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Against Monopoly
Readers are asked to submit suggestions on this draft for submission to USTR next Tuesday:
I base my comments on copyright, by referring to Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution which states:
“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.”
Copyright has been repeatedly extended with doubtful justification. If the author sells the rights to future incomes, the present value of each year’s future income from copyright declines rapidly, approaching zero. The buyer of those rights gets little inducement to increase his payment for them. Thus, beyond ten years, copyright is not an inducement to create.
Moreover, the existence of copyright makes the creation of newly inspired derivative works unattractive because of the risk of being sued, successfully or not, given the costs of litigation.
Finally, legal suits over copyright are a huge cost to the economy, as is the continual cost of lobbying for more favorable legislation by the large holders of copyrights. This has only gotten worse in recent years, as the potential gains from resort to law increases. This is particularly true in cases where the law is unsettled, as so often happens when courts or legislation make small changes in the law and its interpretation.
The lawsuits are made increasingly expensive by pressure to get courts to change the interpretation of the law …