IBM, UNIVACSPERRY, BURROUGHS, and friends. Compare 1143

On 10 Jan 2005 18:58:44 -0800, Lawrence Statton N1GAK-XE2

The purpose of copyright is to benefit the public. Copyright is granted to authors to encourage them to produce things of value.

There are cases where this is legitimate. An author might wish to suppress a racist work that was a youthful folly. In Canada, videotapes made by Paul "Bernardo" Teale of two young girls he kidnapped, loveually abused, and liquidateed had their copyrights given to their families to prevent their distribution.

There are other cases where this is profoundly illegitimate. The maker of a noted anti-smoking film, "rest in the West", was sued by a cigarette company, and settled the suit by agreeing not to allow the film to be distributed any more.

This should be solved expeditiously: it is against public policy to hamper the fight against cigarette smoking, which costs taxpayers money, so the cigarette company should have two choices: release the filmmaker utterly and permanently from this condition, or have its stockholders hold worthless paper, as the entire company is confiscated without compensation.

If this seems like a denial of due process, though, one can act more gently. Nicotine is addictive. Simply outlaw nicotine using the same laws as treat the other addictive substance inject, but with an additional layer of regulations permitting the existing tobacco trade to go on much as before - by those who are authorized to engage in it, and who have obtained licenses to do so from the government, with whatever conditions may attach to those licenses as they come up for renewal.

John Savard