RE: [dvd-discuss] [Off-topic] Eldred v. Ashcroft.

["Dean Sanchez" <DSanchez(at)fcci-group.com>]

I not sure that I agree with your first assertion.  Could you expand on it?  I think that unpublished works are more akin to trade secrets; you can use it and protect your 'ideas' yourself.  However, once it becomes public, you loss any ability to claim ownership.  If you want to copyright it, then you accept the social contract and the restrictions inherent in that contract.
To what type of collections and archives are you referring? Private collections and archives would not be available to the general public.  And what type of public archive would contain unpublished works?  Is not the act of placing a work on public display a type of publishing? If one is unable to quote from a work, then any benefit to the public would of necessity be indirect through the second person of the reviewer.  The public does not benefit directly as it would from a published work.

I agree with the second paragraph.  The Constitution expressly indicates that copyright must be of a limited time; do anyone  know where and when the idea of a common law copyright come about?

-----Original Message-----
From: Ernest Miller [mailto:ernest.miller@aya.yale.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 11:29 AM
To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] [Off-topic] Eldred v. Ashcroft.


The argument isn't specious that way.  There are many unpublished works 
(in archives and collections, for example) that people have access to, 
but wouldn't be able to quote due to copyright.

I believe the argument is wrong because common law perpetual copyright 
for unpublished works is unconstitutional.  No law can say that some 
expressions are forever outside the public domain.

Dean Sanchez wrote:
> I think one of the most specious arguments he makes is the one that Congress has "dramatically increased the scope of the public domain" by limiting the copyright of non-published works to life+70.  What a croak!  If it wasn't published, who cares if the copyright was unlimited.  The public never got to see or benefit from its existence anyway.  Once it was published, it fell under the copyright guidelines and would eventually became part of the public domain.
>