thought for the week of August 22, 1999

In his article "The Failure of the American Copyright System: Protecting the Idle Rich", professor patry remarked that

    United States copyright law has failed of its     essential purpose--to benefit authors--and is     being shaped largely by powerful distributors     and their lobbyists with the dual goals of     extending a monopoly (in order to extract high     prices from the public) while simultaneously     depriving authors of as much money as possible     (though thye push authors forward, puppet-like,     as the intended beneficiaries). _Notre Dame     Law Review_ 72(4), May 1997, p. 907, at 909.

Professor Patry's observation is not new. Similar remarks were made by Attorney-General Thurlow in his remarks at the start of proceedings in the case of Donaldson v. Becket in 1774:

    The booksellers [Attorney-General Thurlow] observed...     had not, till lately, ever concerned themselves     about authors, but had generally confined the     substance of their prayers to the legislature, to the     security of their own property; nor would they     probably have, of late years, introduced the authors     as parties in their claims to the common law right     of exclusively multiplying copies, had not they     found it necessary to give a colourable face to their     monopoly. Donaldson v. Becket, _Parlimentary History of     England_, Vol. 17, p. 953 (14 George III), at 954.

Tim Phillips
<hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> Received on Fri Aug 27 1999 - 02:52:14 GMT