Re: fwd: new bill reduces our rights

[drew@umbc3.umbc.edu (Drew Eisenhauer)]

[ From the Love-Hounds Lost and Found... -- |>oug ]

Philip Verdieck <pv04+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes

>Subject: [rms@ai.mit.edu: new bill reduces our rights]

>Senator Orrin Hatch is pushing a law against lending and rental of
>software and also of musical recordings.  This would take away (in one
>area) a public freedom that has existed since the beginning of
>copyright law: the freedom to borrow and lend.

>It seems that there is a continuing effort to restrict or eliminate
>traditional rights of "fair use" of copyrighted works.  

>The reason given by the publishers is that they make less money than
>they would if people did not have these rights.  In other words, they
>think the law should be designed to maximize their profits, and the
>interests of the users are secondary.

It is very likely that the publishers will make more money if they
have a tighter control over the lending of copyrighted materials.  The
small percentage of unscrupulous individuals who do copy rented
software, video tapes, albums or whatever would probablly purchase a
small amount of materials which they are not now doing.  The record
companies were actually trying to get around this a few years ago by
claiming that the sale of blank tapes was hurting the artists, not
them, but then for some strange reason they balked when it was
suggested that the one dollar per-tape tax (they were advocating)
should go to the muscians guild and not to the record companies! (I
think that this was never passed) This movement was taken much more
seriously in europe- do you remember import albums with the white
skull and cross-bones on them where the skull was a cassette?

>They have their priorities backwards.  The purpose of copyright
>(stated in the constitution and by the Supreme Court) was to benefit
>the public in general--helping publishers is just a means to an end.
>We must not let the means wag the end.

I'm not sure I follow you here.  Where exactly does it state in the
Constitution or in what Supreme Court case that the purpose of
copyright laws is to "benefit the public in general" and that helping
publishers is just a means to an end.  One major source of laws is
precedent, which in the case of a colonial situation often means that
there simply are no laws untill they are found to be appropriate.
This is one reason why slavery was legal here but not in England, why
the west was wild and so forth- laissez-faire economics and all
that...  Consequently there were no copyright laws in America for an
awfully long time, and no copyright agreements with foreign countries.
American printers, in the case of books, would simply reproduce
European authors work without their permission and print as many as
the market would bear.  One disadvantage to this system was that there
was no incentive for original American works since the writers knew
ahead of time that they wouldn't be able to make any money on sales of
their works.  The printers figured out that while copyright laws would
cause them to pay for European works it would also guarentee them
exclusive rights to individual authors or works, as well as allow them
to publish vast numbers of new American books.  Thus it was the pleas
of the writers and the publishers who lobbied for copyright law in
America.  Neither group, but especially the publishers, gave a damn
about the American public so long as they bought books.  This is
capitalism!  Beware pretences to altruism!  Successive revisions of
copyright laws have been the product of similar circumstances.  For
example, the law that declares a writer's work public domain fifty
years after his death donates work to the public heritage which is a
wonderful idea, but one must remember it makes the rights real cheap
for Penguin paperbacks...

But certainly "fair use" must be defended at all costs, because of its
implications for our libraries and also for scholars and critics who
interpret and thus preserve these works for posterity (we are also
suspect but maybe the lower salaries says it all- seriously).

>Regaining these rights would be much harder than preserving them.  If
>we can muster enough opposition now, we can avoid a much harder fight
>in the future.

No shit here!

>Please help wake people up.  Write Senators Hatch and Kennedy...

I am. Y'all musicites do it too.