RE: Greenspan comments on IP

["John T. Mitchell" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan Greenspan was quoted:

>    "Are the protections sufficiently broad to
>    encourage innovation but not so broad as to
>    shut down follow-on innovation?"

Kenny Crews commented:

"The struggle for the balance between private protection and user rights
is central to IP law.  How one strikes that balance makes all the
difference." . . . Greenspan "is an economist with a great
responsibility regarding the national (and world) economy.  One can
argue endlessly the correct IP balance in that arena.  Meanwhile, we in
academia (well, I and many others) are attempting to influence the
national IP agenda, usually with a non- ecomonic argument."

I say: Right on, Kenny!  Greenspan's economist's view betrays a bankrupt
approach to copyright.  It is not a question of balancing innovation
incentives against follow-on innovation opportunities.  While that is
certainly a factor, one could find a beautiful balance of those two
objectives and still disenfranchise billions of people from access to
the creative wealth authors have to offer.  The other key point of
copyright law is to make sure those billions of people can have access
to copyrighted works, be it, on the one hand, by granting the exclusive
right of reproduction and initial distribution to encourage such
dissemination, or, on the other hand, making those exclusive rights
"subject to" (quoting the first words of section 106 of the Copyright
Act) the rights, among others, to make fair use (section 107) and to
redistribute copies and phonorecords even against the objection of the
copyright holder (section 109).

The Greenspan approach might be content with the encouragement of
innovation and follow-on innovation, the benefits of which are available
only to the elite who can afford the terms and conditions dictated by
the innovators.  If the innovators' rights are indeed "subject to" the
right of fair use and redistribution of lawful copies, however, then the
billions who depend upon resale, gift or lending of used copies, or
depend upon the right to read, watch or listen to works without
infringing the copyrights (for it is never infringement to read a book
-even a stolen or pirated copy), then copyrights will continue to serve
billions rather than just a few lucky millions.

John

______________________________
John T. Mitchell
John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://interactionlaw.com
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