Re: [dvd-discuss]YAATEA-Yet Another Anti-Term ExtensionArgument

["John Zulauf" <johnzu(at)ia.nsc.com>]

microlenz@earthlink.net wrote:

> Of course, we all know why they want to keep their 1%. In true
> Hollywierd Accounting "Winners pay for losers". THe longer terms
> merely mean that they can create more losers. That hardly
> promotes progress either but then if Hollywierd can't have it
> summarized on a sheet of paper, they don't understand it.

Longer terms are not about winners v. losers -- it's about assuring that
their is no public domain in the modern media types to undercut the
pricing and profitability of current works.  I've said it before

"if all music older than 28 years is in the public domain -- the music
industry cannot charge $18 for current works"  Public domain CD
transcriptions of pre-74 music (available on the internet no less)
create a replacement good for the majority of the listening public's
"music-ear-hours".  A viable replacement good is something the RIAA
members business model cannot tolerate

The other two reasons are (1) that public domain modern media works
constitute and "commercially significant non-infringing use" for Napster
et. al. and (2) a short duration brings the "horribles" of TPM'd
quasi-publication (a thing cannot be restricted and public
simultaneously) in from the intangible distant future of "science
fiction" into the tangible world of "current affairs".  

If I buy a DVD of a movie produced in 1975.  Under a 28 year term, next
year I will "have standing" to challenge the anticircumvention
provisions.  While I don't have a 1A right to infringe, I certainly have
a 1A right to public domain works.

It's not about the money older copyrights yield, it's about the monopoly
(cartel) control and ensuring that the tools of fair use can be
restricted as tools of infringement.

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