Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 14:57:34 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Jamie Bowden <ragnar@sysabend.org> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Copyright law, again... Message-ID: <20010524145734.J52234@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10105240511440.83023-100000@moo.sysabend.org>; from ragnar@sysabend.org on Thu, May 24, 2001 at 05:14:00AM -0700 References: <20010524111622.A52234@lpt.ens.fr> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10105240511440.83023-100000@moo.sysabend.org>
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Jamie Bowden said on May 24, 2001 at 05:14:00: > > The point of copyright and patent law is not to benefit the general public > directly, but to spur art and science in the interest of long term > progress. The point is that this progress is meant to be to the benefit of the public. Extending the copyright on Mickey Mouse does not benefit the public. Nor does it benefit the creator, who's dead. (The creator's rights over his work are a direct consideration in Europe, I've heard, but in the US the creator is given such rights only as an incentive, not as an end in itself.) The point Litman makes -- quite plainly and unambiguously -- is that every time a technological advance has had unintended (good or bad) advances for copyright holders, the big companies who have large stakes in copyright tend to push legislation which will retain the good (for themselves) consequences and destroy the bad (for themselves) consequences. Such legislation is not discussed adequately: whatever the big companies say, goes. And this has been the entrenched situation since the 1920s. This is not only bad for the public; it is also bad for independent creative people, and for libraries. - Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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