Americo Inc.
Dec 30th, 2007 at 12:46 pm by Susie
Where the corporations make up the rules as they go along:
Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.
[...] Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.
I don’t know how many of you are aware of it, but the Founders actually foresaw this:
In the days of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, patents and copyright were seen as devices to help an individual to profit from his work and invention, and their term was seen in the context of a persons working life. The Copyright Act of 1790 was for 14 years, with option to renew for another 14 years and applied to maps, charts and books. But today corporations do not have a human life span, and see patents and copyrights they have collected as property; corporate assets, and have been lobbying heavily and successfully to extend the length and breath of their copyrights and patents. Trademarks have also been expanded. Congress is giving incentives to produce to dead men, extending the length of copyrights to keep Disney covered, and the Patent Office has relaxed almost all standards necessary to get a patent.
Now, if you dig further, you’ll see that the Founders quite clearly put protections in place against corporations, and that a fraudulent Supreme Court decision is what turned that on its head, giving corporations standing as persons under the Constitution and opening the flood of money into politics.
And this is why I like John Edwards. He understands that the government abuses of recent years all flow from corporate power - and it needs to stop.
Yes, Copyright registration terms are now ridiculously long, life of the author + 75 years or alternatively up to 120 years in some instances. Surely something along the lines of 75 years or the life of the author, whichever is longer, would be sufficient time to recover the costs and reward the author.
But the Patent Office has relaxed almost all standards necessary to get a patent? Equally ridiculous. Granted, there have been some infamous lapses in patent quality in recent years, but in general it is now harder than ever to obtain a patent in the US. Recent Patent Office statistics suggest that more than 55% of new applications are rejected. Harsh new regulations that would have made patents even more difficult and expensive have been stayed. With luck (and some legal common sense) the stay will be made permanent.
What the patent community needs is a greater emphasis on patent quality, and someone with patent experience to head the patent office for a change. Let’s remember that the goal is to encourage innovation, not discourage sharing that knowledge via the patent system.
Patent terms, by the way, generally are no more than 20 years worldwide. The US extends some medical patents as compensation for regulatory delays. Trade secrets (the formula for Coca-cola) can last as long as they can be kept secret.