Off-topic: Case profs and copyright law
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,048
    This is mostly to wave in Mr. Tucker' s face, but it's relevant to the rest of us too. Kind of old news though, I see...
    http://www.case.edu/magazine/fallwinter2010/copyright.html
    "Published in the November 2009 issue of Vanderbilt Law Review, the study by Case Western Reserve University copyright expert Raymond Ku and Jiayang Sun, a Case Western Reserve professor of statistics, looks at how the number of creative works registered from 1870 to 2006 was affected by increases in copyright law, population, technology and the economy.
    Ku says that increases of copyright protections didn't have a uniform or predictable relationship with the number of works registered-effectively pulling the rug out from under the theory that has driven the nation's ongoing expansion of copyright law."
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    That's a very interesting study, with conclusions that are not surprising at all. There have been many dozens of studies showing that the same is true of patents. The principle is pretty simple here: creating monopolies does not lead to a flourishing, growing, dynamic market but rather the opposite.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,951
    It would be interesting if a court were to find Congress lacked a rational basis for expanding copyright terms.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    It would be interesting if a finding of rationality or its lack had any bearing on any law enacted by any government anywhere, ever.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    yeah, if courts start adjudicating based on rationality, we can prepare for the end of the world as we know it.
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    If courts "start adjudicating based on rationality" in the robust sense, then we turn the courts into an unelected (and life-tenured) legislature who are charged to approve or overturn laws based strictly on whether they are a "good idea." I, for one, don't want my government run that way, but YMMV.
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,021
    Well, there are differences in "rationality". If one's own rationality is based on the truths revealed in the Bible, then one is on pretty solid ground. The problem is that each of our government officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and then rule over us swinging between Machiavellian and Marxist!
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