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Eldred Transcript, Bookmobile Experience
Patrick writes "The transcript of the oral arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft is now online." Such exciting lines as: "CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST: Well, but you want more than that. You want the right to copy verbatim other people's books, don't you?". See previous stories about the oral arguments and Lessig's thoughts on them. chromatic writes "The O'Reilly Network has just published Richard Koman's Lessons from the Internet Bookmobile about his travels with Brewster Kahle to Eldred v. Ashcroft. I particularly like how he describes the universal positive reception."
Well, I arrived at 5:15am in line, waited till 9:30 when the first 50 people where let in to see the arguments. I was 54...so I didn't quite make it.
The guards told us to wait...in case there were openings, so the other 25 people waited in line. I had made friends with a few law students over the previous 4 hours...who were all in the same boat with me. About 9:40am, we were looking down the steps to the Supreme Court, and up hurriedly walks this stalky gentleman, with snuggly fitting pin striped suit, grey hair...just a little too long, slicked back. As he approached the front of the line...he sideglances the group of law students that I'm standing in line with but quickly looks away. He walks right up in front of us to the two guards and announces, with authority "I'm Jack Valenti (pause). I'm on Scalias list."
Wow...did we all really here that right? Yes we did. We laughed our tired laughs, joking that we thought Scalia was "on our side"...and silently wishing that we had snuck in behind this Man, famous in our small circle for his accurate prophetic visions.
*** MAKE A STAND. NOW!
Good point. Things like this seem to show that copyrights should be granted for a fixed period of years, and not depend on that author's lifespan.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Life + 70 is bullshit. For one thing, the vast vast majority of the profits from a work are reaped in the first few years it is on the market. Very very very few pieces of copyrighted material (be they music, books, movies, etc) will be making significant profit in 10 years.
Another problem is the undetermined time of when a copyright expires. "Life" could mean 1 year, 10 years, 50 years, or 100 years, depending on how old the creator is when (s)he copyrighted his/her work, and on how healthy (s)he is. Copyrights should be a fixed time period. If they expire before the author dies or after (s)he dies, too bad.
These increases in copyright length have not increased productivity and creativity. No artist decides whether or not to create something depending on if (s)he will still own the copyright in 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 years from now. 10 years would be plenty of time for creators to make significant profit on their creations... Almost all software is a complete non-factor 5 years after creation (how many still buy Windows 95? or Windows 98?...what about Descent 2 ('98)?). Almost all movies are a complete non-factor in terms of profit 20 years after their creation...Jaws, one of the best thrillers of all time, isn't a significant profit factor anymore...it wasn't a factor in 1990 either. Most music is a complete non-factor (again, in terms of profit) 10 years after its creation. How many people still buy stuff by Morris Day And The Time? What about Paula Abdul?
10 years is plenty of time for any work to make a profit; if something's going to make a profit, 99.9% of that profit is going to be made in the first 10 years. The only people who have something to worry about are people like Disney who have an interest in maintaining ownership over some stupid fucking cartoon character. For the few lazy companies or authors that are still resting on the fruits of one creation 10 years ago, I say to damn bad.
My scheme provides plenty of incentive to both young authors and old one's alike. Old author's will still get 10 years of protection; if they die, then the remainder of that term is set out to their family in their will.
If anything, my scheme provides MORE incentive for authors to create. An author can't just rest on his or her previous accomplishments, as they will only make him or her money for 10 years. Thus, my system provides incentive for authors to create new works more continuously.
The other benefit of my system is that works transfer to the public domain relatively quickly. This allows new authors to make use of the works of old authors, adding additional innovations to them, without having to worry about copyright problems. This allows for more circular innovation; that is, innovation which builds atop of previous innovation.
As one additional note, hopefully, the Supreme Court will rule retroactive copyright extensions unconstitutional, thus preventing this perpetual copyright extension. Hopefully, they will also rule excessively long (i.e., life + yy) copyright terms unconstitutional, as they are effectively indefinate and not limited.
Aside from duration, the other thing which needs changing in our copyright system is the scope of copyrights. The scope of copyrights has been blown way out of due proportion (refer to discussion by Lessig in The Future of Ideas). Now-a-days, if you make a movie and have a Nike symbol in the background in a scene, you have to clear that with Nike. What bullshit. There are other areas where the scope of copyrights is blatantly unjustified, and should be radically scaled back.
Of course, the real problem is the bribery and soft-money under-handed deals going on between the RIAA/MPAA and the Congress/Senate. The RIAA and MPAA basically pay to have the laws they want.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Congress needs the ability to change those limits based on changing economic climates in order to protect the balance between public interest and the promotion of science and the arts. Unfortunately, as Lessig argues, this power has been abused to create an effective perpetual copyright term under the guise of a limit.
Lessig argues that any extensions should apply only to new works because any discretion congress has in setting limits applies to the promotion of new works. Extending copyrights on existing works does no such thing. The government attempted to counter with the very weak argument that people who create works expect to be included in any such extensions. I would bet lots of money that not one single work has been created under that line of thought. NO ONE holds back on the creation of a work out of fear they will not be included in the next extension of copyrights. And NO ONE creates works today because they know they will be included in the next extension.