RE: [dvd-discuss] [OT] Model for copyright?

[Richard Hartman <hartman(at)onetouch.com>]

I like it.  Is there anybody in congress we could
get interested in proposing an idea like this?  If
there is one we could write to, a bunch of letters
might be useful ...


-- 
-Richard M. Hartman
hartman@onetouch.com

186,000 mi/sec: not just a good idea, it's the LAW!



> -----Original Message-----
> From: D. C. Sessions [mailto:dvd@lumbercartel.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 9:25 AM
> To: DVD-Discuss
> Subject: [dvd-discuss] [OT] Model for copyright?
> 
> 
> I can't claim that this is original, but it's certainly
> interesting:
> 
> Proposed that the objective of incenting artists while
> enriching the public domain with still-valuable works is
> reasonably accomplished by determining when the artist has
> received *most* [1] of the commercial value of the work.
> Mathematically, this can be approximated as the time when
> the sales of the work decline to a small (let's say 10%)
> portion of the extant copies.  In other words, when a work
> which has sold a total of 1 million copies declines to
> 100,000 a year it's time for it to enter the public domain.
> 
> Keeping detailed records for each work is too expensive, too
> prone to error, and too prone to abuse.  A reasonable compromise
> would be to determine classes of works (movies, novels, textbooks,
> newspapers, scientific journals, recorded music, etc.) and set
> the expiration date for each.  Despite vulnerability to lobbying
> and manipulation, that sounds like a job for the Librarian of
> Congress.  Some classes of works (e.g. most periodicals) would
> expire in a year since they're almost /never/ reprinted.  Novels
> would probably last a decade or thereabouts, recorded music
> somewhere in between, etc.
> 
> Part of what I like about the proposal is that it immediately
> drives the discussion into the penny-pinching territory: the
> Cartel is driven to explain why even after they've squeezed
> four nines of the value out of a work they should still be able
> to keep it out of the public domain.
> 
> -- 
> | It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance  |
> |  It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance  |
> |   It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give     |
> |    and the soul afraid of dyin' that never learns to live     |
> +------------- D. C. Sessions <dcs@lumbercartel.com> -----------+
>