Breakfast with a presidential candidate

Dan Jenkins dan at rastech.com
Wed Jan 7 13:35:39 EST 2004


On Tue, 2004-01-06 at 10:08, Ken D'Ambrosio wrote:

>>I think copyrights are all well and good -- really!  But I 
>>think that, eventually, all copyrighted material should enter the public 
>>domain.
>>    
>>
>
>I agree. And I think that's what was intended by the original laws.
>However, congress is now sliding down the "slippery slope" of
>perpetually extending the expiration period (along with adding more bad
>stuff). It is now unreasonably long - to the point of endangering
>innovation - companies won't need to innovate because they can rely on
>the "old stuff" and the copyright laws to protect them.
>  
>
Spider Robinson wrote a story called "Melancholy Elephants" on the 
subject of perpetual copyrights about 30 years ago.
(Which can be read here: 
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm)

A quote from the story comes to mind:
"That ended the legal principle that one does not copyright /ideas/ but 
/arrangements of words. /The number of word-arrangements is finite, but 
the number of /ideas/ is /much /smaller."

This ever increasing copyright and patent does not bolster innovation in 
the long term (mayhap not in the short term either), it locks away ideas 
- perhaps for our lifetimes. Do we have so many ideas we can squander 
them by locking them in a box?

-- 
Dan Jenkins (dan at rastech.com)
Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-624-7272
*** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century




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