Copyright Extension is Theft
Consider the following tales:
- Alice hires Bob to build a house and they agree to a payment of $100,000 for the service. Bob completes his work, receives his payment, and goes on his way. Fifteen years later, however, Bob decides that he deserves more money. He asks for another $100,000 - the law forces Alice to pay up. Bob keeps coming back, every few years, and extorts a new sum.
- Alice wants a house. Bob is a house builder. They hire Charlie, a lawyer, to put together a fair contract so that Bob can build a house for Alice. They eventually settle on the details, and Bob will be paid $100,000 for his services. After the house is finished, just before Alice moves in, Bob decides he deserves more money. He gets together with Charlie and rewrites the contract, extorting an additional $100,000 from Alice. Reluctantly, Alice eventually scrapes together the funds, and pays the new fee. Unfortunately, just before she takes up residence, Bob gets together with Charlie again to rewrite the contract. This time, the contract states that Bob gets the house, and Alice has to pay $10,000 per year for the next 20 years to have any chance of ever taking up residence. Frustrated but without any recourse, Alice waits patiently for the term to expire, during which time, Bob dies. Bob’s daughter DeeDee decides that she likes the house too much, so she gets together with Charlie and revises the contract yet again, tacking on an additional 40-year term to the previous contract.
- Alice hires Bob to build a house. They both hire Charlie to negotiate a fair contract. Being short of cash, Alice agrees to supply the land, while Bob supplies the parts and labor to build the actual house. In exchange, Bob gets to live in the house (or rent it out, or do whatever) for fourteen years, after which Alice takes possession. They both agree to the terms, Bob builds the house and moves in for a few years, then rents the place out for a few more, recovering his expenses. The fourteen year term is about to expire, so he asks Charlie for an extension - and gets another 14 years to live in the house. Alice is a little perturbed, but figures she’ll still get to move in eventually. Of course, Bob asks for extension after extension, and after he dies, his descendants keep getting extensions, and Alice never gets to move in.
Can anyone honestly say that Alice isn’t being screwed in these stories?
Substitute the American Public for Alice, Intellectual Property owners for Bob and his descendants, and Congress for Charlie, and you’ve got a pretty accurate picture of US Copyright since 1910. Every single copyright extension has been a massive theft of value from the American public. It’s time we started getting angry about it.
December 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I agree with you that this should not be the case, but probably for different reasons. However, I know that can come up with much better examples than this! As I read these I am getting out of this is that intellectual property owners have purposefully entered a contractual obligation for very specific products or services with the public, sometimes using the Congress as an intermediary or agent, for a predetermined and fair (at the time) price. That is, in all cases cited, the public has directly and specifically requested intellectual property owners to complete projects with defined and agreed scope, budget, schedule, and delivery date. Even if the project is to create a piece of intellectual property instead of real property, there is a definite transfer of ownership when the product is delivered. The only problem in these cases is that the transfer of ownership was somehow flawed or an imminent domain issue exists, which is another issue altogether.
Perhaps an example wherein Bob buys land and builds several houses with the hope that someone thinks they are valuable and will pay him money for their use (i.e.: nobody asked him to build them, he just used his own resources and creativity). Alice decides that she likes one of the finished houses and enters into a lease-to-own arrangement for the property just like everyone else in this new neighborhood. The lease-to-purchase term is established by the property zoning, so everyone who enters an agreement with Bob will have the same terms for use and transfer of ownership. During the lease period there are numerous use clauses which prevent Alice from using the property for a business, she cannot sublease it, she cannot attempt to sell or alter the property, and other such restrictions—all normal lease provisions set by the owner and applied to all of his properties. (In the intellectual property context, these restrictions could be: no copying, distributing, reverse engineering, etc.; you know the common ones better than I do.)
What the lessees do not know is that Bob has a cousin named Charlie on the Zoning Commission who is willing to work on his behalf. Charlie builds a network of commissioners and moves an agenda through the Commission in order to rezone the area which will extend the mandated lease portion of the agreement, and he does this again and again. Every few years a vote to rezone the area comes before the Commission and Charlie always has enough votes to get the rezoning passed, thereby extending the mandatory lease terms on Bob’s properties a little farther each time. The lessees get a say every few years and could vote to remove Charlie and his compliant friends on the Commission, but these people are lazy and would rather continue to pay more to Bob than to learn who is driving the Zoning Commission.
How about that?