Slashdot Mirror

I can also store a bazillion books on my computer, but I don't think it's reasonable to charge me a million dollars tax for my hard drive.

Over half the books ever published were published since 1950. Every book published on or after January 1, 1923, or whose author died on or after January 1, 1931, or which is an adaptation of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, is under Bono Act copyright in United States and/or one or more countries in the European Union. (The Bono mentality is to extend copyright by 20 years every 20 years, circumventing the "limited times" language of the United States Constitution.)

Please donate to Eldred's legal fund.

Shouldn't Peter Pan have become public domain? I think it's been long enough. Instead every production of Peter Pan pays royalties to an English Children's hospital.

Here's some more information on the perpetual copyright on J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. This copyright is subject to compulsory licensing; royalties go to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Disney will get a dose of its own medicine when it tries to release Return to Never Land on DVD in Region 2.

This applies only in the United Kingdom. Such a literal perpetual copyright cannot happen in the United States because of the "limited times" clause in the Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 8. However, this does not stop Congress from declaring: "Resolved, That it is the policy of the Congress of the United States to enact a twenty (20)-year copyright term extension every twenty (20) years," unless Eldred convinces the Supremes otherwise.

works owned by an individual remain the exclusive property of that individual for his or her lifetime, then the property of that individual's estate for seventy years.

How much are you willing to insure me for that this number "seventy" will not increase further within the next fifty years?

After that term, the copyright expires

This means that for virtually all works, anybody who has ever seen the work commercially exploited will not live to produce anything from that work.

Many uninformed reactionaries have written that copyright is now perpetual, because Congress can extend it any time they want. This has always been true, within the limits set forth by the Constitution.

What limits? The "for limited Times" language of the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, clause 8, has been declared moot by a District Court unless Eldred wins a Supreme Court battle.

It doesn't mean that copyright is meaningless, or that it doesn't expire.

But if Congress has the power to do everything short of explicitly stating that "Resolved, that it is the policy of the Congress of the United States to enact a 20-year copyright term extension act on every 20-year anniversary of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act," then what is the substantive limit on Congress's power to make copyright perpetual in practice?

So what happens if the hacker dies in between?

In that case, tough beans.

United States copyright law, 17 USC 302, provides for a perpetual copyright on all works created on or after January 1, 1978. Currently, it's 150 years (life plus 70), but Congress reserves the right to pass a 20 year copyright term extension every 20 years, and if Eldred loses the Supreme Court case this fall, count on an immediate 1,000 year extension act.

And don't count on being able to talk the heirs into re-licensing the software. In general, heirs tend to be greedier about copyrights than the author was.

Repeat after me: there are no technical fixes for social problems, there are no technical fixes for social problems, there are no technical fixes for social problems.

I don't care what code you put on the SACD, or what rights management comes with the software: until we get a consistency of governance, with the same clear law implemented uniformly, protecting both fair use, individual rights, and copyright law (what's left of it after Eldred Vs. Ashcroft all of this is just screwing around: people will hack around it, of course, and it'll be DeCSS all over again.

That's not progress, or a solution.