Creative License

Kudos to John Balzar for “Copyrights and Wrong Copying” (Commentary, Oct. 23). He’s right that perpetual copyrights have to go, while the incentive to create is encouraged by the opportunity to receive compensation for one’s work. He might have added that the “Internet fundamentalists” ought to think about the connection between copyrights and patents. Inventors will stop inventing if they cannot get patents, just as novelists and screenwriters will stop writing without copyright protection. In time, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt and take the Internet down with it. And the cancer drug that won’t be discovered might have saved their lives.

Sears McGee

Santa Barbara