🚀 go-pugleaf

On 14 Aug 2000, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 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.

Granted -- but I presented the idea because I believe that it is
radical and IMO more effectively fills the purpose of copyright; it
gives corporate copyright owners protection, but limits it because
corporations *exist at the will of the people and subject to the laws
of the people.* (Much like governments, but on a much more transient
basis, IMO.) I also think that if the RIAA and the MPAA manage to win
their respectively dangerous court cases (pitting one form of copyright
against another form of copyright), voters will be much more interested
in this form of radical change to copyright law.

My original message was:
 Sub: What should copyright be? (was Re: Let's boycott the record
      industry)
 MID: <Pine.GSU.4.05.10008100854390.27207-100000@psyche.the-wire.com>

The substance of my proposal -- weak on the specifics, since it's
designed to inspire discussion, rather than be a definitive
specification -- follows.

    We do need to provide some copyright protection for non-published
    works. For example, I've written several poems that I've not
    published (and I've written a number of poems that I have published
    on the web, but have since taken off). Just because I've chosen to
    not publish these poems does not mean that they are free and fair
    targets.

    I'd also suggest that a stronger distinction between corporate
    works and non-corporate works may be necessary. I do not believe
    that a corporation (consortium, what-have-you) should have as long
    a copyright limitation as it does, while I believe that a personal
    copyright is only somewhat longer than need be. (I do think that
    extending copyright to be some time after one's death is
    acceptable, provided that the heirs are persons and not corporate
    entities.) I don't think 'personal' copyright should last longer
    than 100 years in any case, and 'corporate'[1] copyright should
    probably not last longer than 25 years -- and that certain forms of
    copyrightable expression should last less (e.g., software).

    I think that software and other similar things should have a ten to
    twenty year maximum. I think that the duration of said copyright
    depends again on whether it is 'personal' and 'corporate'. In this
    case, I would suggest that the durations be reversed; personal
    copyright for software would be shorter (five years?), but
    providing the source code would increase the duration of copyright
    protection to ten or fifteen years. Similarly, I think that
    corporate[2] works should have a ten year protection, rising to
    twenty years if the source code is made available. To prevent
    abuses of the source-code-available provision, I'd push for a 40%
    time limit: the source code has to be made available within the
    first 40% of the original copyright protection to obtain that
    limit.

    I also think that there should be statutory compulsory licence fees
    for works which are not currently published but previously have
    been -- they don't lose their copyright, but they can be revived by
    paying the statutory licence fee. The trick for this is that the
    Internet now makes it possible to continuously publish something.

    [1] This does run into problems when you get into collaborative
        works, which I would not qualify as corporate works -- the
        copyright is jointly owned by two or more people, and not by a
        corporate entity. It would be easy to split the middle on that
        one and say 50 years, but I'm not sure that's right.

    [2] And I'd suggest that, for software, collaborative works and
        corporate works be seen as the same.

-f
-- 
austin ziegler   * fant0me(at)the(dash)wire(d0t)c0m * Ni bhionn an rath ach
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AIM Fant0me526   *-s/0/o/g--------&&--------s/o/0/g-*  without Discipline)
Toronto.ON.ca    *     I speak for myself alone     *-----------------------
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