Book People Archive

Re: Redeeming copyright (Was Re: Eldred v. Ashcroft)

There is in the common law, a right to appropriate abandoned property. Could it
not be argued that a book that has been out of print for a certain number of
years has been abandoned, and therefore available to all comers.

Rod Hay

Eric Eldred wrote:

> I don't have a ready answer to your point that a conservancy
> might encourage the noxious idea of copyright as some sort
> of personal property, instead of directly encouraging a free
> public domain on the utilitarian principles of the U.S.
> Constitution.
>
> When I first presented the idea to Richard M. Stallman, he
> quickly pointed out that the ethics of the conservancy would
> be similar to redeeming slaves from slavery.  He asked
> whether we really wanted to drive up the price of slaves in
> such a process, and make slavery more attractive financially
> to the slaveholders.  On the other hand, redeeming slaves
> has been an important moral obligation for people of many
> religions for thousands of years.  Slavery still exists in
> some parts of the world (including the United States).
> Groups that raise money to buy slaves' freedom in Africa
> face the same criticism from honest people who do not
> approve of slavery in any form.  Many who belonged to the
> Society of Friends did not approve of the 1861 war against
> southern slave states, because they did not believe in
> killing people--yet they had for many years raised money to
> buy freedom for the slaves instead.  I haven't examined any
> studies that purport to show the effect on slavery of any
> of these responses.
>
> The situation with patents is even more directly ethically
> questionable.  Some of us at first thought that the
> conservancy might help preserve the role of copyright in a
> world where its utility is disappearing, being replaced by
> encryption.  However, some of us do not agree with patents
> on software or business practices in any form.  Yet members
> of our group from MIT insist that patents be included.
>
> Another factor is that current U.S. law prevents the creator
> of a copyrighted work from obtaining a tax deduction when
> donating it to the public domain, yet heirs or publishers
> can profit.  It seems to some of us that if anyone is to be
> given an incentive, instead of stealing their works, it
> should be the authors.  And if anyone should pay, it should
> be the general tax-paying public.  For that we can be called
> communists, I suppose.
>
> As far as a longer copyright term is concerned, I doubt
> that anything we do would have an effect on that.
> Essentially it is already "forever minus one day," no
> matter what we do.  However, the concept might have some
> expressive power like a form of jiu-jitsu, to make people
> think about so-called 'intellectual property,' and allow
> individuals to make a personal response to the problem.
>
> This issue is not as simple as it sounds.  We need input
> from everybody concerned here.  Thanks for raising this
> issue.  We will expand on the general concept as we meet
> this spring and decide on a charter for the corporation and
> will be back in touch.  In the meantime, we welcome more
> discussion here.
--
Rod Hay
rodhay@[redacted]
The History of Economic Thought Archive
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