Re: [dvd-discuss] Must Copyright terms be uniform?

["Michael A Rolenz" <Michael.A.Rolenz(at)aero.org>]

Without knowing the acronym the "founding fathers" seems to have 
understood KISS.




"John Zulauf" <johnzu@ia.nsc.com>
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11/08/01 09:13 AM
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"Ballowe, Charles" wrote:
> 
> Agreed -- but if a company (Disney?) still wishes to hold rights to
> something, wouldn't letting them do so and requiring a fee based on
> sales be potentially useful, particularly if that fee went directly
> into a program promoting arts and and science in schools? I'd prefer
> copyright to be short, but if that's not going to happen, the people
> should receive something to help promote the arts.

This is a different way to retain the balance to be sure.  Perhaps
exceptions could be made for "trademark" copyright works.  Effectively
if a character or work is of such critical value to a corporation that
they would be willing to part with a "large" chunk of change to preserve
the copyright for some renewal period -- that might be acceptable, but
the fee would have to be high (10% of revenues or more) and would
require the company forgo other copyright renewals (assuming reversion
to a 14 with one 14 renewal scheme).  (1/10 of total renewals to keep
one work preserved with a schedule that ramps to NO renewals after a
small number of works are preserved past a limited time of 14-28 years.

This would balance the desires of a Disney to protect Mickey Mouse, but
force them to relinquish other copyrights earlier in return. 
Essentially a firm with signature works (like Mickey or Daffy) would
allowed to keep those works but prevented from parlaying the extended
monopoly into a market dominant position (like owning Discover, ABC, and
everything else).

I still prefer the simpler scheme of the founders.

.002

> 
> -Charles Ballowe
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: John Zulauf [mailto:johnzu@ia.nsc.com]
> > Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Must Copyright terms be uniform?
> >
> > Which of course invalidates the whole point of "promoting progress" --
> > if only the unvaluable works enter the public domain, then
> > the public's
> > benefit and reason for providing the monopoly in the first
> > place.  Works
> > must still be contemporary, relevant, and valuable when they enter the
> > public domain, or the constitutional mandate of "promoting
> > progress" is
> > not met, and the term of the copyright is unconstitutional.
> >
> > .002
> >