Supreme Court Accepts Eldred Case

Patrick Fitzgerald writes: "The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to intervene in a fight over copyrights, deciding whether Congress has sided too heavily with writers and other inventors. The outcome will determine when hundreds of thousands of books, songs and movies will be freely available on the Internet or in digital libraries." Openlaw's Eldred v. Ashcroft page has more information about the case, which seeks to challenge the most recent retroactive extension of copyright terms.

Comments

Re:The key here

[csbruce]

My thoughts are that a corporate copyright should last for 50 years, and that an individual copyright should last for the lifetime of the author plus 20 years. Any copyright that was ever owned by a corporation shall always be classified as a corporate copyright.

Fifty years is plenty long enough for a corporation to reap its rewards, and an individual should be entitled to rewards for his entire lifetime. We wouldn't want copyrights to end at an author's death, because then an industry would spring up for bumping off authors of important works.

There should also be provisions for abandonment. For example, if a copyrighted work is not available for sale (including for $0.00) from its copyright holder to the public for a total of ten years, then it is considered to be abandoned.

Copyright Win-win

[pgrb]

Let's apply some government moderated capitalism here.

Copyrights are obviously valuable, otherwise corporations would not be prepared to spend so much defending them. However, they cost nothing to create. The government is missing an obvious source of revenue here - simply tax the ownership of a published copyrighted work that is itself sold. If you don't pay the tax, it becomes public domain. Copyrights for free items would be free of this tax.

To add spice, double the tax each year the copyright runs. For example:

Tax in year 1 - 1 cent
Tax in year 2 - 2 cents
Tax in year 3 - 4 cents
...you know where this is going.

An up-front fee (or pre-payment of tax) of $10.23 protects your copyright for 10 years.

An up front fee of $327.67 preserves your copyright for 15 years.

But you can see that after 25 years, the next fee is $335,544.32 - you need a serious income to preserve the copyright. If you don't pay, it becomes public domain.

You get the opportunity to profit. The government gets a revenue stream, and items become public domain after a reasonable time.

Obviously, the starting point and the exponential could be varied, but explaining it with a pile of pennies and a chessboard - move one square per year and double the number of pennies - keeps it simple. The fees in the early years are very reasonable, encouraging people to profit from their work quickly.

Problems?