Re: thought for the week

On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, Jeroen Hellingman <jehe[_at_]kabelfoon.nl> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Greg Ikonen <gikonen[_at_]venlaw.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Even some copyleft folks do believe that a copyright can encourage, if
> not creativity itself, at least the investment in making creative works
> available. But copyright is not essential to be creative, and many
> copyleft folks are just seeking a way to share their creations without
> others taking the credit...
>
> I see much in favour of a minimalist view of copyright, that is,
> copyrights should be just enough to encourage such investments and
> nothing more, such that the creative works are available to the public
> at the lowest cost possible. That means, I favour shorter terms and
> broad "fair use" Anything more is a waste of money, and may actually
> drain resources that otherwise could have gone to creating more
> creative works.
>
> Considering that the average economical life span of a copyrighted work
> is about 5 years, a life+70 years copyright term is ridiculously long.

Please cite source for estimated commercial life of 5 years. Warner Chappell, as owners of the copyrights generated by Irving Berlin, amongst others, will be amazed to hear how precarious their business really is...

CS

"Galvanising Ideas"

Colin Seeger, Consultant, Management of Intellectual Property. P.O Box 3227, Tamarama, Sydney, Australia 2026 Tel: (61) (02) 9365 1186, Fax (61) (02) 9365 1286 <seeger[_at_]ozemail.com.au> Received on Wed Jul 28 1999 - 14:03:28 GMT