Re: [dvd-discuss] Posner's views on copyright

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

Good point. That's something that the founding fathers seemed to 
understand. They were willing to let a little go by because they didn't 
have the option of getting it all.

As an economist, Posner may have sufficient background to understand the 
notion that the public domain is also the process whereby copyright 
regularly flushes the material out of the system to make way for new 
material. 

I doubt that Posner understands the notion of entropy in systems. A long 
copyright term means that the probability that infomration regarding 
copyright gets lost  as time goes on. A copyright term longer than the 
existance of individuals or most corporations assures that.




Mikael Pawlo <mikael@pawlo.com>
Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
01/14/02 02:14 PM
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        Subject:        Re: [dvd-discuss] Posner's views on copyright


At 15.36 -0500 02-01-14, Wendy Seltzer wrote:
>Veering far off-topic here, there was a very funny review of Posner's
>"Public Intellectuals" in Sunday's New York Times Book Review.
><http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/books/review/13BROOKST.html>
>At least copyright terms have a plausible connection to economic theory,
>though I have a nagging suspicion that Posner will undervalue the public
>domain and view most of fair use as "inefficient."   Can we even quantify
>the benefit the public gets from a rich public domain and generous rights
>to make transformative use of copyrighted works?

Actually, even if there was no fair use provisions in copyrigt law, the
transaction costs for monitoring everything within the fair use scope
widely exceeds the benefits of such policy. Hence, thinking like an
economist, copyright without fair use is ineffecient.

Regards

Mikael Pawlo

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