Re: Old games and copyrights
24 Mar 1995 13:28:05 -0500
In article <1995Mar24.140747.30539@oxvaxd>,
Mathematical Institute, (0865) 2-73525 <nelson@vax.oxford.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <3ku21i$7c@umbc9.umbc.edu>, mlevy1@umbc.edu (Michael Levy) writes:
>> Why shouldn't they? What public interest is served by extending copyrights
>> indefinitely? I know the folks over at Project Gutenberg are going nuts over
>> an attempt to extend the law from 75 years to 95 (and I don't have any firm
>> position on this, except that everyone else in the world has settled on 75),
>> but the only justification I see for extending copyright law to last forever
>> is one along Ayn Randian lines. I.e. A viewpoint that denies that there
>> exists a public interest.
>
>One has only to transfer this proposal to books to see how awful it is.
>Should amateur dramatic companies be paying royalties to Shakespeare's
>estate every time they put on Hamlet? (Actually Shakespeare has no
>estate, interestingly - his family line died out.)
>
>At the moment there is a useful process of rejuvenation of interest
>in works when copyright runs out, because it enables publishers to put
>out new, cheaper editions, or Tv and radio to adapt the works. It isn't
>just about money - the difficulty in getting approval to do anything with
>old but still in copyright works is enough to put off many people.
>
>Ask yourself how much Victorian literature would still be in bookshops,
>if it weren't for copyright amnesia.
Err.. just wanted to make it clear that I was AGAINST the proposal to
extend copyrights indefinitely, and that I was using Ayn Randian in a
perjoritive manner. So we are in agreement.
If nothing else, Masterpiece Theater would be put out of business by
eternal copyrights, and we would never get Middlemarch, various Dickens
adaptations, etc..
This is getting pretty far afield, but does anyone know the legality
of the following situation? Suppose Congress extends copyrights by 20
years as they're threatening to do. Then in the next decade, all sorts
of roaring twenties items will still be protected in the U.S., but not
elsewhere. Suppose someone in Britain has _The Great Gatsby_, and
various Robert Benchley columns, etc. stored electronically on a bulletin
board or on WWW. Now, if I dial up this board, or transfer into the web
page from the US, and access this information, is the law being broken?
--
-- Michael Levy
mlevy1@umbc8.umbc.edu