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Posted by PTravel on 12/08/06 02:51
"Bob Quintal" <rquintal@sPAmpatico.ca> wrote in message
news:Xns9892DC7FB5DFABQuintal@66.150.105.47...
> "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.
Again, you're simply making up definitions. It says, "book." It doesn't
say "engineering drawing," it doesn't say, "scholarly work." Read on --
about 15 or 16 pages in you'll find this: "The purchaser of a book has a
right to all the benefit resulting from the information or amusement he can
derive from it; and if in consequence thereof, he can write a book on the
same subject, he has a right to do so. But this is a very different use of
the property, from the taking and publishing the very language and sentiment
of the author, which constitute the identity of his work.
More to the point, in 60 or so pages of discussion about the scope and
nature of copyright, you'd think, if you were right about your arbitrary
limitation on subject matter, it would say it somewhere. Of course it
doesn't.
You also might want to look at the section on copyright as a property right.
>
>
> 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.
Sorry, you're simply focused on words and interpretting them to mean what
you want to mean. Copyright is not limited as you claim, and has never been
limited as you claim.
>
> 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
Nothing about limitations of scope here.
>
> 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.
It doesn't, in any way, agree with what you stated. Moreover, it is not the
law.
I spent about 5 minutes on Google to find this article. I have no intention
of doing exhaustive research to prove a negative, particularly one as absurd
as your central premise. If you are right, find something, somewhere . . .
anywhere . . .that says, expressly and clearly, that the scope of copyright
was limited as you claim.
>
> Unfortunately, these perversions are current law. As Charles
> Dickens wrote: The law is an ass.
I am constantly confounded by lay people who, with absolutely no education
or study of law, think they understand it better than those who have legal
educations and practice it every day. If the law is an ass, what is the
person who thinks they can make it up as they go along?
>
> --
> Bob Quintal
>
> PA is y I've altered my email address.
>
> --
> Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
>
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