Women in Technology

Article:		Eldred Opinion Met with Anger, Determination
Subject:		Reform???
Date:		2003-01-17 12:06:24
From:		jonogden
Most rational people who have created something of real value want to be compensated for it. Many of us out here in the real world want that compensation to be cold hard cash, not the adulation of those too poor or too cheap to pay us for our labor. When there are no copyright laws to protect works from being ripped off, many of those works will not be published, or even created.

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• Reform???
  2003-01-17 14:42:05  Richard Koman | [View]
  
  
  As someone who earns a living by creating things with words, I too want to be compensated in cold hard cash. But what about this issue makes you think anyone is advocating doing away with copyright? The issue is about how long copyright should be extended for, and if Congress should be able to *retroactively* extend copyright for previously published works.
  
  The question asked by the Framers is simply what policy would best motivate people to create and disseminate creative and scientific works? They decided that copyright protection for "limited times" was the best answer. They also explicitly stated that after a limited time, the works be in the public domain, for the use of everyone.
  
  Take this article, for instance. O'Reilly paid me to write it. I might have written it anyway, but I probably wouldn't have stayed up til midnight working on it, so it would publish the morning after the decision. O'Reilly delivers me an audience and a check, and I deliver them content. If I had a means to deliver my own audience, I might still have written the article for that audience, and might have gotten paid for it somehow (subscribers, advertisers, etc) but getting paid through an intermediary is a decidely preferable route at present.
  
  The point is the article is published and paid for. If I haven't handed all my rights over to O'Reilly, I am free to say, sure, republish the article with my credit at no charge -- I've already been paid. I am more inclined to say that if you are running a noncommercial site than it you are running Time magazine.
  
  The point is that this article has a limited financial impact for me. Once that impact is over (after the time at which no one is willing to pay for the content), then neither the creator nor anyone else should want to restrict the dissemination of the content. Under copyright the work is locked up forever, under something like Creative Commons, I can declare what rights I want to keep and when I want to release them.
  
  Also, some creations become so part of the cultural fabric and the creators (or publishers as the case may be) are so well compensated for them, that after a "limited time" they ought to be part of the public domain, available for all to comment on, use, copy, learn from, teach their children with, etc.
  
  In any case, many of those creators are long dead. Is it a public good, or morally obvious, that the children and grandchildren of the creator should rake in huge royalty checks so long after the author's death? At a certain point, isn't our superlong copyright protection law much more about making sure that the publishers and movie studios continue to line their products than it is about motivating creation in the first place? In what way can retroactively extending copyright to works created in 1928 facilitate creativity?
  
  And, finally, how can any of this be construed as saying that there should be no copyright?
  
  PS: I do think that there is a danger that legitimate copyrights could just slip away, if situations like Napster continue. When the cr holders rob the public of fair uses, then it is very possible that users will violate copyrights wholesale, and that the copyright industry will simply adapt to the market (after having tried every possible way to stem the tide.) But the best way to stem the tide may not be to clamp down the iron hand, but to allow fair uses, so that fair restrictions will be respected.