Re: RE: [dvd-discuss] [openlaw] Government takes more extremelineins econd"Eldred" case

[<jerwin(at)gmu.edu>]

Hmm. I thought the whole point of paragmatism was to avoid
messy legal distinctions (as they are economically 
inefficient.) The economic costs of copyright lookups was 
compared to that of patents-- if patents lasted much longer than 17
years, the economy would crumble under the weight of 
patent litigation, as most inventions would infringe on many
more patents, and tracing costs would be prohibitive.

Trademarks, however, do no pose a tracing problem, as an 
active trademark must be connected with a specific product 
being sold in the market. (The article apparently predates the
domain name problem and "IP synergy")

As the term of copyright grows, the tracing costs also grows--and
therefore, the term must be limited (and not just to "forever, less a
day").

It's a interesting article, and worth reading-- as the government has
surely missed some subtleties.

Pragmatism-- n. the attempt to intellectually justify one's apathy.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ballowe, Charles" <CBallowe@usg.com>
Date: Friday, January 11, 2002 1:05 pm
Subject: RE: [dvd-discuss] [openlaw] Government takes more extreme
lineins econd"Eldred" case

> What about works done as a work-for-hire, or with multiple authors?
> What about those authored by a corporation? Do they only enter the 
> public domain if the company goes under?
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael A Rolenz [mailto:Michael.A.Rolenz@aero.org]
> > Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 11:28 AM
> > To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> > Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] [openlaw] Government takes more extreme
> > lineinsecond"Eldred" case
> > 
> > 
> > Landes and Posner stated that
> > "A point stressed in the
> > legistive history of the 1976 act is that, by making the death of 
> the> author the determining date for copyright protection, "all of the
> > authors works, including successive revisions of them would fall 
> into> the public domain at the same time, thus avoiding the present 
> problems> of determining a multiple of publication dates and 
> > distinguishing "old"
> > from "new" matter in later editions."
> > 
> > Now that's quite a straw man argument. All those bad old problems 
> > associated with putting a copyright date on works get solved 
> > by replacing 
> > that with the author's death which is something that 
> > everybody knows and 
> > can easily find out!Too bad they never heard of diff either!
> > 
> > 
> > 
>