Re: [dvd-discuss] Specific ironies of the CTEA

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

"D. C. Sessions" wrote:
> 
> As long as you're Disneying, consider The Jungle Book:
> Kipling wrote it in 1894, but lived to 1936.  Therefore
> under CTEA, Disney *still* couldn't make the movie for
> another four years.  As it was, they made it in 1967,
> a mere 31 years after the death of the author (but
> 73 years after it was written.)

I was thinking about this "life plus N" terms and the "I think we need a
new theory" quote of the USSC in Eldred leapt to mind.  The Justices
somehow think that invalidating CTEA (and potentially '76 et. al.) would
lead to an unmanageable and confusing system.  Yet, how could a system
be more unmanageable than the current one?

Every work by a different author has different terms.  
Every work by the author has a different copyright duration. 
In a work with multiple authors, the authors rights in the same work has
(typically) different terms**.  
For a work with multiple contributors (e.g. text by one, illustrations
by another) portions of the same work have different terms.

(please feel free to add to this list)

And the USSC seems to think invalidating CTEA will have a meaningful
impact on the "spaghetti" of the current system.  It may move a few
meatballs around, but it an order of magnitude less messy than the hash
Congress made of it.  The only "progress" this "promotes" is that of the
accountants and lawyers finding some way to keep track of it all.

As to the term of copyright, the more I think on it the more it should
be no longer than patent.  Why should a mask set for a processor be
copyright protected longer than the patents it embodies?  Why should
"authors" be favored over "inventors"?

Arguments?

.002


**this is subject to wondrous abuse, have my child preview my creative
work, accept one of his/her changes (with no prompting, honest?) and
list them as a co-author.  I'm surprised that no mogul offspring has
their name on a work.  Of course they could be listed under pen names...