Elvis Costello Quotes

The Church of Scientology has repeatedly been accused of fraudulent activities masking as a religion, taking advantage of the United States Constitution protection of freedom of religion. Many religions raise money—tax free—and the government has no right to audit their books. However some people form religions / cults mainly for the economic profits they can make. The evidence in this hearing seemed to indicate that this was the case for the creation of Scientology. Other countries treat Scientology as nothing but a consumer fraud and do not allow its operation or severely restricts it. The officials of the church protest vehemently that this is religious persecution. See {585647} .

There was a major debate about Congress changing the copyright law. Copyrights always had a life of 26 years and could be renewed once giving 52 years of monopoly protection. However, the copyright on Mickey Mouse was running out since it had been created 51 years earlier by Walt Disney. The modern Walt Disney company lobbied heavily for a change in the law. Other publishers joined them. Their major argument was that authors and creators of material need to have a strong incentive to write and do all the creative work to produce great materials. The change they wanted was to protect the work for the life of the author PLUS 100 years. The example that was given was the great American writer Nathanial Hawthorne who could not earn much money writing and spent part of his career doing other things. London publishers ripped off his popular books, but we did not have a copyright treaty with England. Valenti, a former eloquent politician and the spokesperson for Hollywood, observed that if Hawthorne had been better protected he might have written many more great works. However, Lessig turned the tables on him by pointing out that the 100 years after the death of the author during which the industry wanted protection would have no possible effect on the writing productivity of the creator. Dead people do not respond to economic incentives. It became clear that the argument of the industry that the change would protect authors and encourage them to create more, was a red herring and the only benefit would inure to the copyright holders and controllers and the author would not benefit at all. It was pure commercial desire to use the Federal law to get something valuable that they never had and the public would have gotten. However, the lobbying campaign was one of the best in American history and a benefit was taken away from the public and awarded to a small group of companies who paid handsomely with campaign contributions. A monopoly that no one could obtain in over 200 years of American history suddenly was obtained by a change in the copyright law.

Vladimir Lenin. After the Russian Revolution the Soviet State rejected the use of a copyright and patent system with the notion that all intellectual property belonged to the state. According to some political economic theorists, this would portend great difficulty in obtaining innovative and creative output in the arts, industry, and sciences. However, in the next 50 years, Russia went from a backward nation to one of the most scientifically sophisticated in the world and their creative arts output, quality and quantity was second to none. They did not fare as well in consumer technology although their military technology was very powerful and all the more amazing considering where they were in 1918 when the Russians adopted these policies. The issue of whether artists, scientists, and inventors need exclusive control of their output in order to be motivated to create has been in dispute for years.