🚀 go-pugleaf

In gnu.misc.discuss, Roger Schlafly <roger_95073@my-dejanews.com> writes:
> Austin Ziegler wrote:

>> The Founders believed that copyright was necessary. I don't happen to
>> believe that they thought that *corporate* copyright being as strong as
>> it is (or even personal copyright, but *especially* corporate
>> copyright) today, but they found it necessary.

> This is an interesting distinction. The US Constitution says:

>    The Congress shall have Power To ...
>       (8) To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
>    securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
>    Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

> So the exclusivity really belongs to the author. If you said that
> corporate-owned copyrights are weaker somehow -- how would that work?
> Maybe the term would be shortened to 20 years once the copyright is
> assigned?

There's a whole bunch of legal precedents for considering a corporation to
be a person for these sorts of purposes, isn't there?  It's an interesting
bit of speculation, but I think changing that would be a rather radical
change in the interpretation of the law.

Some of the effects of such a change in interpretation may be good ones,
mind, but I don't expect to see something that radical happen.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>