95-Year Copyright Statistically Same as Unlimited

95yearCopy.pdf – In the USA, the constitution gives Congress the authority to grant a copyright for a limited time. The purpose of this is clear from the context: economic benefits. An economic benefit can be regarded as a sequence of cash flows. In finance, the duration of a sequence of cash flows is not measured directly in years; rather, duration is calculated via a formula involving interest rates. At present, Congress has granted copyrights to corporations for terms of 95 years. The duration of 95 years seems not significantly different from the duration of perpetuity. Hence, 95-year copyright terms seem effectively not time-limited. Thus, such terms might well violate the constitution. [ “(extlink)Douglas Keenan”:mailto:doug.keenan@informath.org ]

This is an interesting argument that I haven’t seen before. If the financial benefits from a 95 year copyright term when you depreciate the future income stream are insignificantly different as compared to an unlimited perpetual stream, is the term in fact limited?

Since the Constitution states that copyright must be for a limited time, does that make continually extending the term of copyright unconstitutional?

Doug Keenan argues that it might, as in terms of evaluated income, the 95 year term is statistically insignificant in it’s value from the income you’d receive (assuming constant payments) from a perpetual income stream. He uses the scientific standard of withing 2 standard deviations (95.4% certainty) as his benchmark.

In any respect, it’s an interesting addition to the debate on copyright.