Letters

From the June 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

I believe people come into the world wanting to do good, but are in fact "re-educated" every day to maintain a system around them of the "haves" and the "have-nots." Do people need to be "re-educated" in order for transformation to happen? I believe so. Is this taking away their individual freedom? I think not.

Hugh Vasquez
TODOS Institute
Oakland, CA

All Rights Should Be Reserved

Jesse Walker's piece about copyright law ("Copy Catfight," March) seems more fitting to The New Republic than to REASON. Mr. Walker's assertion that copyright laws create government-granted monopolies is puzzling. A government recognition of the right to specific property is merely the legal demonstration of an ownership interest, whether it is the deed to a home, the title to a vehicle, or the recording of a UCC financing statement. The fact that government acts to protect property rights seems desirable in any society that values classical liberal ideals.

His pragmatic arguments that the public good is served by forcing Disney to release Song of the South or that somehow our collective lives will be diminished by the fact that copyrighted antique movies are rotting in some warehouse somewhere ring hollow. His implication that the Gershwin heirs didn't write the music to which they hold copyrights, and therefore should be denied their property rights, amounts to an outright denial of the right to dispose of one's property as one sees fit.

Most importantly, Mr. Walker forgets that the creation of intellectual property renders it, in fact, property. While it is true that "shared experiences" help create culture, they do not create ownership. My generation grew up with fast cars and drag strips. Those shared experiences helped create our particular culture but they did not give us an ownership interest in General Motors. Instead, the ownership of property resides with the person who created or acquired it through moral means. Additionally, the fact that Bob Dylan, George Lucas, and Disney act hypocritically or even stupidly does not diminish their right to property. By the same token, the fact that the Grateful Dead consistently allowed anyone to tape their concerts does not diminish their property rights either. It just made them cool.

Mr. Walker has amply demonstrated that intellectual property rights are messy and inconvenient. But so are property rights for land. Trespass and dumping are problems that could be solved with gunfire. However, civilized people attempt to solve those problems through appropriate law. The right to intellectual property is no different, and those who own the property, no matter how desirable that property is, have the sole right to determine its use and disposal. That is a basic tenet of classical liberal thought.

Mike Snell
Riverside, CA
[e-mail]

I would like to correct a flawed idea about copyright law based on my own personal experience. The owner of a copyright must vigorously defend it if it is to maintain its legal validity. In 1997, I wrote a book about backgammon strategy (Backgammon: Winning With The Doubling Cube, The Gammon Press), whose total potential audience would be limited to several thousand serious backgammon players.

The book resulted from a series of articles I had posted to the Internet newsgroup for backgammon. Several individuals who maintained Web sites devoted to backgammon asked if they could post my articles on their sites. On the advice of my publisher, I refused. Since the wording of many of the articles would end up similar to that of the book, I would weaken my copyright by allowing such articles to remain on the Web sites.

There is competition even in the tiny market for high-level backgammon book publishing. Another publisher contacted me while I was writing my book and offered to publish it without paying me any royalties. Not surprisingly, I stuck with my first publisher and was happy that I could, if necessary, prevent the second publisher from simply taking my original articles off the Web and publishing them for a profit or even duplicating my book after claiming that the copyright was invalid. In the latter case, I probably would have won a court battle.

When Twentieth Century Fox required Alexander Thompson to remove his transcripts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the Web, it was not "clearly being stupid." Instead, it was simply vigorously defending its copyright. If Fox allowed the transcripts to remain after their existence was called to its attention, it would have a much weaker legal position if another party then used those transcripts to film duplicate episodes with unknown, cheap actors, then sold those episodes to a network.

Further, why should there be any limit at all to the length of a copyright? After all, there is no limit to the length of time a particular family can own, and profit from, physical property.

Peter Bell
Redwood City, CA
[e-mail]

Jesse Walker made some good points about the aggressive behavior of the copyright-owning industries, but some statements need correcting, such as the statistic that the term of copyright has been extended 11 times in the past 40 years. The copyright term has only been changed three times in the last 100 years--in 1909, when the initial and renewal terms were extended to 28 years; again in 1976 when the term was extended to the lifetime of the author plus 50 years; and finally in 1998 when it was extended to lifetime of the author plus 70 years.