May 21, 2007
Copyright Without End, Amen
"What if, after you had paid the taxes on earnings with which you built a house, sales taxes on the materials, real-estate taxes during your life, and inheritance taxes at your death, the government would eventually commandeer it entirely?" asks Mark Helprin, an author who is a fellow at the Claremont Institute, in The New York Times. Mr. Helprin then goes on to make an argument that might cause some scholars' jaws to drop: If property ownership is permanent (at least in theory), then copyright should be, too.
What the author seeks, apparently, is the eradication of the public domain, which he considers financially unfair to copyright holders:
Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren. To the claim that this provision strikes malefactors of great wealth, one might ask, first, where the heirs of Sylvia Plath berth their 200-foot yachts.
Of course, a literature professor might also ask whether it's more important for Sylvia Plath's heirs to own yachts or for scholars and students to have unrestricted access to the poet's work. In fact, American writers, academics, and lawmakers have been debating that point for much of the past century.
In 1906 when Congress considered a bill to keep items under copyright for 50 years after their creators had died, Mark Twain made an argument that Mr. Helprin echoes now: The 50-year term "would satisfy any reasonable author because it would take care of his children," Twain said, tongue firmly in cheek. "Let the grandchildren take care of themselves." --Brock Read
Update: It's no surprise that Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University law professor and copyright guru, finds Mr. Helprin's argument less than convincing. Mr. Lessig has set up a wiki-style rebuttal to the New York Times opinion piece, and people have already flocked to the site to poke holes in Mr. Helprin's thesis. One particularly cogent point: "Physical property, such as real estate, is a finite resource that operates as a zero sum game. And the laws regarding physical property treat it as such. Intellectual works are abstract concepts and do not naturally operate as zero sum games."
Posted on Monday May 21, 2007 | Permalink |Comments
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The problem with this logic is that the next step is to have patents never move into the public domain and then drugs could never become generic. We need to find a balance between individual rights and the public good and 70 years is not an unreasonable time for a dead person to hang onto rights.
— Betsy Susan Morgan May 22, 11:11 AM #
Lessig makes the point nicely. Copyright, like patents, is not a natural, intrinsic right. The US Consitution and other national consitutions explicitly give legislatures the authority to grant copyrights and patents only for a limited time. They are artifical limited monopolies devised by society to provide an incentive for creation of certain non-tangible public goods.
— PJ May 22, 01:05 PM #
How does maintaining copyright deny scholars and students “unrestricted access” to a writer’s work?If it was published, it’s out there somewhere, and if it wasn’t, it’s private property. Helprin’s argument doesn’t “eradicate” public domain: non-renewed works would fall into it,(i.e., “It’s a Wonderful Life”) as would works of creators with no designated heirs.Generic drugs have an obvious public benefit; not so Coca-cola’s “secret formula” which is still locked up in a vault somewhere.(OK, so a good chemist could probably break it down, but if it was copied exactly it’d be patent infringement, just as Kodak violated Polaroid’s instant developing process and everybody had to turn in their Kodak instant cameras. Don’t we all have a right to Polaroid’s patents?For that matter,shouldn’t we all get Photoshop for free? The point is, it’s a lot more complex issue. And who says copyright isn’t a “natural” right? What’s a natural right, anyway? The documents that “grant’ copyright could just as easily declare it a natural right. Constitutions and legislatures derive their power from rthe people and can always be revised.
— R. Martin May 23, 08:59 AM #