Hi Ray, I can't cope with all the strands of your recent posting, but in the meantime you and other FWers might be interested in a test case that is being considered by the US Supreme Court. This is from today's FT:
<<<< COPYRIGHT LAW COMES UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT Patti Walmeir The US Supreme Court agreed yesterday to make a rare foray into intellectual property law. It will hear a case which attacks recent trends in US law that have expanded the scope and duration of copyright at the expense of pubic access to copyrighted works. It was brought by Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Univeristy law professor and theorist of the digital society, on behalf of Eric Eldred, who wanted to compile and electronic archive of unusual and out-of-print works online, but was prevented from posting some works by a 1998 law extending the term of copyright protection. Mr Lessig said US copyright law allows creators to monopolise their creations in ways that stifle future innovation. In the case before the court, he said Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority by extending the term of copyright 11 times in the past 40 years. In 1790, copyrights lasted 14 years. Now they last 70 years after the death of the inventor, if known. Mr Lessig said these extensions violate the constitutional's command to Congress that it "promotes 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". Copyrights of such length are no longer "limited", he argued; and Congress could scarecely claim to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" when it extends the copyright of dead authors who cannot obey the incentive to create more. The case is part of a larger movement to defend the "public domain", the realm of information available freely to all. Mr Lessig thinks every time Congress extends copyright it impoverishes the public domain. He argued that, because creativity builds on itself, it has nothing to build on when public access to copyrighted works is unreasonably restricted. The Bush administration will argue that the law does not violate the constitution. <<<< � Financial Times 20 February 2002 __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
