TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Time for the Recording Industry to Face the Music

Re: Time for the Recording Industry to Face the Music

John Smith (user@example.net)
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 04:26:08 GMT

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> People have a Constitutional right (and a moral one too) to be
> compensated for their creative efforts.

Wow! That's a wild interpretation of the Constitution.

You know, by writing this message, I have just made a creative effort.
Where the hell's my check!?

In fact, nobody has a Constitutional right to be compensated just
because they wrote a song. If they did, there would be a lot fewer
out-of-work song writers in the world.

What the Constitution /really/ says is that Congress has the power "[t]o
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".

Authors certainly don't have the right to get compensated; they only
have the right to prevent OTHER people from publishing or using their
work. And they only have that right for a limited time, and only if
Congress grants it to them, which it has the power to, but is under no
Constitutional obligation to do. In fact, Congress only has that power
if it finds that doing so will promote the "useful arts".

That's a far cry from "everyone has a right to get paid".

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