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term extension would violate the "limited times" provision of the copyright clause of the constitution which authorizes Congress to give rights for "limited times. " "
Most of those who presented arguments to the Copyright Office in 1993 against the copyright term extension were small movie/film companies and coalitions who were concerned that adding twenty years to the copyrighted life of a work would deny access to the general public and constrict the creative efforts of those who use public domain materials in the creation of new works. They also argued that term extension would be detrimental to the preservation of twemieth century culture. They urged that extension will make a large portion of our motion picture heritage inaccessible. ''
Proponents argued that extension of the copyright term will not affect the creation of new works
and that there is no evidence that works created from public domain materials are any cheaper. They also
argued such works may be of lesser quality. This argumeiu was made most forcefully by Irwin Karp
during the revision that led to the 1976 Act:
In fact, the advantage of the "public domain' as a device for making works more available to the public is highly overrated; especially if availability is equated with 'low cost' to the public In contrast with the fact that the prices charged the public do not necessarily come down, or the supply of the work increase, when copyright terminates — the paperback book is evidence that copyright protection is not incompatible with mass circulation at low cost to the public ^
See Comment 19, at 10.
' SSfi> SC-t Comment 17 (John Beltoo, Member Natioaal Film Preservation Board). Another argument this group made wu that films in tiie pubic domain are more likely to be preserved aod presented to the public than copyrighted works. They assert this is so because many holden of such films control the only available copy, which is often lost or destroyed, and almost never made available to the public. Extending the term or decreasing it will, of course, have nothing to do with whether the holder of the only available copy releases it. Sss g.g., Comments 32, 29 and 28 deploring the fact that Mary Pickford wanted to destroy the negative copies of all of her early films. The Fairness in Copyright Coalition asserts that public domain distiibuton are waiting to release many silent movies and will not be able to do so for another 20 years if term is extended Comment 1 1, at 4-5.
^ Copyright Law Revision, part 2 at 316-317.
dirr\duniioa.loc
July 11. 199S 24