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Why do you think that? Can you point to some early philosopher of law that made such utilitarian arguments?
by cess11 2y ago
Why do you think that? Can you point to some early philosopher of law that made such utilitarian arguments?
- throwaway48476 2y agohttps://www.copyright.gov/timeline/ https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/
- mrighele 2y agoFor Americans, the utilitarian argument is made in the Constitution: _"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises [...] to 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"_ [1] [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
- cess11 2y agoDoesn't say anything about "benefit society as a whole".
- anigbrowl 2y agoBecause that's the stated purpose of patents in the US constitution.
- jmward01 2y agoThe actual text of the US constitution maybe? Article I Section 8 Enumerated Powers Clause 8 Intellectual Property To 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; Seems like the idea is to promote innovation by making sure it is for a limited time only seems pretty ingrained in the idea.
- tmtvl 2y agoIf it says 'for a limited time', then wouldn't tying itmto the lifetime of the author be unconstitutional? Because strictly speaking it's impossible to predict whether an author's life will end.
- samatman 2y agoIt's in fact trivially easy to predict whether an author's life will end. Watch: I predict an author's life will end. I give it very high odds indeed.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoCorporations can hold copyright and can be undying.
- HWR_14 2y agoIf the author is a real person, it's life of the author plus. If it is a corporation it is a fixed amount of time.
- bitwize 2y agoDecided in Eldred v. Ashcroft. As long as Congress stipulates a non-infinite copyright term, it's constitutional. Given that the chance of a human being eventually ceasing to live has been 100% so far, it's legitimate to assume that life + n years is still a finite period of time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cess11 2y ago"Progress of Science and useful Arts" isn't utilitarian in the sense "benefit society as a whole".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]