By D. W. O’Dell

To those of you who think that copyright law is the province of pointy-headed academics who like to read Latin, you should check out the collected works of Professor Lawrence Lessig; you might need his help when the RIAA Gestapo kick in your door, seize your computer, and sue you for $10,000,000 because you visited the wrong website.

Lawrence Lessig teaches at Stanford Law School, but he is different from most law professors. For one thing, he was once a character on The West Wing, where he was played by Christopher Lloyd, who does not play characters who are, well, typical. Another difference is that he writes books that are accessible to people who are interested in law but don’t want to wade through 24 footnotes per page.

Lessig’s last two books have been more frightening than anything Stephen King ever produced. King’s novels have almost no chance of ever happening--a zombie is not going to knock on your door tomorrow morning. But the nightmarish world described by Lessig is slowly, inexorably coming to pass, and it may already be too late to do any thing about it.

An earlier book by Lessig, The Future of Ideas, dealt with the wholesale rape of US copyright law by powerful corporate elements. The United States Constitution (Article I, section 8) specifically states that Congress shall have the power to grant exclusive rights to authors for a “limited time” in order to “promote the Progress of Sciences and useful Arts” (bizarre capitalization in original). However, copyrights now essentially last forever, and there’s a ‘Mickey Mouse’ reason why.

Literally, Mickey Mouse. Whenever the little rodent is about to pass into the public domain, Congress (many of whom accept bribes, err, contributions from the Walt Disney Company) passes a law extending copyright protection for a while longer. In 1998 the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (say that with a straight face) extended copyright protection for works created in 1923 well into the 21st century, and one assumes that when that runs out Disney will get another extension until Walt’s head is unfrozen.

A case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, with Lessig arguing for the plaintiff, that extending existing copyrights was a clear violation of the Constitution’s call for a “limited term.” After all, a term isn’t limited if it can be extended indefinitely. The Court, in its infinite wisdom, said that the length of copyrights was a policy decision best left to Congress’ discretion. This ignores the point that the Constitution expressly took away their discretion to vary the terms of a copyright.

Allowing published works to slip into the public domain permits subsequent authors to re-imagine these works, creating even more imaginative works. Works in the public domain could be made available at no cost over the Internet, opening up a sea of literature to low income children who have access to a library Internet connection (do libraries have books anymore?). Disney has made enough money off of Mickey Mouse; they should be forced to make money off of Nemo for a while.

Most of Shakespeare’s works are derived from previous literary works; if the Sonny Bono Act had existed in England in Shakespeare’s lifetime, there would be no Hamlet, no Lear, no Romeo and Juliet. Yes, authors should be allowed the exclusive rights to their creative product, but after a time that right goes away and others get to make what they will of the original product.

The Sonny Bono Act (I’m sorry, but every time I write that I crack up) was a profound expansion of copyright power, but it was just the beginning. In my next article I will explain why the situation is even worse. In addition to copyright power existing forever, the reach of that power has been expanded by corporations into your computer, your MP3 player, even into your brain. The Copyright War has been launched, and the goal of those on the offensive is nothing less than control of your thoughts. But that will wait until next time.