[Random-bits] Steve Forbes on copyright extention

[James Love]

http://biz.yahoo.com/fo/020412/fact_and_comment_2.html

Friday April 12, 7:39 pm Eastern Time
Forbes.com
Fact and Comment
By Steve Forbes

TERM LIMITS FOR COPYRIGHTS
The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the constitutionality of a 1998
law that extended the life of existing copyrights an additional 20
years. The justices should say no dice to the extension. This was the
eleventh time in recent decades that Washington had stretched the life
of copyrights.

Publishers and others have brought a lawsuit claiming this latest
lengthening makes a mockery of the Constitution's grant of authority for
copyrights and patents to be for "limited Times." They're right.
Pre-1998 law gave artists and corporations substantial protection: life
plus 50 years for authors, musicians and other creators; 75 years for
companies.

It is fitting and proper that your creations be protected by law for
your lifetime and a reasonable period afterward. But there is no
justification for what Congress has been doing: transforming a limited
monopoly into an unlimited one. Creativity and culture are enhanced by
having works ultimately become public domain, particularly with the
advent of the Internet. Nowadays you don't even need a publisher to
disseminate your work to the world. Walt Disney has made extraordinary
use of stories written by long-dead authors, e.g., The Hunchback of
Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo, The Little Mermaid byHans Christian Andersen,
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and Cinderella by Charles Perrault.

The high court would be right to rule that enough is enough and should
knock down that 1998 law.