would discourage investment in creative works. But surely, in addition to the many who are developing creative works for the money, there would be *some* in whom the _need_ to create transcends monetary gain?

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

At least in software, Linux (and also the Internet itself) seem to have started without the kind of proprietary development you imply. Now that both are facing incredible investment based on copyright protection, it remains to be seen whether the result *will* be a gain for the public good (or just a gain for the investors).

Mikus Grinbergs
<mikus[_at_]bga.com> Received on Fri Jul 23 1999 - 14:27:24 GMT