Bill Gates compares free culture advocates to communists in this interview with News.com, it gets picked up by BoingBoing and then all hell breaks loose.
News.com – In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?
Bill Gates – No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.
Whilst there are undoubtedly some people advocating abandoning intellectual property laws altogether, I would think that the majority of people seeking IP reform believe in the principle just not in the current form of those laws.
The disparity between the term of protection offered by patents and copyrights is huge. For patents it is 20 years and for copyright it is life of author plus 70 years , which could mean well over a century. Yet the principle is the same – To benefit society by encouraging and fostering innovation and invention through offering a limited monopoly to authors of creative works. In the words of the United States Constitution.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The extension of the term of copyright can only have a extremely limited effect in encouraging new creative works to be produced. I’m sure it would be a challenge to find an author in the UK who would not be prepared to publish something because the copyright would only last 50 years beyond his death rather than 70 years that it has now been increased to in The Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations 1995.
In fact such extensions to the duration that copyright lasts for can have a detrimental effect as it discourages investment in new ventures which can be risky in respect to long established profitable products. The relatively short period of protection afforded to patents encourages pharmaceutical companies to constantly research and develop new products to replace those drugs that will move into the public domain and which will then be produced in generic form by other companies.
In this case the competition drives down prices for generic drugs and through encouraging innovation improves the health of the human race. I personally wouldn’t advocate a term of 20 years for copyright, I believe that a term of 50 years would be a sufficient duration to balance the benefit to both author and society.
Tags: copyright