dhbailey wrote:
he doesn't define what he thinks a "limited time (in the Thomas Jefferson sense)" really is, so we're each left to picture our own interpretation of that remark.
Andrew Stiller replied:
I think it may be said without fear of contradiction that "limited time" was not intended to encompass a period extending 70 or even fifty years beyond the creator's death. Personally, I doubt the framers of the constitution thought of anything more than 15 or 20 years--but hey...
I didn't quote the part of the Jonathan Lethem article that referred to Jefferson's understanding of copyright, but here it is for the record:
"Thomas Jefferson, for one, considered copyright a necessary evil: he favored providing just enough incentive to create, nothing more, and thereafter allowing ideas to flow freely, as nature intended. His conception of copyright was enshrined in the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority 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." This was a balancing act between creators and society as a whole; second comers might do a much better job than the originator with the original idea.
But Jefferson's vision has not fared well, has in fact been steadily eroded by those who view the culture as a market in which everything of value should be owned by someone or other. The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating-its expansion in both scope and duration. With no registration requirement, every creative act in a tangible medium is now subject to copyright protection: your email to your child or your child's finger painting, both are automatically protected. The first Congress to grant copyright gave authors an initial term of fourteen years, which could be renewed for another fourteen if the author still lived. The current term is the life of the author plus seventy years. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that each time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain, the mouse's copyright term is extended."
http://www.harpers.org/TheEcstasyOfInfluence.html -Randolph Peters _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
