On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Chris Alvarez wrote: > Again, many of you are thinking in terms of what is "good for > society".
That's because that's the constitutional reason *for* copyright. Copyright doesn't exist because it's "good for the artist". > I am talking about personal rights. I think the artist has a right to > put the conditions he wants in his music (that are not illegal, of > course) or software or whatever. <extreme example>If I want to charge > $1,000,000 for my new graphic software and put an end-user agreement > that says that you can only use it once and then you have to uninstall > it from your machine, I think that is OK. The courts have made it clear, time and time again, that they don't think copyright is a "personal right" that enables a person to control their work in extreme ways. For example, the doctrine of first sale--I can't sell you my new graphic software and as terms of that tell you you can't sell that copy to anyone else. I also can't sell you a movie and as terms of that tell you you can't create a parody of that movie. I also can't sell you some software and tell you you can't make a backup copy of that software. I also can't sell you some software and restrict (other than copying) how you use it in the privacy of your own home. Those things are beyond the scope of copyright. If you sell me your $1,000,000 graphics package and tell me I can only use it once and then I must delete it, you better have something besides copyright to enforce that, because I'm sure as heck going to make a backup copy of it and use it as much as I like. Copyright was not intended, nor can it (outside of the DMCA) be used to control a copyrighted work. It was intended to secure, for limited times, an exclusive "right to copy" to allow the author to recoup his or her costs, giving people incentive to create more works, thus furthering the progress of science and the useful arts. The best example of this I saw on Slashdot--my favorite author is Isaac Asimov. He wrote hundreds upon hundreds of books, and was able to secure quite a nice living from them. In the absence of copyright, he probably would have had to hold down some other job and would probably have written considerably fewer books, which I would consider to be a great loss. Copyright didn't exist so that Asimov could make a fortune--copyright existed so that Asimov would write more books for me to read. > Again, many of you are thinking in terms of what is "good for > society". Again, that's because that's what the constitutionally defined role of copyright is, and that's how the courts have interpretted copyright again and again. ~ Ross -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
