Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Accepts Eldred Case
Patrick Fitzgerald writes: "The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to intervene in a fight over copyrights, deciding whether Congress has sided too heavily with writers and other inventors. The outcome will determine when hundreds of thousands of books, songs and movies will be freely available on the Internet or in digital libraries." Openlaw's Eldred v. Ashcroft page has more information about the case, which seeks to challenge the most recent retroactive extension of copyright terms.
From an interview with Lawrence Lessig:
"It is important to remember that work in the public domain not only supports those who freely distribute it, but also those who publish it commercially."
Yes, indeed, it does benefit those people, but the one person whom it fails to benefit is the original author of the work. A creative work (book, movie, computer program) takes a lot of money and a lot of effort, often invested with the intent of making a profit.
Why should that effort ever become yours to take, seventy years later or seventy thousand? If I write a book, why should the rights to it not pass on to my heirs, like my house or my money, in perpetuity? Or sold, like any other asset, to a corporation.
Slashdot seems to contain a great many people who like to do work and then contribute that work to the world. I applaud their efforts, and contribute some of my own. But that is their voluntary gift to the world. If an author chooses not to do so, I don't see why the law should force them to. I am not a lawyer, but it sounds to me like the removal of copyright protection is a "taking".
Much has been written so far about how society as a whole benefits from placing works in public domain. I do not deny this. Society would probably benefit from my other possessions as well, but they have no right to them and are not allowed to take them, no matter how long I've owned them.
A caveat: I benefit from the copyright freedom of classic works of literature. I am a Shakespearean actor, in a community theater troupe, and we can barely afford to pay for our space, much less royalties on a 400 year old play. It gives me great pleasure to use these works, and if I had to pay more than a token amount for them, I'd be out of luck.
But if I had to, and could afford it, I would. These plays mean a lot to me. If I couldn't, then it would be my loss, and perhaps also a smaller one of the foundation administering the copyright.
I know that I am very proud of my works (in this case, software), and it would irk me to no end to have to fork that over to the masses and watch as they alter my works as they see fit and spread it around.
Good thing for us Stallman, Torvalds, and co. do not believe their sensitivies need to be so protected.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.