“Why not have copyright law like property law — i.e. it lasts forever?” asked one Australian professor. The question deserves an answer and Eric Crampton offers one EFF Meanwhile, fine print in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty could block badly needed orphan-works reform in copyright law [David Post, earlier on orphan copyright]
3 Comments
Well for one thing, the US couldn’t sign on to a treaty establishing infinite copyright as that would violate the US constitution.
I have long been suspicious of TPP for precisely this reason– that its real purpose is to entrench bad patent and copyright law. We already get the benefits of free trade in most of what we buy, to the regret of some rust-belt industries.
We should be ready to find allies on the Left to sink TPP.
There are already Left groups fighting TPP. DemandProgress.org is one.