At 11:03 AM -0800 12/9/06, Mark D Lew wrote:
On Dec 7, 2006, at 8:59 AM, John Howell wrote:
I don't believe anyone has stated this explicitly, so I'll go out
on a limb. Copyright in the U.S. is treated as a property right,
and a copyrighted work is treated as property. In fact, property
and property rights were extremely important to the founding
fathers.
I think you're going out on the wrong limb here. This is a very
tangled argument for many reasons, not the least of which is that
the "founding fathers" were far from unified,
Agreed that they were far from unified (and what else could we
expect!), but the laws they passed were not ambiguous, and it is
those laws, in my view, that treat copyrights and patents as
property, but as property with a reasonable time limit to its
exclusivity. They also probably disagreed on whether we would have a
King or a President, but they made a decision, and on whether to have
a state religion, multiple state religions, or no state religions,
and again they made the decision that is recorded in our
Constitution. Men of good will can disagree, as long as they have
the intelligence to compromise. That, of course, is what is missing
in the Middle East these days. (Political statement? I don't think
so; just a statement of fact. When no one will give an inch,
compromise and negotiation are impossible, and therefore democracy is
impossible.)
Under American law, copyrights and patents are defined as exclusive
rights, not intellectual properties.
Which may be why, if you check, you'll see that while I write of
copyrights, I do not use the term "intellectual property." At least
not in this particular thread. And the reason I avoid it is to avoid
confusing U.S. law with European law and the "moral rights" or
whatever they are called that underlie it.
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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