Education must improve ““ or else
The Daily Bruin has not moved much further behind the misguided
assumption that more money thrown at government schools is a
cure-all solution (“Education in California has a long way to
go,” Aug. 22).
The Bush administration is seeking to add quasi-market forces to
our socialistic schools by encouraging them to improve or else lose
funds. This is the same principle that applies to every other
economic transaction: If you provide lousy service, your revenue
will decline for lack of customers.
In this case, the Bush administration is acting as the customer,
saying no thanks to funding failure. Over time, the schools have a
huge incentive to improve if they wish to continue to be
funded.
Michael Gordon
UCLA alumnus
Copyright laws go beyond what’s right
Even as they complain about students downloading music and
movies from the Internet, record companies and film studios are
pirating your copyrights ““ and Uncle Sam is helping them.
The U.S. Constitution says copyrights must expire after a
limited time whereupon the work becomes public domain. Then the
puÂblic is free to copy Sherlock Holmes stories, or perform
Shakespeare or Mozart. Public domain is your copyright.
However, copyright’s “limited time” has been
repeatedly exÂtended, often due to big media lobbying. The
1790 Copyright Act set copyright protection at 14 years, renewable
for another 14. By 1998 copyright was extended to “life of
the author plus 70 years.”
Artists should profit from their creations ““ but not 70
years into the grave. Life plus 25 is more reasonable. Anything
longer just benefits distant heirs and big media companies.
The Fair Use doctrine lets the public copy excerpts from
proÂtected works for purposes of news, education, research,
critiÂcism and commentary as well as parodies . It’s a
complex doctrine; you don’t know what’s fair use until
you’re in court ““ so ofÂten it’s determined
by who can afford a lawsuit.
Pirating movies and music is wrong (though not as harmful to
many artists as are industry accounting practices). But it’s
hard to sympathize with big media companies who have suffered
piracy while they and their lobbyists and lawyers are pirating your
rights.
Thomas M. Sipos
UCLA extension instructor