Posted by Bob Quintal on 12/08/06 01:43

"PTravel" <ptravel@travelersvideo.com> wrote in
news:4trsk2F15cuh1U1@mid.individual.net:

>
> "Bob Quintal" <rquintal@sPAmpatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:Xns9892C99ABF179BQuintal@66.150.105.47...
>> "PTravel" <ptravel@travelersvideo.com> wrote in
>> news:4tr5euF15bfbcU1@mid.individual.net:

>>> Here's a paper from the University of Texas. I'm unfamiliar
>>> with its author, but the analysis is both interesting and
>>> accurate:
>>>
>>> www.utexas.edu/law/news/colloquium/papers/Brachapaper.doc
>>>
>> It'll take me a day or two to analyse its accuracy, but at
>> first reading, it points out some things you fail to see.
>
> Read it and then report back.
>
I'm far from finished, but I do think there is food for thought
in
*Excerpt 2
*Constructing the Work
* The 1790 Copyright Act had no definition of the protected
*"work." Neither did it employ the term or the conception of the
*work in its modern sense. The Act referred to maps, charts and
*books
-- page 19

There is an implied definition in the Title of the Law, "An ACT
for the Encouragement of Learning...."

The key word is learning. it implies that the map, or chart or
book must transfer knowledge. It doesn't say for the
Encouragement of Entertainment.


When you add the explicit word from the Constitution Science
it becomes clear what the inten during the 1790s was.
the term useful Arts in the constitution is a little murkier,
becaue the term has fallen out of favor. I said previously that
Engineering is the name now given to what was then useful Arts,
but I'm wiling to comrpromise and use the word Technology.

A little further down, (Bottom of Page 22) Brach writes,

*Practical pressures to expand the scope of copyright protection
*existed in the United-States right from the inception of the
*federal regime. As mentioned, Jedidiah Morse in one of the
*earliest copyright petitions to Congress asked for a specific
*legislative protection of his work that "might be so expressed
*as effectually to secure the Petitioner, against all
*mutilations, alterations and abridgments

This agrees entirely with what I originally stated, to whit that
the originators (of Both the English Statute, and American
Constitution and the Law) intended to limit the scope of
Copyright to works of learning, e.g. the theoretical (Science)
and the application of that Science (useful Arts, today known as
Technology or Engineering), and that inclusion of music,
photographs, public performances, audio recordings, film
video.... are perversion of the original intent of the concept
of Copyright.

Unfortunately, these perversions are current law. As Charles
Dickens wrote: The law is an ass.

--
Bob Quintal

PA is y I've altered my email address.

--
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