Re: Deregulating Expressive Works

Steve_R — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:20:14 -0000

Could you provide some concrete examples of what rights/obligations that the consumer/content producers would have under a common law scenario?

You wrote "To deregulate expressive works, we must let them escape from the Copyright Act
into common law." I am having a difficult time concerning the implications of what it would mean for copyright law to be a subset of common law.

My lay opinion a consumer, under common law, would be entitled to use copyrighted material virtually anyway they wish - provided they aren't selling it (or giving it away) without the copyrights owner's permission. Would this be a valid understanding?

Under a common law approach, how long would copyright last? I hope not perpetually.

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Nit picky editorial comment. I would suggest revising the sentence "Through it, copyright holders win the privilege of invoking state power to control how and what we communicate." to "Through it, copyright holders win the privilege of invoking state power to control how we use copyrighted material." I don't think that copyright law explicitly controls how we communicate, but it does severely restrict what we may do with copyrighted material.

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Re: Deregulating Expressive Works