Court nixes lawsuit fighting copyright law

TalkBack 19 of 38:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

..because the Public Domain is where all ideas end up

"I don't care how long the copyright can extend."

While you don't, there are some who care about the spirit and rationale of United States intellectual property. According to the Constitution, copyrights and patents are designed for limited times. This recognizes that the ultimate place for all ideas is the public domain. IP laws temporarily keep the idea out of the public domain in order to promote innovation.

If you can buy a million year copyright for one million dollars (like you suggest, $1/day), then this is hardly a "limited time".

An increasing cost is appropriate because the longer a copyright is held, the longer the copyrighted work is not in the public domain where others can freely innovate upon it. You really can't argue that the public domain is the place where the most innovation can happen, since there's no restrictions there. Anyone can innovate freely once the work is in the public domain, but while a copyright exists only the copyright holder can innovate. I strongly agree with giving people the incentive to create, but I feel that the monopoly must be ultimately balanced with the innovation (i.e. opportunity cost) that can occur if the work is freely available to others--this is the way to maximize overall innovation, and this is the ultimate goal of US intellectual property laws. I just propose to settle this "balancing" point economically.

Thus, the appropriate remedy is to allow the copyright holder to keep the idea from the public domain a little longer but pay an increasing "rent" to do so-- which the holder will be more than happy to, if that idea is a nice revenue stream. As soon as the idea isn't valuable enough to pay for the monopoly, the holder allows the work to fall into the public domain.

"With this kind of a process, probably 90%+ of all work ever published in any format will quickly be in the public domain, from what I've read."

Well, that all ideas will eventually get there, the debate is when. And it depends on what you call "quickly"-- like the example I showed, its fairly cheap (even an individual) to hold a copyright for 10 years. Even 20 years would only cost a total of $20,971.51-- well within the price range of most corporations and individuals if they're getting good economic returns of the work. And IMHO 20-30 years is long enough for a patent, so its long enough copyright to me.

You might not agree with the fact that copyrights should have a short duration, but since you posed this question on your thread, I posted my opinion

Cheers!

Posted by: Root User   Posted on: 11/24/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
• Finally, an easier way for Small and Mid-Sized Companies to Run Their Business Applications: IBM Smart Business IBM From the PC to the Internet to every piece of hardware and software in ... Download Now
• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now