Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

Brian Clark said:
>>You can fight the DMCA, the CTEA, and software
>>patents, but as long as poeple view IP as a
>>natural right, it will be an uphill battle.
>>And any "win" could easily be "lost" again
>>by future legislation.
>
> I really don't follow that at all, but maybe that's because we're defining
> our terms. A natural right to what? I would say copyrights are a natural
> right: a natural right to first use and a collection of moral rights to
> control how that work is used during that initial time.

so, I'll define my term and explain how
it relates to DMCA and CTEA.

Those who view copyright as a natural right
are of the opinion that an author should
have complete and total rights to their
work for all time.

"I wrote it, therefore it's MINE, all mine,
and you can't have any unless you pay me."
That is the attitude of copyright as a natural right.

how does this relate to CTEA and DMCA?

CTEA pushes terms out to a hundred years.
If you view copyright as a natural right,
the Constitution is flawed, and the CTEA
fixes Section 8 as it pushes terms closer
and closer to "forever minus one day".
(a la Jack Valenti)

DMCA makes anti-circumvention of any
copy-prevention mechanism a criminal act.
If you view copyright as a natural right,
the DMCA is good because it allows
a technical way to prevent all that
"piracy" that occurs under the
Supreme Court's definition of "Fair Use".
Fair Use can be replaced by "metering"
where you pay for every copy and every
derivation of a work. (a la Bruce Lehman)

If you view copyright as a legally created structure
to provide incentives to Authors and Inventors
only to the limit that it supports the Public Good,
then copyright must be of limited duration and
limited rights, and in this opinion, the
DMCA and CTEA are an insult to this balance
between Private profit and Public Good.