Royalties Quotes

As a member of the Crow Tribe living on the Montana Crow Reservation, she recieved, alomg with all other tribal members, about $225 every quarter for the royalty payments that a commercal coal mining company paid on the coar that they mined on the Crow land. The demand for coal had been steadily decreasing for over a decade since coal was the worst of the fossil fules in terms of polluting the air and emitting greenhouse gases increasing the global warming. With the Fracking technology, oil had become much less expensive as was natural gas, making coal not only the dirtiest fuel for producing electricity but one of the most expensive whereas in the past it had been the least expensive. The Montana Crow Reservation was econmically destitute, with no industry, very little agriculture, and littel else to help the local economy other than the royalty payments for coal mining. In other parts of the country otehr Indian nations were giving up economic benefits that came from enviornmentally damaging commercial activity and there was some pressure on teh Crow nation to close the reservation to coal mining. Ms. Ten Bear Reed's quotation illustrated the great dilemma that she, the Crow, other Indian tribes and general citizens all over the country. For decades many areas of the country had been in economic recession, and poverty was endemic. The royalties from coal mining, oil drilling, pipeline right of way and other commecial activities that did or potentially threatened the enviornment was in many cases the only cash families and tribes recieved or it was a large proportion of their income. The moral dilemma was profound when there were chilren to feed and care for. it was much harder for the poor to be environmentally conscious than for people who were economivally better off.

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.