Re: (US) Free speech ./. (c)

On Mon, 02 Aug 1999, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
>
> It also, I think, is starting to show technological cracks. The origins
> of copyright, I think (I am no expert), lay in the relatively large
> capital investment of setting type and creating printing plates. As
> that investment goes down by technological advances like the Internet,
> the need for extensive monopolies declines.

The motivation for copyright was that the technology of printing greatly reduced the cost of making copies by comparison with manuscript; digital technology continues that trend.

If it were the investment that were the motive, bear in mind that the would-be copyist also had to make the investment, albeit after the market popularity of the work had been proved by the original printer, but the original printer would normally come out on top having recouped some of his costs earlier.

The Statute of Anne abandoned the pernicious censorship bargain between state and printer for an author's copyright subsisting in the work (rather than a printer's copyright subsisting in the book).

This brings me to another comment on this thread, which is to suggest that in principle all intellectual property laws should embody the bargain which is explicit in patent law: a monopoly in exchange for publication. Confusion emerges with copyright because the same body of law applies to unpublished works where it performs the equally important function of granting to an author the right to decide whether to make the work public or to keep it private. I submit that the bargain has broken down most fundamentally in the software domain, where software producers can both enjoy monopoly rents and (by not publishing their source code) keep the idea secret.

-- 
Edward Barrow
edward[_at_]plato32.demon.co.uk