In Defense of Copyright Protection

Stanford law professor Larry Lessig (“The Cultural Anarchist vs. the Hollywood Police State,” by David Streitfeld, Sept. 22) is to creators of intellectual property what U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has been to the United States Constitution.

Should professor Lessig’s latest academic pursuit--Eldred v. Ashcroft, a civil suit scheduled to be heard Oct. 9 before the U.S. Supreme Court--succeed, it will have the force and effect of dropping “the big one” in every still photography, motion picture and video archive across this land. Gone will be the financial incentive--for big and small businesses alike--to house, maintain and restore this nation’s greatest form of expression, the recorded image.

Lessig argues that “the Supreme Court isn’t owned by Hollywood,” and his suit will free “hundreds of thousands of artistic works”--much the same way that Ronald Reagan’s administration “freed” the gravely mentally ill from state hospitals, allowing them to die in the streets without medical treatment, food or money. It’s “cultural anarchists” like Lessig who are the real threat to our cultural heritage.

Robert Tur

Photojournalist

Los Angeles News Service

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Apparently Lessig and many others outside of the entertainment industry feel it’s their right to exploit any and all aspects of intellectual property, whether it was created 80-plus years ago or yesterday, without payment to the creators or the copyright holders.

Grossly absent from the article is the fact that someone may earn a living from the copyrights Lessig wishes to annul. Big corporations aside, there are thousands of people who have been involved creatively with film, music and other arts that rely on copyright protection to feed their families. Most of them cannot rely on the income derived because it is so small, and they have to find other means to subsist.

Fred Bailin

Irvine

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I fail to understand why the copyrights for movies, novels and music are treated differently than the limited patents on prescription drugs. The “creators” of these products do not receive anywhere near the majority of the money generated; those involved in mass production and distribution do.

If the goal of copyrights is to protect creativity, then they should end with the death of the artist (or very shortly thereafter) so that the work can develop or disappear according to its cultural significance. As any artist will tell you, imitation is the highest and most irritating form of flattery. What most artists want after death is simply recognition and attribution.

Mery Lynn McCorkle

Los Angeles