Re: INFO/NYT: DISCUSS: The Future of the Internet

On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Patrick A. O'Donnell <pao[_at_]ascent.com> wrote:
>
> This "even if only one person ... its worthwhile" style of emotional
> appeal is getting way out of hand in our country today. I don't buy
> it anymore. There are a few hundred million others of us whose
> freedoms get trampled for the sake of this hypothetical "one person".

I have lost count of the number of entrepreneurs, artists, illustrators, poets, musicians and others whose life pursuit is to create new original works (often at great personal sacrifice), that have come to me having had their work literally ripped off in the most gross, blatant way possible. In most of these cases, if it were not for copyright law, they would have no way to fight the theft.

So, "whose freedoms get trampled" if we do away with copyright?

I respectfully suggest that: (i) the misperception about what copyright law actually protects has lead many people to point their guns at copyright law for the wrong reasons; and (ii) there is little real evidence that enforcement of copyrights has had the effect of trampling the rights of a few hundred million (or even a few hundred thousand).

Having said that, there are a number of areas where U.S. copyright law has took a wrong turn, IMO. The first is in term extension in the U.S., which was as Nick earlier pointed out, almost solely motivated by political power and money, and not the promotion of new creative endeavor. The second, is in the extension of the concept of derivative or adaptive works (I guess the two recent instances that come to my mind are the Seinfeld 'transformative use' case and the discussion on 'Lolita's viewpoint'). I'm not sure how to categorize these latter abuses. Their effect is definitely to chill others from _extending_ prior works without permission.

Tough cases make bad law, sometimes. Its part of the great Democratic Experiment.

-mike oliver
Bowie & Jensen, LLC
<mikeoliver[_at_]home.com> Received on Sat Aug 21 1999 - 14:28:10 GMT