Posted 1:32 PM by Gene

The idea that the public domain is the route to universal intellectual enrichment may not be all it's cracked up to be. Certainly it's criminal (to take one case) that the comic novelist Peter DeVries is totally out of print; Internet publishers could best serve readers by making the Web a repository of unjustly neglected work, and here the Disney Protection Act (or rather, the Trent Lott Permanent Re-election Act) proves to be a safe door, forever locked and under guard. But with mass electronic media, the advantage still belongs to Jack Valenti; unlike with literature, which could be freely copied without loss of quality, the entertainment biggies would control access to master tapes and films and parts even under public domain; and as most music lovers know, low-cost access means low-quality transfers. The flood of tacky public-domain CDs out of Europe will only intensify the notion that old music is bad because it sounds bad. Chalk two up to the biggies; they won in court, and they'll win in the marketplace by default.