Every time they would expire the law is changed to make them last longer. Shouldn't we eventually have new stories and ideas entering the public domain?
Yes, I suppose. But I have no idea how you balance the rights of the public to public domain material with the rights of the copyrightholder to benefit from his work product. At what point does Lisa Marie Presley give up her right to her famous dad's work product? And why should she EVER have to give it up? He left it to her, and if you ever make it to Memphis you are aware that "Elvis" is a "going concern" in every respect. I sure don't have the answer.
I think one point is the situation with Lisa Marie, or Michael Jackson's ownership of the Beatles' song catalog, or for that matter Paul McCartney's ownership of Hoagy Carmichael's songs. If you can't have a lengthy copyright, I suppose these huge investments of hundreds of millions of dollars can't be protected sufficiently to make ownership viable. At the same time, people (creators of the copyright material) live longer today than 100 years ago, so it seems reasonable to provide for a longer copyright.
Hell this could go on all night...just too many issues...
I don't like the fact that the idea of fair use seems to be disappearing or the fact that the movie studios are trying to control what technology is allowed in terms of displaying digital content.
My attitude has changed about it recently. I personally own thousands of CDs that I have purchased over the years. I noticed my 22 year old daughter has CDs numbering in the hundreds (I WONDERED where my money went<g>). But my 19-year old son has never, ever purchased a CD. In fact, when he was in high school his daily routine included burning a CD for the day. Now, he does the same thing in his dorm room. Is he going to do this for life? I don't know. It occurs to me that it may become very difficult for artists to make a living.
I sell my work product on the Internet, where people download my software, try it for 30 days, and it "times out" at which time they pay for it or quit using it. I know from the early days that the honor system doesn't work. At one point we actually distributed the software with a nag screen "begging" for registrations, but with no enforcement. It doesn't work. People don't see it as theft. I would not be able to pay my bills if I couldn't enforce my copyright to some extent -- but we know that we lose a lot of money to piracy and license agreement violations.
So, what is fair use? I think that it is, practically, whatever you have the teeth to enforce. |
