Readers are asked to submit suggestions on this draft for submission to USTR next Tuesday:

I base my comments on copyright, by referring to Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution which states: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Copyright has been repeatedly extended with doubtful justification. If the author sells the rights to future incomes, the present value of each year's future income from copyright declines rapidly, approaching zero. The buyer of those rights gets little inducement to increase his payment for them. Thus, beyond ten years, copyright is not an inducement to create.

Moreover, the existence of copyright makes the creation of newly inspired derivative works unattractive because of the risk of being sued, successfully or not, given the costs of litigation.

Finally, legal suits over copyright are a huge cost to the economy, as is the continual cost of lobbying for more favorable legislation by the large holders of copyrights. This has only gotten worse in recent years, as the potential gains from resort to law increases. This is particularly true in cases where the law is unsettled, as so often happens when courts or legislation make small changes in the law and its interpretation.

The lawsuits are made increasingly expensive by pressure to get courts to change the interpretation of the law and by seeking trial in districts where the courts have been found increasingly responsive to plaintiffs.

This brings me to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). It is an anti-democratic outrage, not to have published the terms of the draft agreement and suggests to me that the USTR is engaged in a shady deal which will not stand the light of public disclosure and discussion. I expect better of the Obama administration, for which I voted, a choice I now question. I must assume that we are trying to browbeat our trading partners into accepting terms that they are resisting rather than examining the pluses and minuses of such an agreement.

This is quite good, but there are perhaps two other points worth mentioning. First that during the formative years of our own development we did not recognize foreign copyright - in effect we had the doors open when we needed them, now we want to close them on other countries. Second - with respect to the length of copyright and incentives: is it worth mentioning the brief filed by a group of economists making that point in the lawsuit over the copyright extension?

Good or not, the comment was not responsive to the question asked in the request for comments. While it likely felt good to state, it will be dismissed out of hand for not answering the question for which inputs were solicited.