Re: Students and copyright

["Glenn Folkvord" <glenn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Abhishek Sharma" <abhisheksharma03@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> Copyright is basically designed to
> protect the economic right and moral right of the author.

Is not the copyright laws designed to, deep down, encourage the creation of 
more works? Not to protect the authors. See these links:

http://www.open-spaces.com/article-v2n1-loren.php
The Purpose of Copyright by Lydia Pallas Loren
Lydia Pallas Loren is Associate Professor of Law, Northwestern School of Law
of Lewis & Clark College

Quote:
And far too many people, including lawyers, have major misconceptions 
concerning copyright. These misconceptions are causing a dangerous shift in 
copyright protection, a shift that threatens the advancement of knowledge 
and learning in this country. This shift that we are experiencing in 
copyright law reflects a move away from viewing copyright as a monopoly that 
the public is willing to tolerate in order to encourage innovation and 
creation of new works to viewing copyright as a significant asset to this 
country's economy. The most recent example of this shift is the new Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act, sign by the President on October 28, 1998.
Understanding the root cause and the dangers of this shift requires exposing 
the most fundamental and most common misconception concerning the underlying 
purpose of the monopoly granted by our copyright law. The primary purpose of 
copyright is not, as many people believe, to protect authors against those 
who would steal the fruits of their labor. However, this misconception, 
repeated so often that it has become accepted among the public as true, 
poses serious dangers to the core purpose that copyright law is designed to 
serve.

The core purpose of copyright law is not difficult to find; it is stated 
expressly in the Constitution. Article I, section 8, clause 8 of the United 
States Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power: "to promote 
the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to 
Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and 
Discoveries."
End quote


http://www.ladas.com/NII/CopyrightPurpose.html
Includes this quotation:
[quote]
The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors,
but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end,
copyright assures authors the right in their original expression, but
encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by
a work.[7]
Feist Publication, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 349-50
(1991)
[end quote]


http://snipr.com/1npvf (a pdf)
Includes this section:
[quote]
Is copyright a natural right of authors?
(a) Not in Common Law jurisdictions (includes UK, US and Australia). It is
not clear that copyright ever existed under common law (ie judge made law,
arising from use and custom as opposed to statute law, which is created by
parliament). In response to arguments that common law copyright existed
alongside statutory copyright, successive Acts of parliament have repeatedly
extinguished any common law copyright that might have existed. As early as
1774 the court in Donaldson v Beckett in England held that the first
copyright Act (the Statute of Anne (8 Anne c 19)) extinguished any common
law copyright that existed as at that date. (b) Where there may have been
some debate in the UK (and therefore Australia), in the US, the issue
appeared to have been settled by the Supreme Court in Wheaton v Peters (33
US 591 (1834)):

That congress, in passing the [copyright] act of 1790, did not legislate in
reference to existing rights, appears clear, from the provision that the
author, shall have the sole right and liberty of printing. Now if this
exclusive right existed at common law, and congress were about to adopt
legislative provisions for its protection, would they have used this
language? Could they have deemed it necessary to vest a right already
vested. Such a presumption is refuted by the words above quoted, and their
force is not lessened by any other part of the act.

Congress, then, by this act [the Copyright Act - 17 USC], instead of
sanctioning an existing right, as contended for, created it.
[end quote]

http://www.andrewwatters.com/copyright/Digital_Copyright_Infringement.html
After discussion of some philosophical basis, and the Feist and Wheaton
decisions noted above, the paper continues:
[quote]
As Supreme Court decisions on copyright reveal, the Constitution does not
treat copyright as a natural right. Copyright is rather a privilege given to
an author that, in some measure, limits the reader's natural right of
freedom of speech that would otherwise allow him to simply repeat what the
author has written. See Wheaton v. Peters at 598. Absent a greater authority
than the Constitution, such as divine will-- which has never revealed its
views on copyright-- copyright is evidently a social construct rather than a
natural right.
[end quote]

glenn