Re: [dvd-discuss] Eldred v. Ashcroft Accepted for ReviewbySCOTUS

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

Progress has nothing to do with maximizing anything. It has to do with 
increasing rather than stagnating or regressing. It's not having the best 
it's making things better. Finding the optimums for some quantity or 
strategy (e.g., optimal control) is intellectually seductive but a 
pragmatically a pointless exercise.The only things that can be optimized 
are simplistic models (e.g., Posner and Landes) that are based upon 
questionable assumptions as well as not being structurally stable under 
small perturbations or even unique(e..g, whatif the function ISN"T convex) 
as well as ignoring many other aspects.




Scott A Crosby <crosby@qwes.math.cmu.edu>
Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
02/20/02 02:47 PM
Please respond to dvd-discuss

 
        To:     John Zulauf <johnzu@ia.nsc.com>
        cc:     <dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu>
        Subject:        Re: [dvd-discuss] Eldred v. Ashcroft Accepted for ReviewbySCOTUS


On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, John Zulauf wrote:

>
> The copyright clause is about promoting progress, not maximizing
> return.  Having a variable term for works copyrights will only lead to

Isn't 'progress' usually considered fulfilled when you maximize the
economic output from a work. When the most money is made on a work? In
that case, as per Posner and Ladner (I believe), it may be that that is
true with these obscenely restrictive laws.

Or, if you define progress as maximizing the number of works in the public
domain, in, say, 30 years.. Then no.

Scott