-----Original Message--

From: cbp-owner@lists.studiob.com [mailto:cbp-owner@lists.studiob.com]On Behalf Of Ivan Hoffman Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:42 AM
To: cbp@lists.studiob.com
Subject: [cbp] ELDRED DECISION

Dear All:

As many of you by now no doubt have heard, the Supreme Court has upheld the validity of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Read "When Do Copyrights Expire?" on my site. Click on "Articles for Writers and Publishers."

If you create or own copyright rights in intellectual property, then this decision is very much in your interest. Intellectual property is today's means of production and the source of wealth in the world today. You just have to look at the top 10 richest people in the world to see that. A hundred years ago, the source of wealth might have been steel mills etc. Later, the source of wealth might have been real estate and the like. Today, the source of wealth is IP. Ownership of IP rights is essential if your goal is to be successful and wealthy. That is the reason I constantly stress the need to "own everything."

All your dealings, all your contracts etc. should be with the view toward owning everything. You should also spend some time on my site on the link "Articles About Being an Entrepreneur." And on that latter link, read "The Do It Yourself Publishing Lawyer," "What Business Are You In?", "Set To Fail" and "The Need for Vision" on my site. Click on "Articles About Being an Entrepreneur."

IVAN HOFFMAN, B.A., J.D.
Attorney at Law
Lawyering With Integrity
Internet Law, Publishing Law, Copyrights, Trademarks, Fine Art Law,
Corporate Training and Online Education Law, Web Design Law, Music Law.
*A 7 Times Award Winning Site.* http://www.ivanhoffman.com

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Ivan is giving very sensible advice for the person who earns his or her living by the written word. It's good advice for any piece of writing created as an item of commerce and for non-commercial writing over which one wants to maintain some control.

In particular, it's good advice when selling a piece of writing to a publisher, because any rights you don't hang on to, that publisher is going to get. Why on earth would I want to give, say, Disney any rights I could keep to a song I'd written for a movie?

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"Ownership of IP rights is essential if your goal is to be successful and wealthy. That is the reason I constantly stress the need to "own everything."

All your dealings, all your contracts etc. should be with the view toward owning everything."

Own own own...buy buy buy...consume consume consume. I find it offensive that this particular law wasn't pushed because a bunch of us writer's were starving and being harmed by the previous law...but to preserve the archives of the media barons. As individuals, let's remember that the copyright extension just extends the ownership after our deaths...in fact it almost extends it beyond my children's death.

I do not write not for personal wealth, but to contribute some value to society. I get my biggest rewards with the mail I get from those who found value in what I wrote. The money only allows me to continue to do what I love. I certainly am not getting rich from it.

I'm not against making money or even getting wealthy from that pursuit, but I'm not interested in building a legacy and an empire of my work so that the fruit of my loins can sit on their asses for the next 100 years.

People like Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Orwell, Huxley, didn't write to establish a legacy of wealth for their families, and I don't believe that they would support this. This law was pushed my large media companies and introduced by one of their lackeys. After raping the public domain to build their empires, the fat cats of media are simply interested in preserving their revenue streams for hundreds of years. I guarantee you that when their rights are close to expiring once again...they'll push through the Millennium Copyright Act.

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(Oddly enough, I'm on the cbp list [from which the letter came], and I took Ivan to task for some of his follow-up comments, explaining my attitude thusly: "It's similar to populist disgust at wealth accumulated over generations as opposed to populist pleasure at seeing the producer rewarded for his or her work.")

But keep in mind the context of the letter: Ivan was using a current event in the course of explaining once again to creators that they should know all their rights and give away nothing. There are a lot of very poor musicians who didn't listen to this advice and very fat record companies in whose interest it was to make sure musicians never heard such advice. Given that Eldred is now (and I'm not happy about this) the law of the land, the stakes in the creator/suit struggle are now much higher, and the advice is better all the time.

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