Subject: Re: RFC3271 and independance of "cyberspace"

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 12:59:52 -0400

>  2) we take Steamboat Willie away from Disney, making it valueless
>     to everybody

If it has value to Disney, then it has value to the public once it moves 
into the public domain.  For example, several universities had planned 
courses and books around the early Mickey Mouse material; clearly, they 
expected that material to be valuable to them, and to their customers. 
When Congress extended Disney's copyright, those universities filed suit, 
calling it an unconstitutional taking.  The suit is still going on.

>Clearly, allowing people to generate their own value is going to improve
>the global lot moreso than mugging the IPR barons.

Copyright is not a right; it is a bargain.  You create something, society 
gives you a monopoly on it for a fixed length of time, and then society 
gets it when that time is up.  If you get your copyright extended 
indefinitely (or put your materials under copy protection, which amounts 
to the same thing), then you are getting that monopoly for nothing; you 
are reneging on the bargain.  In my opinion, this should mean you lose 
your copyright.

/===========================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer        |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc.   |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own.   |
|===========================================================|
|Sleep is for wimps--healthy, well-adjusted wimps, but wimps|
|nonetheless.                                               |
\===========================================================/

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From: "Eric A. Hall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 12:39:49 -0500

John Stracke wrote:

> If you get your copyright extended indefinitely (or put your materials
> under copy protection, which amounts to the same thing), then you are
> getting that monopoly for nothing; you are reneging on the bargain.

As I already said, "I also feel that Disney et al should have been
investing in new assets rather than working to lockup old assets"

I am/was arguing against the complete emasculation of IPR that Keith
called for in his original message:

 | Let us dedicate ourselves to the worldwide abolishment of the
 | provisions in intellectual property laws

The "provisions" make IPR functional as a currency. We don't solve cash
poverty by letting everybody print money whenever they want. That would
devalue cash to zero, exacerbating the problem rather than solving it, and
would limit any latent value to people with the resources to print
billions of dollars on demand. IPR as currency is no different in this
regard (although it is different in plenty of other ways), in that the
protection mechanisms are what makes it work.

To repeat the point, however, I am no believer in infinite protection.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/