6 ms·

If the government takes your land and gives it to the public to build a new road, the Constitution says you have to be compensated. If the government takes you

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > When the government forces private copyrighted materials into the public domain, they should pay the copyright holders for the revenue they would have gotten from paid distribution. More reasonably, they should pay the copyright holders for the value it would have had had the government not mandated it, since if free access comes with the government mandate, the additional value it has because of the mandate is a direct result of the same action as making it free to access, and should not be factored in to an eminent domain value analysis.
  • hobbyjogger 10y ago
    Which is exactly how eminent domain works. If the government takes your farm to build an airport, they pay you for the value of the pre-takings farm, not the value of the post-takings airport.
• mindslight 10y ago
  I would presume that governments pay the private code bodies to incorporate their publications into local laws, or at least would when the code bodies finally accept that doing so puts the code into the public domain, so there is no "taking" going on. Obviously code bodies want to have their cake and eat it too, creating an exclusive right to print the law and enabling a high margin industry of selling the code and its derivatives to every individual bound by it (which is everyone). But this rent seeking is obviously incompatible with the fundamental rule of law.
• jsprogrammer 10y ago
  >If the government takes your land and gives it to the public to build a new road, the Constitution says you have to be compensated. If the government takes your standard and gives it to the public to build a new law, it seems like the same conclusion should apply. The situations are different. In the case of eminent domain the individual(s) lose physical access to their property, whereas with a standard, no damage is done to the individual(s)' ability to use it, as only copies are being made.
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    Both in practice and Constitutionally, eminent domain and the associated right of compensation applies to property generally (including both real and personal property, and, in the latter case, both tangible and intangible personal property.)
    • jsprogrammer 10y ago
      Publishing a copy is not taking. Taking would be something like declaring exclusive use over the work (taking the copyright itself). Publishing a copy of something that already exists is an independent action that doesn't affect copyright holders' use of their property.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Publishing a copy is not taking. "Property", whether real, tangible personal, or intangible personal, is a legal power to exclude others from certain actions with reference to some thing. Limiting some part of that exclusive power while leaving the owner title to the property and with the rest of the exclusive rights is still a taking of property, so even if what the government did with regard to copyrights was less extensive than actually seizing the copyright, it would still be a taking (similar to using eminent domain to take an easement or right-of-way, leaving the owner of land the title.)
      • nicerobot 10y ago
        I see it as taking the copyright holder's control over their material, not taking the material itself. In other words, if someone publishes your works for free that you would otherwise charge for access, they haven't taken your work, they've taken your control over the access to it.